My Neighbor Wants Me to Shut Up. Should I?

My neighbour asked me to move indoors last month, and I minded. The Dude minds, man.

Here's what happened: I like to work outside on my balcony, soaking up sun before our dreaded Northern winter arrives. Occasionally this means holding Zoom calls outdoors. My neighbour, who enjoys sitting on her front porch, didn't appreciate overhearing my side of a work meeting and complained that I was being too loud. She believes her desire for quiet should trump my desire to work outdoors. One of us needs to go inside, and she thinks that should be me.

My wife agrees with her and thinks it's rude of me to have meetings outside. My wife is far wiser than I, so she's probably right. Also, I am used to being told that I am being too loud and tend to defer to my accusers. But something happened recently that made me question my assumption that I am always in the wrong when people say I am being loud. And I need your help, dear readers, to tell me if I'm the asshole here.

I wasn’t always so loud. No, that’s not quite right. I was probably always a bit loud. But I only realized I was loud when I first moved out of my parents’ house in suburban Montreal to live closer to McGill campus. Once I left the nest and lived with others coming from different walks of life, my volume became an issue for some.

I first heard the complaint from my Norwegian friend, Øyvind, who would joke that he wished I came with a volume knob that he and others could dial down. My wife regularly shushes me in public or asks why I’m yelling, and I am hardly ever insulted. I know she is helping me not to be a nuisance to others.

I’ve been shushed in public by complete strangers, too.

I recall sitting at a Starbucks in 2003 near Columbia University’s upper westside campus, having an animated conversation with my friend Catherine. I was brimming with enthusiasm, telling her about the mind-blowing (to me) conversations I’d had with John Bargh, one of my social psychology heroes at the time. I must have been quite animated because within minutes, an embarrassed-looking white woman asked if I could speak more softly. I complied, of course, but Catherine looked mortified. To be shushed in public in New York City—where being loud barely registers—was more than she could handle.

This is far from the only time I’ve been shushed in public by strangers, and when it happens, I don’t think much about it other than to turn down my volume knob. I am the one to blame, I think to myself, and I’m happy to be told when I am being disruptive so that I can adjust to fit in better with other people’s preferences.

But I'm beginning to reconsider whether I'm solely to blame in these encounters.

While visiting family recently, I ate at a Jewish restaurant in Montreal run by and frequented by Moroccan Jews. Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews originate from the Middle East and North Africa, and our culture is livelier and more spirited than our Ashkenazi European cousins. This restaurant was no exception: chaos everywhere, servers yelling, music blaring, and before I knew it, the entire place turned into a disco to wish my mother a happy birthday.

The restaurant was loud. Very loud. But not only did the patrons not seem to mind, they looked like they were having a blast. They liked the volume. They preferred it. And it reminded me of my home growing up, where all of us talked over each other, arguing, laughing, debating. When my wife first visited my parents’ house, the thing she found most strange was how loud we all are.

This reminded me that some homes—no, some cultures—are more passionate. People from these homes and cultures express their views with enthusiasm. Sometimes we scream, not so much out of anger but out of passion and conviction. I cannot tell you how many times I have said to my wife: I’M NOT YELLING—THIS IS HOW I TALK!!!

This means that when I get shushed, it's not necessarily that I'm being rude, but that the culture that produced me isn't the majority culture. While I still appreciate being told when I am being loud, it hits a bit different now. It’s now not only about me, but also about the shusher—they expect their need for quiet to supersede my need to express myself naturally.

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The Atlantic’s Xochitl Gonzalez tells of her own realization about how different cultures place different value on silence. Growing up in the Brooklyn of her youth, she talks about the regular cacophony of urban New York—backing-up trucks, sirens, barking dogs, relatives screaming across the apartment, laughter, and music everywhere. To her, this was the sound of the city, but also the sound of joy. When she attended an Ivy League college, though, she realized that her Puerto Rican New York background was at odds with her white classmates’ preference for silence. She and her friends would be shamed in their own dorm rooms when they’d hear a knock on the door demanding that they use their inside voices.

Although she typically acquiesced when asked to quiet down, she resented that these other students’ need for quiet should trump her own expression of joy.

Now, back to my neighbour. I see that she believes quiet is the correct value, and that louder people should restrain themselves. But in my own home? To be clear, I'm not talking about blasting music at 2am or watching YouTube videos at full volume on a bus. I'm talking about occasional work meetings outdoors, speaking at my habitual volume.

Shared acoustic spaces create genuine tensions between competing rights. My neighbour has a legitimate interest in enjoying her porch in peace. I have a legitimate interest in using my balcony for work. Neither of us is inherently wrong, but someone's preference must give way.

The question is: why does quiet automatically win? Why do we assume the person seeking silence is being more reasonable than the person operating at their natural volume?

My suspicion is that many of you will side with my wife and neighbour. We privilege the person seeking quiet over the person who is more boisterous. This seems like the obviously correct value. But is it?

Although I've pushed back on overly expansive claims about culture's impact, cultures certainly differ in how they value noise and silence. We too often conflate cultural preferences for universal moral truths. Just because Anglo culture prescribes quiet doesn't make it inherently more virtuous than cultures that celebrate volume.

In many cultures, volume is a sign of engagement and passion, of life being lived fully. But we've decided that quiet is virtuous, that the person who speaks softly is inherently more respectable than the person who speaks with gusto.

Yes, I can modulate my volume easier than my neighbor can unhear me. But we live in downtown Toronto—a city where trucks rumble by, construction crews hammer away, and people naturally talk and laugh on the street. If you prioritize quiet above all else, does choosing to live in an urban environment make sense?

So, here's my question for you, dear readers: Am I the asshole? Should I just accept that my neighbour's comfort supersedes my right to be myself on my own property? Or is there something worth defending here about the right to exist with volume in a world that prizes quiet?

Comment below and don’t be afraid to call me the asshole. But please keep it down—I’m trying to work.