I'm on a balcony right up against national forest land as I'm typing this. My typing is the loudest thing I hear. If I stop typing, I don't just hear birds and wind, I hear insects. Lots of them. When I lived in NYC, it was incredibly loud, I was very aware of this, there's nothing at all silent about it. I think after a number of years people aren't merely used to it being noisy, they have some amount of permanent hearing damage, they're just not phased by delivery trucks banging around, sirens blaring, wheels on tracks squealing. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement when it comes to noise.