While waiting on the jetway to get onto the plane for my flight back to Amsterdam a man behind me watches football (soccer) highlights on his phone. Because this is a long flight and a big plane and there is a typical glitch up ahead I am treated to a full ten minutes of “GOAL!” and so forth.
Question: If this guy were poking me in the shoulder for ten minutes would I be allowed to tell him to please stop? I mean he would not be physically hurting me any more than are these sounds but, presumably, I and the people around me would agree he is being inappropriate. But somehow his forcing infotainment on me and everyone else is fine? Because?
Look, I've completely given up on the notion that talking on your phone in the subway or on the train lacks civility. I am behind the times and you, phone talker, are with them. You bought love from Apple or Samsung. You are independent and strong. You carry your world with you wherever you go. Of course your rights as a global nuisance citizen subsume and trump my right not to be poked in the ear by you and your concerns.
One assertion here is that while we talk about the coddling of minds and the social media worlds that make it harder for us to get along with each other because we can each live in our own sphere, we discuss less the constant irritation that makes us wall up from each other out of sensory necessity. Either I have to ignore this guy as everyone else seems to or put on my headphones or find some other way to keep from killing him, as I kind of want to. Almost every moment of the day now comes with someone poking you and far fewer come with the empty space that might lead to something positive. Sure, I might lean over and say, “Hey, I did not see the games, can I watch too” but this differs markedly from my saying, as I might have in the past, “Hey, did you see the game last night?” That act of the past required a leap up human faith whereas now we are “connecting,” if you can call it that, along just and only the pathways that serve big money and giant corporations, space wherein lives, if not Big Brother, then his younger cousin Zuck or Bezos. It is all so intertwined and crazy-making that all I can think of is homicide or where my own phone and headphones are or some version of. . . escape . . escape . . . escape, a thought serves no one except those who want to sell me something.
And not to push back from that to a moral/ethical question like the one we used to ask in the old days, but in these situations I kind of wonder if I am allowed to watch porn or videos of terrorists executing people or home videos of a family member screaming at me. You know, material I want to believe would make people around uncomfortable, if, indeed any such discomfort exists anymore. With no Sacha Barron Cohen instincts, I never do this kind of thing, but if there is no boundary between public and private it surely removes whatever boundary once deemed some content for private consumption only. Will it be an advance of the culture when some percentage of people on the subway are just riding along masturbating? Or will that be a regression? “Times Square . . . this is where I get off.”
Anyway, I am glad to be home where I can turn the stereo up, open the windows, and wait for my neighbors to complain. Civility as I know it.
(Apologies Dear Readers, I did not post this until now, a day late. A Note on Education will follow sometime later Today, and not on some day like it.)
No where any time have groups of humans had the same understanding of civility. What makes the future possible, even with all of our wars, is that all humans have an understanding of civility. Then the hard work comes of translation, or absorption, of understanding, sharing and respect while also sharing the why of what we do. It is actually easier to go to war even if the cost is far greater. Let the Civility begin!