Their code: Slower people keep to the right. Step aside to take a picture. And the left side of an escalator should be, of course, kept free for anyone wanting to walk up.We harbor such beliefs because that actually is the right way to behave in crowded areas? This article must have been written by meanderthals, baffled why anyone might think such things.
... It's unclear exactly why some people harbor such beliefs...
Never been to NYC before, but is midtown Manhattan not where you'd find Times Square? You know all those bright lights are put there specifically for people to look at, right?Yes and no. Yes, there are bright lights and shop windows and tourist attractors. On the other hand, most of the walkways in those areas are spacious enough that there are plenty of places to stand that are not directly in the middle of where people are trying to walk. It's not the sauntering that offends, but paying so much attention to the bling that you are not paying attention to the other people around you. Not only will this make people have to slam to a halt as you randomly swerve into their path, or stop short, but it's a good way to get your pocket picked.
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid goddamn people.posted by zamboni at 2:56 PM on February 15, 2011 [12 favorites]
Or if I'm in a more socially conscious form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUVs and Hummers and V12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just 20 stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks ...
If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do - except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: it's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible car accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am - it is actually I who am in his way.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
If you're referring to escabeche, that's a mischaracterization of his comment. Here's what he or she actually wrote:He didn't say he happed to walk slowly and stop a lot. He said he made a point of walking slowly and stopping a lot. If you're making a point of something, you're doing it intentionally. He also said nothing whatsoever about moving to the side to stop, just stopping frequently."When I lived in New York I always made a point of walking slowly and stopping a lot. People in New York think they're in a much bigger hurry than they actually are."There's a huge difference between intentionally stopping in front of people and walking slowly and stopping to look at things. (Admittedly, he or she was ambiguous about the nature of his or her stopping.)
Walking slowly, moving off to the side and stopping, setting an alternate model of behavior than the dominant. There's nothing inherently wrong or assholish there. (IMO)
I think your inferences expose your bias here.
As a general aside (since this is the net's hotspot today for people who are attuned to sidewalk etiquette), can anyone confirm whether or not I am imagining this or if this is a Real Thing (and an Annoying Thing)? It seems to me that when two friends/acquaintances/classmates/whatever have a chance meeting in the street and pause to talk, they will inevitably and unconsciously position themselves to obstruct the flow of traffic as much as possible. That is, if they approach each other from 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock, they will arrange themselves at 3 and 9 for their little tete-a-tete. Confirmation bias?It's probably partially confirmation bias. It's probably also that people doing this are still in the mental space where they will be continuing on their way. They're not really approaching from 12 and 6, because there's the lane offset.
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posted by Shepherd at 10:30 AM on February 15, 2011 [30 favorites]