Thursday, May 05, 2005
(6:26 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Why I didn't post twice today
My experience with public transit is limited. I do wonder, however, how much more crowded the Blue line trains in the northwest of the city can get before the act of entering a train station will become de facto sexual harassment. I tend to apologize to people when I'm the proximate cause of an awkward squeeze, but I'm very surprised if they respond, much less apologize themselves. That's because the cardinal rule of public transit in America is, "Never acknowledge that anyone else is even there." One must maintain the same outward bearing whether the train is completely empty or full to overflowing. The same is true of walking down the sidewalk.Phenomenologically, the use of more "public" means of transportation, whether walking or taking the bus or train, is public only in the sense that we are deprived of a private space. In the car, we carry around a parcel of private space with us, which allows us to express our anger toward the other person, who is isolated in his own private space, and that anger almost always remains a completely private affair. Stripped of that parcel of private space on the sidewalk or on the train, we are not allowed such outbursts, because they would lead to an encounter with another person.
A measure of this is the reaction to those who are trying to send a publicly accessible message -- the homeless, and those who play music on the street or in the train station along the Red line. The challenge becomes not to pay any attention to the musicians at all, to consciously and visibly ignore it. Similarly with the homeless: even if alms are dispensed, it is reduced to the barest possible level of interaction, almost as if it were a transaction at the toll booth. Beggars on the train are experienced as an eruption of almost unbearable awkwardness.
The only ones reaching out to other people, through the minimum means of a word addressed to a concrete other person (whoever happens to walk by), are those who are deprived of money, and thus of space, altogether. The rest of us can afford various means of isolating ourselves, even in the midst of the closest physical proximity -- solutions range in cost from the Red Eye tabloid newpapers to an iPod full to capacity. We are all working in order to secure some kind of guarantee that we will never have to talk to just any old person.
For now, the public modes of transportation seem better to me. I'm sure that, given time, I will come to hate my fellow public transit-based commuters just as much as I currently hate my fellow car-based commuters.
(The fact that this analysis only applies in the more northern segments of the public transit system is perhaps telling. South of the loop, buses and trains can often be a cacaphony of human interaction, both hostile and friendly. More than any actual fear of attack or robbery, the sheer noise, the sheer lack of a guarantee that that carefully cultivated space will be respected, is surely one reason why -- let's just say it -- white people might feel awkward on public transit in the south side. Whenever I use the non-U of C-oriented transport options between Hyde Park and the loop, I always say to myself, proud tolerant liberal that I am: "I could get used to this -- but my grandparents, never!" That may or may not be true, in either of its parts.)
