Comment by goodmythical
8 hours ago
That's kind of the point the article is making though, isn't it?
You're making a choice to insulate yourself from your surroundings. That choice has effects on both you and your environment. You see it as a simple salve, but the poor souls you're choosing to ignore see it as a just another bourgeoisie wall.
I used to live in a prison. Headphones were a huge fighting issue. People who couldn't afford them would borrow, rent, or steal them. I never saw the point. Humans are a part of nature. I can sleep, eat, shower, and meditate just as well in the middle of a deadly riot (I was once asked by an officer to leave the dining area as they'd maced several people and everyone else had fled while I sat there calmly eating my institutional cheesy cardboard because I was more hungry than bothered by the mace) as I can in a forest or a dead silent bed room.
Embracing or shunning the society you live in is a choice. Choosing either has consequences. My choice means that I am often driven to action to contribute to systemic solutions to the pain I see in life. It isn't easy, but I don't think I could live with sticking my fingers in my ears and pretending it isn't happening.
I worked in Manhattan often in the 00s and early 10s. Have people forgotten what big city life was like before? Commuters did not randomly strike up conversations. It was an unspoken code you left each other alone. Especially in rush hour commutes. Everyone is waking up or tired after a day of work. It is more about having some personal space in a crowded environment for many. Not everyone processes or experiences that the same way either.
> It was an unspoken code you left each other alone.
Adding to this, you never know in advance when your interlocutor's stop will come up. So subconsciously you know it's a bad idea to strike up a conversation. Plus it's a captive audience so the majority of people sense that it's wrong to "force" someone to talk.
And the trains are noisy. It's difficult and unnatural to talk above the ambient noise.
> I can sleep, eat, shower, and meditate just as well in the middle of a deadly riot ... as I can in a forest or a dead silent bed room.
You should realize that there are people who can't do that.
There was a point in my life that I couldn't do that.
To suggest that it is impossible for a given individual is different from suggesting that it is difficult which is different still from suggesting that it is suggested.
I have personally benefitted massively from deconstructing the walls that my parents and peers suggested I build as a child. It was work to do, and is work yet to be done, but I value it.
I am no longer angry in traffic when "the jackass can't see I'm late" or whatever other silliness. I no longer dread the stench and noise of public transportation. Both are natural. Just the way humans are. Being perturbed by it is a choice that I've decided I could do without.
Minus some socio-behavioral-mental deviation from the norm, and even then considering advances that can be made with therapy...I just don't see it. Why should I be bothered by people on the train when I know that it is possible to just...not?
> There was a point in my life that I couldn't do that.
At some point of my life, I realized I can’t assume or rely on the idea that other people will enjoy living their lives like I do. So, what I find admirable and something to thrive might not be the thing they’re looking for.
Surely the solution to this social problem, however, can't be "everyone should simply convert to my religion / achieve a higher state of mind where they're not bothered by any form of inconvenience, irritation, or interruption." If it comes to that, most people will continue to wear their AirPods. It's a non-answer.
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Living in filth is not natural. Animals and primitive humans know how to keep themselves reasonably clean, to avoid attracting predators if nothing else. We seem to be regressing.
I'm not particularly bothered by those things either, but I'm a large man and people don't tend to mess with me much. I can afford to be casual about it (within reason). Not everyone has that luxury.
Why should you be bothered by people ignoring you with headphones when you simply could just...not?
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Being able to do it in the middle of a riot is, absolutely, a hard-earned skill.
But it is, like so many of these things, a skill. You have to practice it.
I think that putting earbuds in and checking out of the world around you is a really awful thing to do as your default in life. As a "sometimes" thing it's fine, even healthy. There's a lot of talk of public transit in this thread. If people do it during riding transit, and not really at other times, I'm fine with that. But so many people have their earbuds in before they leave their front door, every day, every week, and they don't come back out.
And I think that's really, really unhealthy, for them and for the rest of us.
My son, for example, has sensory issues and cannot tune out anything. The "you have to practice it" is like telling a paraplegic that if they just exercise more they'd be able to walk. People are different and have different needs.
> And I think that's really, really unhealthy, for them and for the rest of us.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe the rest of the world is unhealthy and this is a way to reclaim some personal healthiness.
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You’re chastising the person above you for blocking out the world with headphones while bragging that you have honed skills over time to, due to desire and necessity, block out the world in your own head.
In any case, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to want to be unbothered, especially in particularly bothersome circumstances. You don’t owe anyone your attention, and the assumption that you do can and is weaponized by everyone from Zuckerberg to the fentanyl addict aggressively demanding your money.
I'm fairly mistaken you've mistaken me on two counts. I've chastised no one. I've merely observed aloud that the choices we all make have effects on both ourselves and others.
I also don't do any such thing as block the world out in my own head...not really sure where you could have gotten that except perhaps from a misunderstanding of meditation.
The meditation that I and many practice is about peaceful abiding or compassionate awareness. It's about changing our own judgement of reality as it is, not escaping from it.
In a way you're right, but what you can do comes from a significantly high spiritual development level. For an average Joe it's quite abstract and maybe even unattainable in this life.
OTOH, there are people who get sensory overstimulated more easily. Add to that a foreign place, lot of people and chaos around, and even a neurotypical individual can feel anxious.
Putting on headphones and playing Chopin is much more effective than breathing and telling yourself "everythings gonna be ok" in a loop. At least in my experience.
I believe we wouldn't have a tenth of the chaos we are currently experiencing if people talked to their neighbors and fellow commuters more.
With or without headphones, people aren't just chatting around on the subway all the time. I love my headphones and I also chat with my neighbours.
This is just the same argument that has been repeated since the dawn of the walkman.
50 years ago when people weren't looking at their iPhones on the bus, they were reading the newspaper or a book. Not a lot has changed.
What chaos are you referring to? What do you mean by "chaos"?
A buffer isn’t necessarily isolation or insulation.
You will have to explain. Headphones in work or street environments definitely function to minimize interactions with surrounding humans. I literally think twice before engaging with people wearing headphones and am rather oblivious to people around me when I'm wearing them unless someone is using physical gestures to get my attention.
If general public habits shift to the extent that the majority of people with headphones end up only using them for noise cancelling then my behavior would also shift accordingly.
People are really good at finding virtue within themselves
Wow, was it a computer fraud abuse act thing, I mean claimed to be? Obviously nothing violent!
Thanks for sharing.
I plead guilty to financial fraud, thanks for the interest!
Curious how you project certain assumptions, though. Makes one curious about your own activities.
Few who paid their debt to society and moved on are excited about random strangers wanting to do their own petty little performative mock show trials to sit in smug judgement over them. Please stop.
Almost as if there's a limit to how many demands strangers can reasonably place on a person before we as a society agree that the person should put up boundaries (like, say, putting on headphones and outright ignoring the demands) and even go out of our way to encourage strangers to respect those boundaries.
I'm not calling you out, IncandescentGas, you're right and you're doing a good thing. I'm just saying its ironic that you jump to the defense of somebody who has made it clear that they don't believe others deserve the same courtesy you are providing them.
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> That's kind of the point the article is making though, isn't it?
I think the article pays lip service to this in a paragraph ("social crutch") but otherwise falls into the trap of "societal" pieces (Soft "Why can't we talk to each other anymore ? What is wrong with our cvilisation?")
In my opinion make it a safe enjoyable non-crowded ride and you'll get plenty of interactions.
> just another bourgeoisie wall.
You are not wrong in a way. The base of a lot of the kind of interaction the author of the piece is thinking about is a relatively equal social standing, otherwise there's too much at stake, on both sides. For example, I, a lower middle class man, would have little patience for someone telling me about how much fun they are having taking helicopter rides in the summer and I don't think they'd enjoy my rant about how landlords are evil. Of course I think there's a moral duty to lower yourself from your social standing to care for people who have it rougher than you but it's generally not exactly pleasant like a conversation with someone like-minded could be
> I can sleep, eat, shower, and meditate just as well in the middle of a deadly riot
Good for you. I can't. Some people need quiet conditions to focus or sleep and if they don't it feels like active torture.
Counter: my attention must be earned, I do not owe it to randoms.