Author: EEBaum
Date: 2013-05-31 04:20
Karl:
I dig, and like how you put it. Now on to a tangent...
My move to the city was largely because I saw myself rehearsing and simulating everything, including personal interactions. It leads to every bit of my life being a facade, of being "fake" (a term New Yorkers like to use to describe people from L.A. especially, and which I never really understood until I moved here). In effect, I had built up so many layers and personas that I had very little inkling of what it was like to be genuinely myself.
The city doesn't allow you to do that. People are so in your face, all the time, that it breaks down your facade, your barriers. It takes too damn much energy to be always polite out of protocol rather than genuine human interest, and too much energy to put up facades and make yourself out to be someone you're not. By the end of the day, pushing through subways and fending off street vendors and dealing with unresponsive service at restaurants, you are completely and utterly worn down. And then something magical happens: you become genuine. All barriers, defenses, down. It happens within a matter of days or weeks. Then, when you're friendly to someone, it's only out of genuine interest, and when someone's nice to you, it's because they want to be nice to you. It makes New Yorkers come off as rude, but in fact I find them the most empathetic, got-your-back people I've come across. I've been in weird moods and homeless people on trains have asked me "dude, you all right?"
Interacting with people in this manner I find a wholly fulfilling experience, and it's a bit embarrassing how foreign it was to me. How this relates to the topic is that I think this way of interacting in society is largely lost, or at least dormant. We're so conditioned to "be nice" and "say please and thank you" and "tell them how much you liked the performance" in the name of being seen as a good person. But it's not honest. It's a facade. And it's both exhausting and depersonalizing, and can make it harder to have real human connections. Especially when, with TV and computers and cars and cell phones, we avoid personal interaction and start to desensitize ourselves to it. This can and I think does spill over into etiquette pretty easily.
I read a book recently, "Home From Nowhere", which discusses the effect of city planning and zoning regulations on the cohesiveness (or, more typically, lack thereof) of communities throughout the US. It goes so far as to say that's a primary reason why people are lonely and disconnected, and I think it makes a LOT of really incredible points.
Ken:
Little would make me happier than if somehow cell phones could be uninvented. Damn, I must be getting old.
In general:
As far as etiquette, I like to think of it as both a matter of style and tact when attempting to get people to go along with it. It should add to the event, not detract from it. Something as simple as the wording of the "shut off your cell phones" announcement can change the tone for the entire evening. There are a ton of aspects to it... in general I also find positive statements (e.g. "please pay quiet attention") a lot more productive than negative ones (e.g. "don't talk during the performance") from a pseudopsychological angle. It's a gentle request for something great the audience should do (we want you here), rather than a warning of what they shouldn't do (don't ruin it). And it puts the words "quiet attention" rather than "talk during the performance" in the back of people's heads. Little mind tricks.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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