Saturday, December 6, 2008

alien-nation

sometimes i like to think of myself as a sociologist of sorts observing my fellow human beings going about their strange little lives. have you ever gotten on a skytrain and this happened?
CIMG1443
everyone is sitting by themselves...

why is this?
i mean sure you want your own seat thats fine and all. but why has is come to this? i realized people are so uptight and cut off from each other. a while back this lady just started talking to me on the skytrain platform. my first reaction was "whats wrong with her??" when in truth she was just trying to be friendly and wanted to chat. whats wrong with me? whats wrong with us all?
it's like as soon as we head out that door we're actually closing off the world. putting those headphones on and filtering out the world and the other people on it with our little distractions. picking up a 24 and browsing the celebrity gossip section. we all just cut apart from each other in our little newspaper cubicles and our earbud symphonies.

when was the last time you stopped to listen to birds. not as a background noise or on tv. but actually just listened.

i talked to this guy at my store and he told me how it didn't used to be like this. in the early 80s and 70s people just said hello to each other. you could actually just meet someone talk and be friends. i mean this kind of thing is incomprehensible by todays standard. but he witnessed it and the other oldie in line confirmed his story. people in vancouver used to be friendly.
but now we just sip our grande americanos and give friendly people dirty looks thinking "whats wrong with this person didn't they get the memo?"

i'm afraid for the world. people are getting so uptight. so when i see stuff like an entire skytrain filled with people sitting by themselves it freaks me out a little.

but thats just my observation and i'm no sociologist just a guy who observes people weirdly.

2 comments:

Flora said...

Hahah I actually did a paper for a research class where I had to creep the bus and skytrain and take notes. I basically found the exact same thing... dunno why people are so uptight, I guess maybe it's the fear mongering of the media... you never know what psychos might be among us.

Hustle Jr. said...

I totally agree but did you get up out of your seat and start a conversation with someone? It is a dangerous move though because maybe the person is blocking the world out because they had a really bad, busy day and need to be alone. I think that's the problem. People are so busy with work and family that when they get a chance to be alone they take it. The media thing is also totally true, the front page of the Province last weekend was something along the lines of "Is there a rapist, murderer (etc.) in your neighborhood?"

As long as there are people noticing these things then I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.