It is man’s natural instinct, is it not, to be communal? To form communities? Haven’t we always been ‘pack’ animals? First traveling in packs then developing agrarian skills and thus the ability to cultivate, communicate, commune, in communities. Was this not in a sense our destiny? Can you imagine a world where everyone wanders rather than congregates? Or where everything is spread about, sprinkled, rather than centered. It is as if man by nature has a centrifugal force pulling him to center with the rest of humanity. So if this is in our blood, our nature, our very programming for survival, why don’t people talk to each other on the train?
I mean really. They are curious about you, as you are about them. They cast sideways glances, as do you, trying to guess, to deduce what you do for a living, who you are, where you are going. How many times have you really wanted to talk to someone on the train? An attractive man or woman, someone discussing business you know about or are interested in, or just someone whose energy strikes you as intriguing and fascinating. Yet we don’t talk. Why? Communal creatures who are scared to communicate? Is it the fear that they may not be from our commune? Or they may find us annoying? (As most of the people who actually do talk generally are.)
Have you noticed as hard as it is to begin talking, it is harder to stop, even when you want to. Maybe this is the communal nature that is in us. Once you have sparked that teeny connective energy you don’t know how to severe the connection. Is this why we hide from the knowledge of others’ suffering? Why we don’t raise our eyes to the poor and the homeless? Because once that tiny connection is sparked, our communal nature takes over? We realize this person is a part of our community, our world community. Maybe we form our smaller communities to create a sense of belonging, necessary for our communal nature, without a sense of responsibility, inevitable in our communal nature. Maybe this is why we don’t talk – you know you won’t be able to disengage when you want to; any more than you can disengage from the sight of suffering. Don’t tell me you can. You too slow down when you pass a wreck, battling between empathy, judgment, and relief that it is not you, this time.
Don’t believe we are communal by nature? Go to the football game this Sunday. Watch what happens at sports games. You have no clue who the person sitting next to you is – intelligent, common, rich, poor, a transplant, a native – but if they are wearing the colors of your team, you feel a camaraderie with them. You cast jokes over your beer and hot dogs about bad ref calls. You hiss together and cheer together, lamenting and celebrating. You feel a definitive disliking for the person you don’t even know, wearing the other teams colors. You boo them. Make spiting remarks. Some of you goad them into fights. It is not even a real experience, it is a vicarious experience, but it creates community. A community based on nothing more intrinsic than a decision which team you like. I’ll bet if you were on a train in Italy and saw someone wearing your team’s sweatshirt the week before Superbowl, you’d talk to them.
On that note, GO PANTHERS!
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