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.
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.
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.
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
Thanks for sharing.
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.
It's too bad that they don't live more fulfilling lives that don't require them to feel the need to attempt to insult people.
Show trial?
Curious how you project certain assumptions, though. Makes one curious about your own activities.
:( hey I didn’t wanna be rude… I retract the question
Smart hacker news poster comfortable talking about their legal history… feel like I suggested they set out to gleefully hurt people or something
You should realize that there are people who can'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?
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.
> Embracing or shunning the society you live in is a choice.
When the reality is that it's more complicated. You're able to make this "choice" because you've spent years cultivating a quasi-religious attitude of equanimity toward things that are, from the perspective of most, annoying, troubling, or frightening. So what you're asking of most people is more than a choice (taking their AirPods out), it's more a matter of converting to a different way of life entirely.
Just because something is simple, does not mean it is easy.
This has been part of ancient philosophies: “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” — Epictetus
But also more recent writings:
* “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor E. Frankl (someone who survived the Holocaust)
* “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” ― Viktor E. Frankl
* “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
> So what you're asking of most people is more than a choice (taking their AirPods out), it's more a matter of converting to a different way of life entirely.
Before making the effort to "convert" you first need to choose whether you want to continue to be vexed and frustrated by external events, or if you want to try to reduce your mental anguish by things you cannot control.
Do you want to continue to get pissed off by other drivers, or not? Do you want to get annoyed by other people on the train/bus, or not? Do you want more of an internal calm/peace, or not?
It's clearly a difficult thing or else there would not be many many many individuals and groups dedicating their time to such an effort...
Yes, as I said: simple ≠ easy.
I was in a depressive suicidal hole, and had been for well over a decade. The first time I tried to kill my self, I was seven years old.
It began with the realization, while I was trying to drink myself to the courage to finally pull the trigger, that the common refrain "it's all my fault" meant just a bit more than I'd given it credit for.
I realized, huddle on the floor behind my recliner because it was the smallest place I could find and fit in to, that if the desperate quality of my life were truly entirely my own fault, then it could be possible that I could stop being the source of my own malcontent. That was enough to save me from that particular suicidal flare. That I could stop harming myself.
It's been many years from then, and it was many years from there to when I realized that I could even be a source of happiness for myself instead of merely not harming myself.
But it was a choice that I was making, to view myself as inept, beyond salvation, capable of and likely to ruin everything, hater of my fellow mankind, etc. I have found in the years since the last time I tried to kill my self that almost every single unhappiness in my life was a matter of perspective rather than a genuine immutable fact.
Consider the article. People are noisy. Do I have to be upset about that? I certainly used to be bothered by all sorts of rude and noisy people. On the train, at the library, in the grocery, etc. That anger contributed to my general dismay of humanity such that I used to feel that it was all hopeless, and that if everything were hopeless, I shouldn't persist in trying.
That posture was a choice. Choosing to make the effort to no longer adopt that posture was a choice. That I have continued to attempt to make the choice to be compassionate and equanimous towards others is a choice that I have struggled with, and have ultimately both struggled with and succeeded in pursuing.
It's a choice that I have ultimately benefitted from. I cannot possibly see going back to the world in which I elevate my own concerns so highly above others that I simply and outright refuse to observe their own suffering. The world's a bummer, for sure, but for me personally, I am happier observing the problems and contributing to their diminution than I ever was ignoring or pretending the problems didn't exist.
I'm sorry that you think I'm asking anything of anyone, and that you think I've got anything at all adjacent to a religious attitude. Neither could be further from the truth. I am merely sharing my own experience as a contrasting example to the phenomenon described. I know that many people associate certain words with religious activity, but I can assure you that I definitely do not practious any such thing, and would never advise anyone else to do any such thing.
I used to be a person who shut everyone and everything out. I used to do so because I believed that anyone and everything were the source of my suicidal ideation. When I chose to change my beliefs, to believe that perhaps I was the source of my own discontent, was the first moment that I had a glimpse of a future in which I was no longer suicidal.
I just figured this was an opportunity to be like "hey, listening to and talking to people is actually possibly a good thing because it was for me even though I used to think otherwise"
Unfortunately, you can't lead most people to this place you've found; they have to find it on their own in order for it to work for them.
I know I'm no leader, that's why I've not condescended to offer any kind of a map. I took a messy, far longer than necessary route to achieve anything that could at all be described as succesful.
I just thought, hey, why not share a picture of the progress?
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.
I certainly never said any such thing as it simply isn't true.
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.
> 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.
-- Evelyn Waugh
Paraplegics don't have the use of their limbs. Acting as if "sensory issues" are in the same category is grossly insensitive.
Stating that using this kind of technology is "unhealthy" both for a person and society is a pretty bold claim that I think is pretty ridiculous.
People with these conditions literally cannot learn to tune things out.
I suspect the parent commenter was intentionally vague to avoid derailing the thread into discussing their specifics (many of which are, unfortunately, currently politically charged).
Most of the dozens and dozens of people I see in daily life sealed away in their earbud pockets do not appear in any way to need to do that. I am certainly not seeing the full picture of every single person's life, but I do not think that every last one of them is incapable of meaningfully engaging with the world.
You're assuming all this is "really really unhealthy" but what is the justification for that opinion?
And when I go to the park and have a run, of the 100 people I might see there and on the way, we're closer to 50/100 than 5 or 99. So I think we have a problem.
The flaw in the whole argument is that somehow people are having less "meaningful" conversations because they headphones on. I'm sorry but you're not going to have a meaningful conversation (or any at all) with the 100 people who are also actively running at the park whether or not they had headphones on. I still don't see it as a problem if 100% of the people running had headphones on; they are there to run! It's like saying there's a problem because 50 out of 100 people at the park having running shoes on. If you've pre-decided that running shoes are a problem then that's a big concern otherwise it's just nothing.
For me, if I didn't have headphones on I wouldn't be going for a walk/run at all. That one thing has drastically changed how I approach exercise in general and I would do less without them. That said, I do occasionally enjoy a nice walk/run without any headphones but as the exception rather than the rule.
You don't disagree with the need or the concept, just the means for irrelevant reasons.
Its like people attempting to shame for going on ozempic to lose weight.
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 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.
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.
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.
And why exactly should I give a fuck about people who are trying to bother and inconvenience me?
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.