gog...
I live in a small college community in the US and I see this behavior and attitude every day. Self-absorbed, oblivious to risks and utterly unconcerned about the welfare of others. We aren't all like this, but there's far too many that are.
Doesn't matter where you live.
I'm often grumpy too and for a number of good reasons aside from the fact that I'm an old
, (
George Carlin, "It's Bad For Ya).
The reason such individuals at the bottom of evacuation slides are so oblivious to others waiting for him, in this case, to gather his papers carried by the wind, is that we are an atomized society where "the commons" does not exist.
The "locus" of "rights" is, these days, oneself. Others have rights, "academically" but "mine are real." One listens to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc in the solitude of one's car or home, without the luxury of others around to perhaps question or disagree with us. Psychological isolation permits a host of notions to survive unchecked, permitting self-examination to pass by, endlessly, as one lives in a self-reifying world of one's own construction.
Even with many "close" friends with whom one shares comments about one sports team or one's job or whatever, one can still be alone with others. In an atomized society where we are psychically and even physically "cubicled" at home or in our cars, listening to media, where is the challenge to our nodding heads and notions of what's right and what's appropriate?
Such isolation, which, with social networking sites and the other crap that passes for "friendship", our fundamental selves are neither known, nor challenged.
Those self-same rights we proclaim by our many acts, in this case by gathering one's "important papers" at the bottom of an evacuation slide in an airplane accident, do not obtain in and for others, because "the Other", quite bluntly, does not today psychologically exist for us. "Our advantage" exists; "others' right to advantage will have to wait".
It is not merely the notion of, "every man for himself"; - it is far deeper, more philosophically serious than that; It is as though "the other" is not even a real entity which (not 'who') has those self-same collective rights and privileges which oneself enjoys and advantages him/herself thereby. In an atomized society, the legitimacy of "every man for himself" is complete only describes the behaviour we can observe; atomism goes to the bone.
The act of delaying an evacuation (or blocking a fire exit in a burning building), is not even in the realm of the notion of "selfishness" because for selfishness to be legitimate, two must be involved - the one who is taking advantage "inappropriately" and the other who is disadvantaged thereby. In this man's psyche, "the other" (likely at the top of the chute in the airplane, waiting), didn't even exist, but this man's briefcase and papers did.
Our society places such extreme importance on the legitimacy and the mock-importance of the individual and our individual rights that innate awareness (and therefor thought towards) the "other" is impeded, atrophied, the notion of "public manners" long since becoming anachronistic, a "fool's game".
Unbridled competition for advantage does this to people and they forget where they are and what they are doing, so psychologically atomized are they...are we.
The result of calling attention to such an act would be a shrug from the individual and perhaps a mildly hostile repost in some self-justifying manner. What public discourse legitimates such thinking? It is no longer existential anomie, but a curious self-righteousness and self-assuredness which invisibly motivates and guides one's public behaviour.
"How dare you", seems an abiding challenge in public life as though one's rights were themselves innate and somehow "god"-given, and without the slightest sense of reciprocation. And these are mature, adults not teens or twenty-somethings.
But...there it is, on video: one person gathering his important papers while others wait for his briefcase to be collected out of the way. Us old
ask why is such an act even possible today?