Sniff Sniff…Was That You?
link News from The Associated Press.
There is an iconic German expression, author unknown, which goes, ” stadluft macht frei”, which means “city air makes you free”. In the day when this was first coined, it meant that to live in the city away from the constraints and prying eyes of a rural community gave one the freedom of anonymity and therefore freedom to do as you wished. In the city of course, there were many, many people and no one really cared what anyone else was up to. In theory, this is a fertile environment for novel intellectual thought and so living in the city was supposed to foster intelligent discourse and a civilized society.
In the crucible of a great metropolis like New York, we can observe if this notion still has validity. According to articles like the one in the link, being free these days means to be willfully indifferent to your social surroundings. The article cites instances of people carrying on in the subways with all kinds of activity as if they were in their own living rooms, things such as eating, picking noses and inexplicably, clipping toenails. Not being a resident of New York, I can’t comment on whether or not clipping toenails on the subway is common and acceptable behaviour. If we see clippers for sale at the kiosks, then we’ll have our answer. In addition, it’s difficult to imagine enjoying a twirl of spaghetti in the close confines of a subway car filled with the bodily gases of dozens of people.
It appears that the ‘freedom’ so offered by city air has morphed more into outright anarchy as people’s behaviour has deteriorated to reflect only personal conveniences to the exclusion of the consideration of others. Presently, in our society, the lines separating what is considered to be individualistic, eccentric and crazy are faint to non-existent. So much so, that even the most outrageous behaviour rarely raises any eyebrows these days. So many things are being done for publicity and shock value, that most everything appears routine. When few things have any shock value, people as a whole become cynical, aloof and disengaged from the rest of their society. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we observe so many ‘celebrities’ engage in self indulgent and anti social behaviour. They are living in a time when virtually anything they do has positive consequences, at least as far as publicity is concerned, which is really what celebrities crave. It can’t be that hard to find any number of people on any given day in the New York subways that are real life Charlie Sheens.
If unfettered behaviour is the hallmark of a civilized society, it may be time to be a bit less civilized. It wouldn’t hurt to put up a few signs in the subway restricting activity that you would otherwise see in the Bronx Zoo. I’m all for distinguishing primate species. At the very least, use deodorant.