I read through this piece by Anne Herbert and found this passage resonating in my head: she mentions someone introducing their band as “Failure to Disperse” something that just sounds quietly radical or politely intransigent. In other words, something we could use more of, I think.
Some of the most important work to do now is to fail to disperse and
to remind others to fail.People with microphones who may be more interested in their
own interests than in ours are strongly recommending that we
disperse.Suggestions popular now include being scared of the group
or groups du jour–gays like me, immigrants like the family I
come from, people in other countries we haven’t met, poor people,
people who aren’t pale or aren’t suit-bound or both, people who
don’t live inside.Be scared of them, miss any connection you might have with
them.Disperse.
If you’re in one of the recommended icky groups, be more scared
of everyone else.Disperse.
Also suggested to you by those who want to control you:
Watch lots of TV. Inside, in your own place. So what you mainly
know about other groups is what people who plan to profit from
your fear tell you to make you scared.Stay in your car. See other people as good or bad drivers,
in your way or not. Don’t see their faces and possibly, in their
faces, their story. Keep your face behind a windshield so they
won’t see your face and your story.Stare at screens. Don’t have very many times and places to
look at people.Disperse. Be alone with whatever manipulative info is coming
at you through screens. Spend less and less time being in your
own physical situation with your own body and your own impressions.
Disperse; break life.Watch TV and say how stupid it is. That’s fine. Just as long
as you watch it. Using your intelligence to say that TV is stupid
is not really having a very strong connection with your own intelligence.
Not a new idea (this book came out 6 years ago and I think others have follored up on the ideas therein).
A little Googling turned up this book, which purports to discuss the need for etiquette lessons made necessary by the railroads. One didn’t have any need for such fripperies on horseback or in your own wagon, but sitting shoulder to shoulder in a train car was another matter.
Travel in those days was necessarily in groups. Nobody but the very rich could afford to travel alone. One bought a ticket and sat down in a train car full of strangers. Doubtless the excited passengers jostled each other for space, but although the Europeans were already looking down on American manners, it was not yet the nation’s fashion to be rude. On the contrary, this remarkable new technology worked as well as it did, moving the citizenry from city to city, because the travelers understood their obligation to treat each other well. They purchased guides to proper behavior, like Politeness on Railroads by Isaac Peebles, and tried to follow its sensible rules: “[Whispering, loud talking, immoderate laughing, and singing should not be indulged by any passenger” was one. “Passengers should not gaze at one another in an embarrassing way’ ran another.’ Conductors were soon cracking down on passengers who “indulg[ed] personal preferences at the expense of other passengers.”
Well, of course: to travel so far together, packed shoulder to shoulder like chess pieces in their little box, everybody had to behave or the ride would become intolerable. Everyone followed the rules for the sake of their fellow passengers, and they did so, as one historian has noted, out of a spirit of “self-denial and the self-sacrifice of one’s own comfort for another’s.” Alone of God’s creation, human beings can make those choices, setting aside their own needs and desires for the sake of living in society with others. And so this nineteenth-century understanding captures two of the gifts that civility brings to our lives: First, it calls on us to sacrifice for others as we travel through life. And, second, it makes the ride tolerable.
But nowadays we have automobiles, and we travel both long and short distances surrounded by metal and glass and the illusion that we are traveling alone. The illusion has seeped into every crevice of our public and private lives, persuading us that sacrifices are no longer necessary. If railroad passengers a century ago knew the journey would be impossible unless they considered the comfort of others more important than their own, our spreading illusion has taken us in the other direction. We care less and less about our fellow citizens, because we no longer see them as our fellow passengers. We may see them as obstacles or competitors, or we may not see them at all, but unless they happen to be our friends, we rarely think we owe them anything.
Are we overdrawn at the bank of social capital?