The Man Who Made It About Himself

Public spaces are always such an interesting place to observe the way humanity operates. It’s fascinating to see social norms at work. This is top of mind because last week I was on an airplane and someone drastically violated the convention.

The plane lands, the seatbelt sign is off, and the man sitting next to me slides off his seat, into the aisle, and sneaks his way half way up the plane. The audacity! Doesn’t he know he needs to wait his turn? Doesn’t he know how selfish it is to do something at everyone else’s expense?

As I witnessed other people reacting to the calamity I thought deeper: What are the consequences to making a choice like that?

One possibility is that there are none, and that the man was completely oblivious to how he was supposed to behave in that situation.

The more likely answer is, very little. Beyond the short-term discomfort of getting dirty looks and passive-aggressive comments, his life is relatively unimpacted. In fact it’s probably way better because he saved himself 10 minutes of his precious time.

It got me thinking, if the upside outweighs the downside, why doesn’t everyone look out for their own self-interest and hurry their way off the plane at other people’s expense?

I think it’s because we all have a social contract to not inconvenience others. When we all agree to maintain a certain standard of order, it works out better for all of us. 

Imagine if people didn’t stop at stop signs to let other cars go by? 

Imagine if we didn’t wait our turn to enter a venue? 

Imagine if we all got up once the plane landed and pushed our way to the exit?

It would be chaos. There would be more aggression and micro-violence and things would be horribly inefficient. And that’s an environment where the majority of us are worse off. So to offset that, we follow the rules for the sake of doing what’s in the best interest of the collective.

Regardless of whether this man was at fault or not, I prefer to receive his behavior with curiosity. What about him caused him to do this? What about this offended me? What are the forces creating this environment? 

Life is better that way, it doesn’t make things any better to get angry about them.

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