Kyriaki Yozzo
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Today, I seethed on my way to campus. A delayed West Side bus greeted me across the street from The Belmar, brimming with backpacks and phone calls and jittery knees, anticipating a late arrival to their 11:40 a.m. classes. Standing up and trying to keep my bag away from the many bodies enclosing me, getting pushed further and further back as the bus reached full capacity, I ended up right by the back door, where my heart rate shot up. There, on this can-of-sardines bus, was a boy holding a seat for his backpack. Here he was, watching NBA highlights on his phone with a bag that wasn’t even big. I can be sympathetic toward a heavy load, but this actually might have been one of the thinnest backpacks I’ve seen, like the bag of someone who shows up to the first day of class with a sheet of loose-leaf and a ballpoint pen. Trying to bury my disdain with a podcast, I just could not escape the singular thought — this is socially unacceptable behavior.

As this thought burned my brain, I initially thought about hitting him in the face with my bag and generally entertained fantasies of publicly shaming him. But as my blind rage resolved, I settled on the thought of tapping his shoulder and simply asking if I could sit down. This would have been a perfectly reasonable request, a mild-mannered and respectful way of addressing his stupidity. But I stood the whole way. I got off the bus asking myself, “Why didn’t I do it? What do I think is socially acceptable behavior?”

My best friend and I have talked about this a lot. One of the most prominent features of growing up in New York City is living alongside mass upon mass of pedestrians, navigating streets and subway platforms with bodies moving in all directions around you, and learning how to move with or around them. The presumed and acted upon Golden Rule is to keep to yourself. In spite of the MTA’s screeching announcements, most people are not in the habit of saying something if they see something. A subtle tension fills these spaces, where we literally and figuratively try to not step on each other’s toes, where we never keep our eyes fixed on anyone for too long. Always fiddling the fingers, always biting the tongue.

The first article I wrote for Pipe Dream was about our unwillingness to consider the stranger as human, as worthy of attention and interaction, and in this column, I tried to argue for greater interest in and recognition of the Other. My intention was to acknowledge the significance of the Other in our daily lives, to suggest that a more enthusiastic disposition toward transient exchanges could greatly enhance what we think of as existence in the public sphere. I now venture toward and play with the thought that this culture of the inconsiderate, anchored in an unconscious oath of silence and utterly distorted sense of individuality, is also strengthened by our inability or disinclination to voice aggravation or identify misconduct in a level-headed way.

I’m over this Kantian social order and its nonsensical contract. Everywhere I look, I see the conscious or unconscious influence of this pretentious asshole on how we of the West approach the Self and social order. There’s the underlying idea that when we step out into the public, we are entering a domain in which we restrict our “Will” out of respect for others, that we place limits and do not impede on the choices of others so long as they do not obstruct ours. The assumption at work here is that to be Me, to be a Self, is to desire in a self-referential mode, to wish and want in a way that always leads back to me, me as the Sun, and thus the assumption that we need to ‘compromise ourselves’ in order to live among other people.

This framework is truly so ingrained in me that, when thinking about addressing the boy on the bus this morning, I actually thought for a second that saying something would be selfish, that it would be an unnecessary action — what twisted fucking neural pathway is at work there? Do I infringe upon another’s liberty and freedom by asking them to move over? Am I harming anyone by subtly addressing their lack of spatial awareness? Is expressing a grievance really a matter of my Self against You, a Battle of Will? Autonomy and personhood cannot be negated by the simple fact, the lived reality that we are all sharing space and time. There simply is no Me without You present! So when we step outside, why not be mindful of and practice that undeniable truth?

Of course, there’s a need to discern circumstances that are not as personal as they may initially feel from those that have a more active rudeness tinging them (although seeing someone get on the L train during rush hour with one of those huge electric scooters has sent me into that strong affective state in which I proceeded to pass down moral decrees like the God of the Old Testament in my head). This isn’t a matter of someone who has bad B.O. or is talking obnoxiously on their phone. Context is important, and I think most people have the sense to appreciate that.

I’m not advocating for punishment and just deserts or unrestrained expression and temper tantrums. I’m not sure I’m advocating for anything in particular. All I know is that I want a new social contract, one where existing alongside others doesn’t feel so trying and tedious, where I feel a bit more free to advocate for myself. All I really want to say is that I wish, I should have asked that boy if he could scoot over. Next time.

Kyriaki Yozzo is a senior majoring in philosophy, politics and law. 

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.