What our world has become.
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Monday, June 29, 2026 21:34
VIEWED: 23018
PAGE 9 of 20
I saw this on t.v. I find it hard to believe that NO ONE stopped and checked this guy out, if only for a minute. I know I would have. Unless I was late. Which is sadly all too often the case.
Humans are critters of habbit. I doubt many expected to come in contact w/ such a musical phenom. They expected a street musician, and that's how their mindset prepared them.
I think you do this experiment a bit further out of the city, you'd see much different results.
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Fred: DO you honestly think that if you're late ONCE you'll be fired on the spot? Most of these people, as the article pointed out, work for the government. It would have been so easy to say "My kid was sick" or "the train was late", and if the person was usually on time and late only by a few minutes I don't think anyone would really care.
And do you think there SHOULD be a situation when being late once gets you fired? I don't. The exigencies of life- late trains in DC, traffic jams in LA, sick kids, spilled coffee, getting mugged- is going to guarantee that everyone will be late sometime. Work doesn't require such precision that you be exactly on-time each and every day, and firing someone is unnecessarily harsh and inefficient. So why do you keep citing that reason when it's obvious that these ppl aren't going to get fired for being late, and that kind of penalty is not preferable and not even efficient? Why would you use it as a valid reason for not paying attention to your surroundings? Why would they?
I deeply suspect that "being late" is just an excuse. I don't know what the real reason it, but "being late" isn't it.
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Always look upstream.
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When interviewed later a lot of people said they didn't even realize that there was a musician - including people who were waiting in line nearby. I think this is a tribute to the expectable safe routine. People are able to immerse themselves in their thoughts and NOT keep attuned to their surroundings.
As to what they would be thinking about so deeply on their way to work ...
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Here's a weird suggestion. He was too good.
People say they didn't notice a musician. That doesn't mean that their heads weren't automatically filtering the musak often played in public malls. Because of the quality of the music, they had no reason to look about for a performer. It was flawless. If you heard sweet violin music playing, wouldn't you first assume it was broadcast?
Just an idea I had while standing at a mall entrance the other day.
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Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charlie Brown
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Quote:After doing some reading on this it seems clear that SignyM and marina may be right about this. At least some of the experts in Anthropology do believe that at least some hunter/gatherer societies led very leisure-intensive lifestyles. What is curious about this is that one of the cultures often cited as an example are the Bushmen of the Kalahari. My own experiences led me to believe that this was unlikely, or if true could only be true of hunter/gatherers in very lush environments, but the Kalahari is far from a lush environment. How this is a case, I’m not sure. I would theorize that it is probably a result of a communal lifestyle and a very low expectation of standard of living. Hunter/gatherer cultures like the !Kung and !Xu have a society in which the profits of all work are shared with the community, which helps to offset the inefficiencies of hunting and gathering, but just as important is a culture that does not expect much from life a part form a subsistence communal lifestyle. Certainly, it is not something we should strive for in our culture, but clearly it does seem possible to survive with little work.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Amazonian tribes are a pre-civilization culture; that’s not really what I was thinking about anyway. Although I find that incredibly hard to believe. I’ve survived in the wilderness before with no food or shelter. It’s an all day affair just to keep yourself warm, dry and fed. I suppose that environment has a lot to do with it, and maybe in a place as lush as the Amazon, you can gather enough food to survive with only a 4 hours work day. It’s hard for me to envision, but I’ll see if I can find this book and maybe I can learn something.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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"Certainly, it is not something we should strive for in our culture, but clearly it does seem possible to survive with little work."
Sadly, the !Kung have officially lost the rights to their ancestral land (to Botswana I believe). And a major effort to 'settle' them has been in the works for several years. This has lead to rampant alcoholism, promiscuity, violence, and other drug use.
Whatever they had in their impoverished lifestyle was so vital to their psychological well being they can only make up for its loss with life-threatening addictions.
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"DO you honestly think that if you're late ONCE you'll be fired on the spot?"
No I don't think that if you are late once you will or should be fired. However it is one strike against you, and I don't think lying to your employer is a good idea either, even about small things.
"So why do you keep citing that reason when it's obvious that these ppl aren't going to get fired for being late"
Because like most people, they don't WANT to be late any more than they have to. They don't know classical music well enough to recognize him or his ability or his music so they aren't going to stop and listen to him any more than every other street musician who's halfway decent.
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So anyway, the contention, if I get it right, is that people have become droids to the system.
On the other side are the various responses - some people don't like classical music, or violins, or have the experience to know what's remarkable; some people are already mentally at work or afraid of being late (probably not true of the people standing in line to get lottery tickets), some people wrote it off as muzak, ignoring stuff is a habituated response to city commuting, wrong time - wrong place, etc.
But it did touch on what we do as a society, which is work a lot on schedule.
How many people here would like a slower pace ??
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
"What our world has become"
Another thought occurred to me - have US cities ever been kind to buskers, especially classical musicians? In general Americans don't have much interest classical music. You practically have to be a snob or geek or French to like that sort of thing.
Hey moron.....Let's see the stats on that! Take the bait Ruse......Actually,... don't. AMERICANS spend more money on 'CLASSICAL' music than the rest of the world combined.
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