Subway Lemmings

Last Friday began like every other day this summer. I was woken late (but still at an hour that would give any sane college student cold sweats) by a cacophonous chorus of three different alarms, each placed strategically around my room so as to be out of easy reach. By the time I dragged myself out of bed, I had a pulsating headache that would last until lunchtime thanks to the jarring sound of screeching, badly maintained train brakes out my window. Nevertheless, I managed to get showered and dressed in time to make it to my train (no time for breakfast, though), and I arrived at Grand Central terminal without incident (except a splitting headache, of course). As usual, I brushed past the crowds of gawking tourists, propelled by the daily stream of corporate suits hurrying to their jobs.

Just as I passed the subway turnstiles, on the way to the Lexington Ave. Express, I witnessed a well-dressed woman stumble and collapse on the floor of the long corridor that led to the trains. It was the heat, I was later informed, that caused her to faint, and she was fine afterwards.

But what was truly shocking was the behavior of the people walking through that passageway. Scores of men and women in suits walked right past her, heads never even turning, as if she didn’t exist. Others glanced at her and seemed to hesitate with their heads, but were propelled onwards by their feet. It almost seemed like the Devil was playing a game of Lemmings with men and women in business suits, and they were dropping, one by one, off the plane of sanity.

As I strode, or more accurately was pushed, and consiquently jostled nearer to the sprawled body, I am somewhat ashamed to say that I, too, hesitated to stop and help her. And in my moment of hesitation, a man behind me rushed to her aid, activating an emergency assistance box a few feet away. After that, I helped the man prop the woman up and give her some water until the paramedics arrived a few minutes later.

When I shakily re-entered the stream of humanity, or perhaps inhumanity, I noticed things I hadn’t before. The New York walk, for instance, filled with purpose, but purposeless. The faces that looked unwaveringly ahead yet saw nothing. The way that people avoided eye contact at all costs on the subway. The fact that middle seats are almost never taken on even the most crowded rush hour train—people would rather stand. Why is it that when taking public transportation—one of the last places that all segments of society come into close contact, we seem to check our humanity at the turnstile?

I’m not sure what my moment of hesitation that morning says about me. I didn’t hesitate consciously, but I’m not sure whether the fact that my reluctance was subconscious comforts me or scares me more. I can’t help but think that I wouldn’t have kept walking if the man in front of me hadn’t stopped to help first.

Maybe it’s an ingrained cautiousness in subways. Maybe it’s the psychological urge to follow the crowd. But more likely, I think, the force that turns us into Lemmings on the train or subway—the melting pot within the melting pot of an American city—is the fear of the unknown. The fear that the invisible dykes that we erect around our lives to give ourselves a sense of security will somehow be perforated if we show our humanity in unfamiliar environs.

We prefer to avoid these situations by dealing with reality abstractly when we can, and putting our humanity on hold when avoiding reality is impossible. And so it is that a businessman who walked by that morning and did not notice the woman sprawled by his foot could, an hour later in his office, his humanity re-engaged, become saddened by a newspaper report of a crime half a continent away.

Brian J. Rosenberg ’08, a History and Science concentrator in Lowell House, is an editorial editor of The Harvard Crimson. While not working for the New York City Council, he dreams of saving people from the perils of public transportation.