A reality check ... and Richard Dawkins
been a long time that Madrid would take the subway to go to work. Today I had to. And in the short 40 minute journey I have had occasion to give me a bath of humanity, literally, because in the rush hour in Madrid humanity spreads throughout the corridors of the platforms and inside trains, around you and you wet and times until you drown.
not think I'm a prude: All my life I used the metro, and I am a big proponent of this public transport, essential services, essential and basic any big city. But it should be noted that the metro during rush hour is far from that fast and comfortable means of transportation that we want to sell in the ads (especially on certain routes and certain sections) and can become a little torture. So much so that many people directly rejects it and prefer to consume minutes and minutes in the jam, but at least comfortably seated, with the air conditioner and set to music or the distilled wisdom of his early morning todólogos favorite radio talk.
Anyway, I was ready to enjoy the ride that lets you do that the metro and not the car: read . However, things began to happen.
First it was a pickpocket. Voices at the bottom of the car made me take my attention the fascinating experiment of Dr. Richard Lenski with 45,000 generations of bacteria Escherichia Coli in his laboratory at the Michigan State University, which shows dramatically, to the dismay of the creationists, the effects of natural selection front of our eyes and in a very short space of time.
But in a very short space of time and also before my eyes a scruffy looking guy slipped away down the platform to shouts of "cheeky", "card", "scoundrel" ... as a man of a certain age warned other than the above had been about to steal his wallet and had it not been for the warning cries of this gentleman.
always occurs to me in these cases what would I have done if the pickpocket was acting on my side and I warned. At the end of the day, the guy had a bad pint, and could churn violently to a cry of warning, especially in a confined area can feel very trapped. And, do you want to tell you, I'm those who think that the portfolio of a stranger, not even my own, deserves a knife. Perhaps it would be wiser to stop acting and get off with him at the next stop and follow as discreetly warn the police with the phone (provided that the station had coverage) or a pair of security officer that you are there and they were not threatening occupied a top-manta. Unfinished
to resolve this deep moral questions that gnawed me, I went back to reading the book by Richard Dawkins , saying to myself with relief that this would be unlikely that he could see no pickpocket acting very close to it was.
But something happened a few minutes more. So fascinating (though much more inexplicable) and the experiment of Dr. John Endler guppies fish in Venezuela, an experiment that clearly shows the evolution (yes, that Darwin's Dangerous Idea ) occurs before our eyes (I know I repeat myself), sometimes at astonishing speeds.
One lady got up to alight at the next station, leaving the seat free newspaper had been reading. You do not know if this act is a courtesy for another passenger to take the newspaper and read in turn, or an example of the despicable practice Hispanic leave our garbage in any place to another to collect. In any case, a plump female representative of what we might call a certain malice "animal of the industrial estate" sat atop the newspaper while browsing suddenly her own copy. In the front seat, while a girl dressed and coiffed with a drawing style monotonous observer (not me of course) would define as "typical chonis the South" spoke to her to ask if you could bring the newspaper on which he had sat. To the astonishment of all who were going around, the fat woman reacted by lifting the paper not see the face of another while muttering an expletive. The young man looked surprised and mumbled that the chick must be crazy. The thing is why not have happened were it not for the first kept mumbling unintelligible things, until he heard a loud insult. At that time, the angry young man stood up and walked toward each other, loudly taunted the insult and insult his time. From here begins a "conversation" a shouting match between two of the most absurd thing you can imagine, while the other occupants of the car were the guardians of silent witnesses, unhealthily fascinated by the degree of verbal violence that was occurring for no reason apparent.
the end the girl got her newspaper and the tone of the insults of both went down to a stop, when everyone else went back to what we were doing, but with a little less confident in the rationality of mankind.
For those who are convinced of the power of reason and that words are to be understood, is a blow to observe behavior like this. You can always say that the lady was a little crazy, and that the girl was too sensitive and, finally, both a little greengrocer. But unfortunately not so simple: maybe they were both "normal" people, people come to their jobs, with some interest by newspaper articles, etc.. The only thing I got to thinking, is that the "reasoning" of creationists, Dawkins's book mentions often seem to me a little less incomprehensible in light of the waste material inside some of our brains. And after this brilliant conclusion, I dove back into reading the book to find the key to natural selection that allowed me to understand the stupid behavior of some subspecies of Homo sapiens .
Yes, I know: this is just an anecdote, a casual event that may not be repeated in months, no conclusions can be drawn. But Look, it's Monday, it begins a tough week of work (for which we are fortunate to have one) and do not tell me it's more fun not to start it with a little amateur sociology, psychology touches bar bar ...
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