by Alan Nemirovski
Illustrated by Lamisa Chowdhury
I work at a bar on campus, The Three Tuns. There, I meet about a hundred customers every shift, so my interactions with each one are fleeting in nature. Thus, very little makes me remember someone. However, I have somehow retained a vivid catalogue of the people who don’t act with common courtesy, especially those who don’t, at a minimum, say “please” or “thank you.” Every interaction with no reciprocity of basic decency makes my blood boil. Worse still, with every passing shift, the number of these interactions I remember grows higher. This continues to surprise me because here, on campus, I would expect students to treat each other with at least a little bit more humanity.
For those who have ever been the recipient of a drink at Tuns, I’m sure you can relate to my next anecdote. As many, I often walk into the Silent Zone of the LSE library, hoping to get work done or cramming my studying in before an exam a couple of days away. Nonetheless, without fail, there will be a group of people roaring in laughter or shouting away despite the side eyes they get and gentle reminders from passers-by. And despite common stereotypes, no, these people are not always French. You could tell others to get noise-cancelling headphones or blame the people who have raised the issue, but it’s called the Silent Zone for a reason. This, among other similar scenarios, makes it apparent that people are becoming more self-centred.
This is not only a complaint about rude customers or loud people in the silent zone, nor a boomer-style rant about the moral decay of the young generation. Instead, it is a poignant observation of how individualism has consumed us, gradually eroding our ability to be decent human beings. Nowhere else have I seen this erosion appear more prominently than in large, cold, concrete jungles like London (and consequently, LSE), which have become the epicentre of individualism worldwide.
This is not the fault of any one particular person or particular entity. I, too, have previously caught myself acting cold and disconnected from others out of sheer convenience — passing people on the street without acknowledgement or trying to avoid basic social interactions because it was simply easier. Nevertheless, this culture of individualism is being blindly perpetuated by many, and it’s time it’s addressed. As we face generational challenges and existential threats in the near future, the only way to deal with them is together.
One such existential threat was the pandemic. To my previous point, it was only overcome with human cooperation. However, it also isolated everyone. We were all trapped in a 6-foot bubble, and many were left alone. It’s no surprise that many people, particularly those in their formative years, built habits centred on themselves. That translates well to essential issues such as self-care, but it poses a more considerable risk when attempting to bring isolated individuals together. Nobody else matters when one prioritises the self and survival above all, as we’ve seen in the pandemic. Aside from avoiding infection spread, it made no sense to consider others (notably, strangers) because why would one need to? Covid is not the sole contributor to this problem, but it was certainly a catalyst.
The likeliest starter of this in present times, however, predates Covid: social media. In the age of self-care (further propelled by the pandemic), the message to supremely prioritise oneself above others or be the ‘main character,’ seems to have gotten lost in translation. The takeaway has now become that only one’s feelings are of concern and that others’ feelings can be minimised, if not outright dismissed, as they don’t matter nearly as much (prime example: Rory Gilmore in the later seasons).
Also, similarly to Covid, everyone on social media is physically isolated and cruising around with no real person in sight. After all, other people become reducible to just a set of pixels. We’ve been given massive doses of exposure therapy to obscenities we would never see in the real world, seeing people treat each other like garbage, worse than scum. We assume the worst in everyone, yet we all desperately try to create false narratives that only contain the best parts of ourselves and our lives. This contradiction makes it difficult to empathise with others online and offline. Consequently, if we can’t empathise with others, we have little (if any) reason to help them.
Even larger institutions like capitalism could have caused this hyper-individuality in a way that predates modern technology and the rise of social media. This can be argued through historical claims highlighting the ongoing impact these institutions’ laissez-faire, competitive, individual-centric nature has on broader discussions of collectivism and general empathy. Still, these may have played into the problem at hand, but their significance has diminished today. That doesn’t mean they should be entirely discounted, but instead, they are further down the list of urgency in which causational factors need to be addressed to remedy the issue. Only our daily interactions and how we choose to behave are up to us — and addressing our habits and tendencies is also well within our power, whereas reforming centuries-old institutions is simply unrealistic.
Positive interactions between humans certainly still exist, though they seem to be dwindling outside of people’s close circles. Not everyone may be good or nice, but not everyone is terrible or intent on being an asshole. As social creatures, how we interact does – in part –define us. Treating everyone with decency and respect first, instead of with judgemental disgust and coldness, would make living nicer and easier for everyone. It won’t fix all our problems, but it will make daily life more bearable.
