What The Shallots Taught Me

Friday's work was hard. He didn't get much sleep the night before, either. She had a beautiful dinner waiting, full of cubed potatoes and bacon bits and red wine vinegar. There was a side of cabbage with sauteed shallots and lemon juice.

An empty plate later, surrounded by dirty dishes, his left for the bedroom. He fell like a timbered log onto the bed. He napped. "Just for five minutes," he said.

She woke him an hour and a half later. The sun was gone.

"Get up," she said. "I've asked you five times now. I'm going to the store to get things for breakfast tomorrow. Come with me."

He rolled over, groggy and impatient.

"Why are you so concerned with me getting up?" he said.

She brushed off his question.

"I'm going to the store. Do you want to come or not?"

"No."

She huffed out and walked out the door.

He pulled himself up and walked to the living room. He saw the kitchen, full of pots and plates and crusty potato skins. The flavors of dinner came to him. The cabbage had been covered with so many shallot pieces. She must have spent a lot of time cutting them,  alone.   

The Man On The Train Tracks

Two weeks ago, a man was pushed onto the tracks of a Times Square subway station in New York City. He tried to pull himself out, but, because of the awkward height of the track well, he could only flail his arms. A photographer, R. Umar Abbasi, took a picture of him staring at the oncoming train. The man couldn’t climb the well and was killed.  The entire process, from fall to impact, took twenty-two seconds.

                       

Try staring at the clock for twenty-two seconds and imagine the ordeal unfold. That’s a long time to watch a helpless man try to escape with his life. What would you do? Of course you would help, right? That’s what a woman named Denise Martorana was quoted as saying in a news article:

                       

“I would certainly try to do whatever I possibly could. I certainly wouldn’t be able to stand there and watch, that’s for sure.”

                       

Is that for sure? Denise is probably upset, along with the rest of the United States, at Abbasi, whose photograph landed on the cover of the New York Post next to the headline “DOOMED!” But Abbasi’s interview with the Associated Press provides some insight into why he didn’t help, and why Denise probably wouldn’t, either. 

Here is a retelling of the event, from Abbasi’s point of view:

“It took me a second to figure out what was happening…I saw the lights in the distance. My mind was alert to the train. The people who were standing close to him…they could have moved and grabbed him and pulled him up. No one made an effort.”

                        

Ignoring a death is horrible, but the most terrifying thing? This isn't the first time.  

                        

In March, 1964, an elderly woman named Catherine Genovese experienced a long, loud, tortured, public  death. Here are the first few paragraphs of the story, written by A.M. Rosenthal, from the New York Times:

                        

For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.

                        

Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead...

[Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen] can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him—not because it is a murder, but because ‘good people’ failed to call the police.

                        

Isn’t that what happened in the subway station two weeks ago? Rosenthal concludes that the depersonalization of urban life causes New Yorkers in particular to ignore their neighbors’ troubles. The only way to live in a big city is indifferently, he says.

                        

But psychologists have studied this problem, and have come to a different conclusion. There is a much larger rule being manifest in both the Genovese murder and the man on the train tracks. It’s called “The Principle of Social Proof”, and it’s the same reason for why sitcoms have laugh-tracks.

                        

The Principle of Social Proof states we view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. When an abnormal situation happens, we rely on the crowd to figure out how to react. But here’s the problem: when an individual looks to the group to understand how to act, he doesn’t see the group acting appropriately, he sees the group staring back at him. In our natural reaction to adhere to the norms of the group in abnormal situations, we render the group without any norms at all.

Let’s go back to Abbasi’s testimony, and imagine how Abbasi’s eyes moved.

                       

“It took me a second to figure out what was happening” (from the man)…

                       

“I saw the lights in the distance. My mind was alert to the train” (to the train)…

                        

“The people who were standing close to him.” (to the people around him).

And what does he notice? That no one goes to help. No one makes an effort, because they are just as confused as he is. 

And there's your twenty-two seconds.

The Principle of Social Proof sounds like a bad thing. But, in some contexts, it can have a positive impact on a situation. In fact, Disney uses this principle to help vacationers have the maximum amount of fun, in the same way laugh-tracks make bad jokes seem funnier. My wife and I recently went on a Disney cruise, and I was shocked by how many times I was told to do something. Before every show, and sometimes even before dinner, the cruise director would get on stage or the speakers and say,

"Everybody put your hands in the air!"

"Now wave them side to side."

"Now, as loud as you can, say "I'M HAVING FUN, AND I'M ON VACATION!!"

And you know what happened? Every single person in the theater/restaurant/pool deck would raise their hands, wave them side to side, and yell that they were on vacation. Even the big fat dude wearing the Crimson Tide t-shirt with his belly hanging out and a beer in his hand did it. Then he did the Mickey Limbo and dressed as a Pirate for Pirate Night. 

Disney uses this trick to get us into group-think mode, because they know that if we see others having fun, we will likely have more fun as a result. Even in 1830's Opera Houses, businesses such as L'Assurance des Succes Dramatiques charged performers for their services. What were those services? Professional applause. Each "Bravo!" and "Bene!" carried a price, all depending on how insistent you wanted the fervor to be. The claquers got paid, the performers got recognition, and the audience, believe it or not, enjoyed the show more because of it. 

Adam and Eve and Feminism

I’ve been thinking about a column my wife read to me a couple of days ago called The War on Men, by Suzanne Venker. Her ideas led me to wonder if men and women really do have natural talents and inclinations towards traditional gender roles.

Our parents and grandparents seem to think so. In their eyes, a woman’s primary role is that of caregiver. This is based on the assumption that women have natural talents men don’t have. Men’s role in society is that of ambitious career-seeker to provide for his family. We live with these enforced gender roles because we buy in to society’s assumption that men are better at one thing, while women are better at another. Media creators know they can get an easy laugh simply by combining a man and a baby. Look, he’s holding a bottle! Look, he’s duct-taping a diaper! That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

Women have it just as bad in film and television, where to have a career is synonymous with being selfish and stuck-up; the higher the office, the higher the heels, and the louder the walk. Think Sandra Bullock’s character in The Proposal before she finds the joys of family…in the family’s mansion, in an Alaskan town owned by the family. Even Cruella Deville would grow a heart under those circumstances.

But the career-woman stereotype will have to disappear because now, for the first time, women have surpassed men in the workforce. Women do better in school and get more advanced degrees than men.  This feminine ambition is nothing new, however. A close reading of Genesis shows us it’s merely a rebirth of the actions of Eve, who I think was the world’s first feminist.

Shortly after God made Eve, her and the serpent have a conversation:

2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Eve’s explanation to the serpent fascinates me. Not only has God commanded her not to eat; he has commanded her not to touch. Why would Eve receive this second commandment which Adam did not? Could it be that God knew the temptation of His knowledge would be greater for Eve than for Adam? Was Eve the ambitious one in the Garden of Eden?

The serpent responds:

4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil.

6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

She ate the fruit in her desire for knowledge. And that knowledge probably included the realization that she would be kicked out of the Garden of Eden for her disobedience. But why did Adam eat?

And he [God] said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

The words “to be with me” give Adam’s motives away. He knew he needed to cleave unto his wife, and the only way to do that was to gain her knowledge and follow her out of Eden. He traded the comfort of the garden for the toils of living by the sweat of his face. He adapted. But it took the ambition of Eve to push Adam forward. That’s why it is not good that man should be alone.

Feminism is not the end of men. It is an opportunity for men. It gives us a chance to do what societal norms never allowed of us: to be a fulltime father, or a part-time employee who leaves early to pick up his kids from school and start dinner.  We can finally show the world we are more than one-trick ponies. Let’s fight sleep to rock a crying baby and cut the crusts off of sandwiches. At the front door, let’s hear “Daddy, I’m home!” for a change. Let’s make that old joke about the guy who can’t change a diaper obsolete.