Engagement

The death of manners in American society has been rather precipitous and jarring for me. In the last two decades, the general public behavior on American urban streets has deteriorated. This has accelerated with the public use of PDAs, iPods, iPhones, netbooks and mobiles. The advent of hip hop culture prior to onslaught of these devices laid a perfect groundwork for isolationism and marginal aggression in the public space.

I understand the seductiveness of earplugs in modern urban America. I travel subways and walk frequently through urban neighborhoods, which are jammed with cars, bicycles and baby strollers. I can see a day when pedestrians may be wearing hi-tech glasses, equipped with GPS and a virtual reality, projected on the inside of the lenses. These, combined with earplugs, would provide the perfect mobile womb.

I happen to believe that staying engaged, despite the annoyances, is an important part of being a practitioner of humanism. So, I venture out unplugged daily. I hold doors open for others. I say thank you to store clerks. I make eye contact and smile at people on the subway and sidewalk. This is an essential part of my humanist practice as I see it. This is my own way of taking responsibility for improving my environment. Retreating into technology, in my opinion, is an irresponsible and antisocial approach to the stresses of urban life. Regular, peaceful engagement in the public space, I believe, is a way of promoting greater peace in society.

Engagement

So much of being human is being engaged in human community. Human dysfunction often accompanies isolation and withdrawal from the human community. For example, when minorities are marginalized, they become dysfunctional in the greater society. Crime and addiction flourish.

The process of engagement with the society is a two-way process. The society which does not promote public engagement fosters fear and isolation. The aftermath of the 911 attacks is still evident in the urban American environment. People on subways and streets are obviously shy of one another. Here in a tourist city, out-of-towners prowl around in large packs and do not readily interact with strangers.

The cure for isolation is not complicated. A smile, eye contact and a nod on a street or subway usually gains an automatic, human response of recognition. Offering help to someone looking at a map on a street corner doesn't require much time or trouble. Holding a door open for someone behind you is a message of engagement. Each small behavior like these builds a sense of belonging to the world outside your personal environment much more effectively than looking at your Facebook homepage.