The human world is built for conflict. Humans appear to love it. Half of what is written on this power guzzling paradise of pathos and propaganda called the internet is about conflict. We go through the processes of avoiding, eliminating and reducing it. We protest, we peace-make. But all around our man made world seems built for bad feeling. It’s as if every door has a bucket of water perched on the top…the world is booby trapped for beration.
Take a look at this photo.
There are three people sitting in a row, and I’m the middle one. That’s the arm of the guy next to me. He has two arms, as do we all. Two arms on three people makes six arms. There are armrests for people to rest these limbs upon, and I do not take such generosity lightly, especially from Ryanair.
But there’s a problem. Four armrests. Six arms. I am also English, and have a double dose of body contact aversion, one from my genes and one from my environment. Nature and nurture join forces to give me the kind of face that says “don’t touch me”. Isn’t biology amazing?
So anyway, this guy doesn’t have that problem, he’s free and easy, sits right down with his headphones on and takes the whole arm space on both sides. His elbows are almost in me. So now we’re two armrests down, and technically I have just the one to put both my arms on. Then there’s the guy next to me, who is eying the armrest on my left with apex predator focus that he’s trying, and failing, to conceal from me. I’m stuck in some kind of pose like a primary school kid learning how to dive, arms locked together in a straight line between my knees.
“Your flight time is two hours and forty minutes.”
This is a deliberate. You need six armrests for your six arms, we are giving you four. A plane put together with love and care, with safety checks and delicate instruments of precise measurements, a huge hunk of metal that pretends to be a bird…there is no end to the complexity of this machine. But wait….there is an end! The end is right here, where my elbows should be. We must fight, fight to the death, for this arm space, survival of the fittest…there are no runners up in this contest. Second place is your hunched over, bad back demeanour from take off to landing. It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part!
We could have less people on a flight, bigger seats, pay more for tickets, increase some wages and decrease others so it’s not only the rich that get off this stinking island. Give people their space, don’t deliberately make them feel worse. Perhaps then I won’t end the flight wanting to kill this guy, who was probably just tired, maybe more tired than me, maybe he was on his way to the funeral of a family member. I don’t want to think about how these little fights blow up exponentially into world conflicts. Other people suck, and other people in large numbers suck more, especially when you think you have a reason to think so.
Well, there’s an option to share the space. He could put his elbows forward a bit, I kind of slide mine in behind and spend two and a half hours holding them tight in position to stop any touching. That’s pretty exhausting…I think my neck would be strung like a Steinway after that kind of ordeal, like a sprinter waiting for the starter’s pistol….but for two and a half hours.
And he can’t hear anyway, likely sunk in something terrible like Taylor Swift on those headphones. So I sit huddled, balancing a book on my knees that I read sideways, somewhere between landscape and portrait mode. I won’t let the system wear me down. I will read and improve myself. I reject the armrests altogether, I do not accept the terms. The other two have two each now. I am almost proud, almost feeling better except the veins at my temples start to come out like poisonous snakes after hibernation. But at least I’ve avoided an argument successfully. If this were the tip of an iceberg, my hot head would melt it.
I guess this last bit is where the optimistic ending comes. I’m sure humans can get better at being alive. I think my favourite imagined scenario is a squadron of benevolent aliens appear and aim their lasers straight at us. “This is how to get yourselves organised and live well. Do it. If you don’t we’ll blow you all up. If you do, after six months we’ll leave you and take the lasers with us. We guarantee you’ll carry on.”
And then, because they understand how our brains work, a final addendum:
“Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.”
Brother Face 