On buses

Earlier I wrote about my daily bus trips. I told you they are boring. Ok, nothing much interesting might happen to the outsider, but to the watchfull eye some interesting things happen almost without reaching the conscious level of ones mind.

So. This morning i got on my bus again. As on most mornings, i am the only person to get on the bus on its first stop, so i get to be the only one (apart from the bus driver) to witness the filling of the bus. More and more, i get detached from the other people's on the bus and their lives. Though every day i see more of them, it seems like seeing more is to feel more apart. Distance gets important.

And i am not the only one thinking that way. Take a random bus stop and an empty bus approaching. Several people standing at the stop. When the bus stops, it will always come down to the following: Person 1 steps on the bus. He is the only traveller who gets to choose between two equal alternatives. It depends on his opinion on the driver of the bus. If Person 1 doesn't like the driver, he will undoubtedly walk through the entire bus and take the seat nearest to the rear window. If he considers the driver a part of the bus, or he doesn't have a negative impression of him, he might also choose to sit directly behind the driver. Person 1 is however the only one who has this luxury. The moment he has taken his seat, all the other people are bound to a very strong bus law:
The Law Of Maximum Distance.

Let's pretend that Person 1 has some grudge against the driver, and decides to sit way in the back of the bus. Obeying the Law Of Maximum Distance, Person 2 will take his seat near the driver (despite any grudges he or she might feel against the driver). Person 3 will see Person 1 and Person 2 and take a seat at the exact center of the bus. This will continue until all benches are occupied by one person. Then, once again, one person gets to choose (because now all seats are equal again), but this is not really the case, for to gain maximum distance, not only location is of importance. There also has to be a proper means to escape. Thus, the first of the remaining seats that will be taking, will be the seat in the direct vicinity of the exit door. That one being taken, The Law Of Maximum Distance will take over again and all other seats will fill evenly according to the law.

So, inside small areas people behave like mindless gas under pressure, and take as much interpersonal space as they can get. In itself that isn't too strange: there are more laws in nature that apply to microscopic as well as macroscopic scale. The really strange thing is, that people act the opposite way when they are not yet on the bus, but still waiting on the bus stop. Though there is space enough (open air, an unending strech of sidewalk in at least two directions), as soon as the bus appears over the horizon, they stampede to a single imaginary square inch on the edge of the sidewalk. All the people know that this is an impossible thing to do, but yet they try it. And they keep doing that every single working day!

My point is: How can it be that being outside or inside a bus determines the human behaviour? Is there some dark force involved? Do we find it so important to be the first on the bus, still knowing that the driver got there first, anyway? What use is it to have free choice, if there is nothing too choose from? And the oddest: Why do people choose to stand in a crowd, pushing against eachother (which they seem to hate), in order to sit in a crowd, trying to avoid eachother's early morning gazes (which they also hate)? What is the point? Hmmm. To be continued...