Enigma Variations

Crowd stupidity

January 9th, 2008

Travelling to Malta over Xmas I was reminded of the astonishing stupidity that seems to overtake humans when they’re in groups.

Firstly I took the train to Glasgow. The train was packed with pre-xmas shoppers (though why anyone would go to Edinburgh to shop escapes me – the shops are awful) and this must have been obvious to those waiting on the platform. Yet they insisted on gathering close to the doors and stared gormlessly when heavily loaded passengers tried to disembark and had to push past them. Did it not occur to them that they can’t get on until the incoming people have got off? Had the train been quieter and the people waiting been fewer then the chances are that everyone would have acted more sensibly, moving aside for each other, yet in large groups such common sense seems to be absent.

An equally brainless scenario can be regularly seen with air travel. What is the point of people leaping to their feet as soon as the aircraft has landed only to have to stand crushed together until the doors are opened and the staircase is in place. It doesn’t matter who gets off first – we all have to wait for the baggage to be offloaded anyway.

Which of course leads to the other scene of idiocy – the baggage carousel. We’ve all seen it, a planeload of passengers all crowding round as close to the moving belt as they can get, all craning to see past each other to see if the luggage coming down the belt is theirs or not. The predictable result is that no-one can see except the person at the furthest up the line and there is a mad scramble to grab luggage seen at the last moment through a pile of struggling bodies. All of it completely unnecessary. If everyone would simply stand back by even three or four feet then the lines of sight would open up and everyone would be able to see, the lucky first recipients would be able to easily retrieve their cases without fuss and with room to manoeuvre, and no-one would have to battle. It doesn’t need an Einstein to work this out so why does everyone insist on subjecting themselves to the crowded scramble?

Next time you find yourself in a crowd, watch carefully. But most important, think for yourself!

Entry Filed under: Social/Political