But it would be the kind of silence where we both feel obligated to say something, but neither of us have anything to say. It's probably the reason I never strike them up when I'm on the bus or train. I do see remarkable people and I do sometimes have questions for them or I overhear some point of interest in a loud conversation behind me and think for a moment about joining in, but I never do. I don't know that I ever will.
And the interesting flip side is that whenever I am on a train or a bus or in a car or anywhere really with people that I do know, we don't stop talking. Not in a chaotic rabble of conversational noise sort of way, but I've just realized that whenever I am with friends we are always talking about something. Unless our attention is devoted to a third party like a movie or the tv, we keep conversation going all the time.
It seems like when you spend time with people it's assumed that you'll fill it with talking. I've never organized to meet up with a friend to just walk around the mall and get lunch without speaking. We never travel into the city on the train and smile as we see each other and then proceed to sit in silence the whole way there. We are always talking.
Now the point of interest between these two very obvious observations is that I am the same person in both scenarios. When I am alone on the train or with friends on the bus, I am the same person. I am the person who definitely won't start a conversation and the person who definitely won't stop one.
Elias Canetti in his work 'Crowds and Power' pointed out this tension as a way of studying Nazi Germany. Elias, who spoke German fluently and was of Jewish culture, had lived through both World Wars. He pointed out that we are a collective of individuals. Our society runs in such a way that we are awkward about invading each other's lives and personal space at a social level, but we are also capable of radical unity and work towards a common goal when given the means to do so.
Elias illustrates this by talking about our personal space. By default we go to great lengths to not touch strangers, on the street, in restaurants, even when crammed into a tiny elevator, we will maintain at least a inch of space between us. But when we become a collective mass, at a concert or a rally or some function, we press in together and don't have any concerns about it.
It all got me thinking about how we live with this strange duality; we are unique, specific, different people who have capacity and even need to be part of a collective whole. We live in apartment buildings, surrounded by people we don't know, we sit silently next to people in cafes and on park benches and we throw up this wall of distance called the internet. And it all seems ok for a while, but then we develop websites to connect with people and we sleep in our apartments wishing we weren't alone, sitting on our park bench and thinking how nice it would be to have a friend with us.
I think we are fairly unique among the animals in this way; as far as I can see animals function either as the collective or the individual but we constantly have both in great extremes. For a species that's so aware of our need for education and health care and a solution to depleting energy resources, I wonder if we are as aware of our need for each other. We know that the life of the hermit isn't ideal, the shut-in, the marginalised. While we exhibit this lifestyle in sections of our lives, we know we can't sustain it in the whole of them.
It seems to me that the gospel makes sense of the human condition in this facet. We are unique individuals who are part of a whole. Different body parts that each belong to a body. And part of what it means to be relational is that we have our own personalities and preferences that relate to and complement each other.
The God who made us doesn't call all of us to be the one and the same type of person, all of us being identical to each other, but He does insist that we function as members of the one family. From spending time with friends who don't know the gospel, I can see that they are confused trying to balance out this duality, but as a Christian I am free to cultivate my personal identity and my place in the collective. Human beings are made to be united individuals.
Sam Manchester is a University of Sydney graduate interested in Sociology and Ethnography. He spent a couple of years living and studying in London, but now is home on the North Shore enjoying Sydney's arts and social scene and working in a 'three cup' cafe.