Recommendations of the Editorial team
The Walkman made music mobile. The cell phone has made phone calls mobile. The Gameboy made entertainment mobile. The smartphone has brought all of this together brilliantly – but unfortunately it has been equipped with a loudspeaker.
Since then, public transport has no longer just been a means of getting around together. Today it is also a stage on which private worlds dance Capoeira together while others drive to work. Music, videos, phone calls – all of this competes unfiltered for acoustic supremacy in our moving boxes made of glass and metal.
The loudspeaker has long been more than just a technical feature. Rather, it is becoming a social challenge for which our society has apparently not been able to find a working etiquette to date. Some of the most passionate drivers in my Berlin environment refuse to use public transport to get to work because they consider the background noise in the S-Bahn and U-Bahn to be unacceptable. But is this really primarily a question of behavior?
The culprits are quickly sought and supposedly found: youth, other cultures and generally the decline of all kinds of values. But all these explanations remain on the surface.
Those who have little space live in public
If you look closely, a pattern becomes quite clear that we also know from other debates. From corona protection measures to the ban on public consumption of alcohol to night-time evictions: for many of our fellow human beings, the use of public spaces is not just one option among many, but a social necessity. Sometimes it is even one with no alternative. Those who don’t have large apartments, a garden, a car, a home office and sometimes not even their own room live their lives more publicly – and therefore often more audibly.
At the same time, consideration functions as a status marker in our society. Being quiet is considered cultured. So are the lutes simply uncultured rednecks who can’t pull themselves together? With the new noise-cancelling headphones worth 200 euros, you can indulge in such cultural pessimism largely undisturbed. One should not forget that not everyone will end the day on a gravel bike or doing power yoga to deal with their life crises.
My aim is not to make social status the wild card for every behavior, no matter how reckless. Notorious egoists exist in every population group, even among poor people. But we should be interested in the underlying causes of problems when we look for suitable solutions.
Clash of worldviews
A look at social research provides direction. People who hardly feel like they belong are more likely to behave in ways that deviate from norms. Not so much out of provocation, but because they don’t fear the social costs – for example my eye rolling on the subway – or can’t even calculate them. However, if you know the unwritten rules of etiquette, you can maneuver safely through public spaces. This is also why I’m more annoyed with the obligatory tie wearer on the ICE train, who loudly lets all passengers take part in the discussion of his quarterly figures for half an hour. Because Mr. Important violates etiquette even though it’s definitely familiar to him.
Buses and trains have long since become the stage set for all kinds of stories. Today, a single bus ride is often used as evidence of an entire (political) worldview. And someone else’s train journey proves the exact opposite. This anecdotal evidence is terribly tiring and of no use to me, an excessive public transport user. I’m not aiming for a utopian or dystopian driving experience, just a little more peace and quiet.
And because experience shows neither educational loudspeaker announcementsif pictograms are still stuck on to reverse an undesirable social development, I would like to contribute with a very pragmatic suggestion: In the future, every subscription ticket will be accompanied by the annual issue of a pair of headphones. In general, the simplest copies are now cent items, which is no longer significant given that the Germany ticket now costs 63 euros per month. And if it calms people down, then I think we can also enclose the conditions of transport including a catalog of fines.
Anyone who argues that anyone could buy cheap headphones themselves is right. But given the amount of time I spend on public transport, I prefer to be left alone on buses and trains rather than just being right.