@Randem

You’re riding down in the elevator, and you reach the lobby. The doors open, and before you get a chance to move, there are a dozen people already pushing into the elevator before it’s even empty. It happens every day.

The crowd in the lobby doesn’t even wait to see if there are actually people on the elevator… they just see the doors open and start climbing in… only acknowledging your presence if they happen to bump into you on their self-concerned journey to the upper floors.

It’s rude. And I don’t stand for it. When I’m riding in an elevator, I stand directly in front of the door once I get near my destination floor. When the doors open I stand firm, blocking entrance for anyone who doesn’t give me space to exit.

We’ve all been that hurried passenger, anxious to get into the elevator. But why do some people eventually slow down and look while others never learn?

How might the various schools of thought answer this question? Let’s see…

Social determinism
The passengers who wait calmly must come from better homes and have higher education, whereas those who push their way into the elevator without concern for people trying to exit must come from broken homes with divorced parents, and have attended bad schools.

Environmental determinism
The patient people who wait for the elevator to empty must come from warmer climates, which formed lazy, relaxed attitudes, while the impatient people are from colder climates and have a more driven work ethic.

Evolutionary psychology
There were no elevators in the Savannah, so our minds are not evolved to deal with the conditions of vertical transportation.

Chaos theory
A pigeon flapping its wings in the promenade outside caused a chain reaction of events eventually leading to the urgency, or lack thereof, of passengers to enter the elevator car.

Freudian psychology
The lobby is a cold, scary place, and passengers long to enter the warm, womb-like safety of the elevator… no doubt due to some repressed sexual desire for their parents. The patient ones are simply repressing their oedipal sexual urges to penetrate the elevator.

Jungian psychology
Those who push their way into the elevator without empathy for the passengers trying to exit have very repressed shadow selves due to failure to admit their own failures, shortcomings, and weaknesses.

Pavlovian psychology
After being hit by the closing doors, or being left behind for not boarding the elevator fast enough, people eventually learn to enter the elevator as forcefully as necessary in order to get aboard and avoid negative stimuli.

Then there’s Randem Psychology. My theory is simple: those who push their way into the elevator, ignoring the passengers who try to exit, are inconsiderate, self-absorbed, rude. They’re assholes, and they need to be knocked down a peg. And that’s why I block the door and prevent their entry until they make room for the current passengers to exit.

Tags: determinism, evolution, Freud, Jung, psychology

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under humor, rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.