how we can use the rider in us to tame the elephant

story time

I was on my way back home for the long weekend. If you have been in the tristate area recently, you’ve probably noticed public transport has been buckling down on their regulations and fees.

1. Random checks on MTA buses for paid tickets

2. Increases in subway fares

3. NJ transit fee increases

4. Piloting: Emergency subway doors will no longer open immediately

The ticket collector was coming down the aisle at the beginning of our ride, and there’s usually a few stragglers that are trying to buy their tickets with no service underground (including myself). That’s fine; ticket collectors usually come back once the train is above ground. Three stops in though, I notice that the ticket collector is back and asking a passenger near me for their ticket.

Let’s give these people nicknames. Ticket collector = TC, passenger = PA.

PA still didn’t have their ticket ready, because their Apple Pay wasn’t loading. At this point, you could tell TC was becoming impatient and told them “you’ve had enough time; if you can’t pay, you need to get off at the next stop.” TC gives PA five more minutes, but once TC’s back, they ask, “Do you have it or not?” And the tone was pretty threatening. It sounded like PA’s Apple Pay was connected to someone else’s credit card, and they needed some passcode to access it and that person wasn’t being responsive. PA begins frantically calling people, asking for $120 in Venmo cash. They were asking different passengers, including me and my friend, do you have cash I can borrow? But no one did. TC was getting really annoyed at this point, and was just lingering around PA until they could figure out a way to pay for the ticket. They repeated, “you can get off at the next stop and use your physical credit card to buy a ticket.”

time to be honest…

I’d like to preface this you all to read the rest of this piece with an open mind. Pause, and read the piece in its entirety before you make any judgements. Now, let me share my raw thoughts with you from beginning to end of the incident.

1. When I noticed PA was delaying their payment of the ticket, I began noticing their belongings. They had four to five bags, more bags than one would take for a long weekend. They had Airpod Maxes and a Beis bag. My intuitive judgement was confusion, why were you struggling to pay for a $20 ticket? And why were you asking for $120 on Venmo when the ticket itself is only $18?

2. I witnessed TC’s annoyance / threatening tone towards PA and thought to myself, huh they’re being slightly aggressive to PA. For one second, I thought TC must be annoyed because they must deal with a lot of people who don’t pay for their ticket and no one is entitled to that. However, the tone was quite degrading and especially so because there were dozens of people around.

3. I saw PA’s face of panic when they began calling people to Venmo money to them and asking everyone in the cabin for cash. And that’s when my humanity began kicking in. Maybe they’re leaving an unsafe situation and are in fight and flight mode and need to go somewhere else.

What does this sound like to you? Guess, after guess, after guess. I think I made at least twenty guesses above around PA’s situation. I don’t know PA, and I’m making assumptions about their entire life. When in reality, all I could see is that they couldn’t pay for their own train ticket and it was causing them distress. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, lacking money in a society that values material wealth and success can be weaponized and be one of the most humiliating and shameful things to experience.

Ultimately, none of us know PA’s situation. The pessimist in us can assume that this person is entitled and is trying to game a system, and we, as strangers, need to teach them a good lesson about this harsh, cruel world. In fact, it’s been studied that humans care more about bringing down the bully rather than loving equality.

It’s similar to how people say, I don’t want to give a homeless person cash. They’ll just purchase drugs, they have no idea how to spend their money, etc (it’s the same reasons people were very skeptical of unconditional cash transfers, but GiveDirectly quite literally disproved this myth). I’ll wait till I have X dollars to “save the system”. I say this because I’ve said to myself before. Yes, in a lot of ways the system is broken and I’m a devout believer in making systemic change. But in the meanwhile, there’s small individual actions we can do today where we avoid dehumanizing others. Giving back is a mindset and I have a lot of hope that those $10 will allow someone to buy whatever they need to have their basic needs met in that moment.

Oh but wait, I never finished the story.

Finally, another kind woman on the train purchased their ticket. And quite frankly, I don’t know what was going through that woman’s head. Maybe she was having the same judgments as me, maybe her humanity kicked in earlier than mine. But she didn’t allow her intuition to blind her from the humanity of the situation. With a lack of information, she helped another human get to their destination with a small act of kindness.

ending thoughts

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the elephant and the rider analogy, where our rational side is the rider and our emotional side is the elephant. The rider strives to be in control but in reality, the elephant’s power dictates our initial intuitive response. The elephant in us will make an intuitive judgment. But now, let’s pause. Although we made our initial judgment, the rider can aid how we respond aloud. I’m admitting to you all of my own intuitive judgments around PA, and that it’s okay that your mind jumps to that. With the amount of things we see in a day and our brain’s processing power, it makes sense that we make snap judgments about people everyday. Also, it makes sense because looking a layer deeper, there is a lot of internalized stigma around money in our society. But I urge you all to take that moment of pause and ask yourself why. When you make an assumption about someone’s situation, just ask yourself why you thought that? And at the end of the rabbit hole of whys, you might just realize that you made a bunch of guesses and it isn’t your place to actively make a judgment about someone else.