Boeing Culture

Two days ago, I finally returned from a vacation in the UK of nearly three weeks. Our flight was a 7 1/2 hour affair on a Boeing 777 Continental Airlines jet. It's a huge plane, with three sets of three seats on the left, right, and center of the aircraft (in coach--"Economy" class). My parents and I were in the middle cluster of seats, midway back in the cabin. Long before we boarded the plane, I noticed an always-amusing sight--a Hasidic Jewish man of only 30 years or so in full dress--long black coat, white undershirt, hat and tightly curled strands of hair (called "peyot") on either side of his head (look up "Hasidism" on Wikipedia or do a Google image search if my description wasn't too good). He was sitting in front of my father, in the left seat. To his right (directly in front of me) was a dark-skinned young man with a shortish, ragged beard which indicated that he was a Muslim. To this man's right was a woman, also a Muslim (though these two were not acquainted with one another). What transpired between these three gave me a spark of hope for civility in a world that seems to be fleeing civility at an alarming pace.

From about ten minutes after the plane took off, the Hasid and the two Muslims engaged in what sounded like a cordial but at times quite animated discussion of their respective faiths and how they factored into world politics. Unfortunately, I can't be any more specific about the conversation as I didn't hear it very well and didn't want to eavesdrop. Simply noticing this discussion got me thinking about a tangential term that I learned in my sophomore year (high school) European History class--the term "tavern culture."

From what I understand, tavern culture developed fairly early on in Europe. Taverns served as an alternative meeting place to churches; a place where people of a wide range of socioeconomic classes would eat, drink, and socialize. What resulted was a rise in lively debate of all matters of life--religion, politics, culture, etc.

As we hurtle deeper and deeper into the iPod age, people tend to close themselves of from others when in public. Walking down the streets of London, the amount of people wearing iPods was as awe-inspiring for negative reasons as for positive. On the good hand, the product market-share Apple has created in the last five or six years is simply astounding. They've allowed music to flow from creator to consumer as never before. But now that everyone seems to have an iPod or some such (myself included), there emerges the tendency to descend into music and ignore all others around. It makes us as societies look like hoards of individuals, rather than an interdependent whole. Thank goodness the Hasid and the Muslims didn't wall themselves off with iPods. As nice as music is and can be, they wouldn't have been so enriched as they were when they left the plane had they put themselves in the iPod cocoon.

No lyrical selection this evening.