impatience as a reflection of economic system and standing
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7/27/2019 Impatience as a Reflection of Economic System and Standing
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Jeffrey Wang
05 OCT 2013
Ethnography
Impatience as a Reflection of Economic System and Standing
Nobody enjoys waiting. The circumstances are irrelevant — a delay before a
joyful surprise inevitably becomes impatient anticipation; a hold on an unwanted
punishment inevitably becomes fearful apprehension. Waiting merely intensifies our
desire for the outcome, good or bad; as the sense of anticipation builds, the waiting
individual becomes fixated on what he or she is expecting, and as my observations of
commuters at Los Angeles‟s Union Station have shown this may lead him or her to
ignore surrounding events and even become competitively aggressive in trying to
accelerate the arrival of the awaited occurrence. This goal-oriented mindset that waiting
induces ultimately allows it to be used as a representation for the values (and their
effects) of the capitalistic system that drives our lives.
To demonstrate this connection is what I set out to do in this essay. Waiting is, in
a number of ways, the bane of America‟s fast-paced society. It is something we seek
always to minimise, to ignore, to negate in any way possible. Yet why do we dislike
waiting with such intensity? It will not do to say, by way of explanation, merely that we
are an impatient society; while not incorrect, it is about as superficial and unhelpful as
stating that one enjoys a certain type of music because of the way it sounds. One is
hardly expected to judge music by the way it tastes. Instead, the actions of individuals
waiting for a train and the comparisons that may be made between these specific actions
and the broader trends of a capitalist society suggest that our negative attitude towards
delay is fuelled and influenced by our existence in a nation driven by capitalism.
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First, of course, the behaviour itself. I boarded a Metro Expo Line train at 5:26
a.m., intending to observe the movements of the rush of people commuting to work, and
immediately noticed a tendency that was at once obvious and perfectly unnoticeable; in
fact, what made it so apparent — the fact that nearly everyone did it — was simultaneously
the same reason for its utter normality: eye contact was religiously and automatically
avoided. As they sat and waited — whether at the Metro station, on board the train, or in
the waiting room of Union Station, where I ultimately made most of my observations,
passengers typically did an excellent job of scrupulously minding their own business.
Few looked at the people around them, and almost none attempted to strike up a
conversation with the person next to whom they were sitting, with the exception of
persons who were already acquainted with each other. Even when I took a break in order
to buy breakfast at the station‟s Starbucks, I noticed that literally none of the customers
intentionally (that is, aside from reactionary communication, such as a customary „sorry‟
after bumping into someone) interacted with each other. Instead, they either stared in a
neutral direction (such as the floor or some point outside the window — in other words,
any direction not conspicuously occupied by a human being) or occupied themselves with
a distraction (such as a newspaper or phone). This behaviour proved near-universal; in
the waiting room, as well as in the station‟s lobby and the Metro Gold Line platform, I
found people reading, texting, watching other trains, even simply standing alone staring
blankly into space — anything but interacting with the people around them.
At times this self-absorption escalated into more serious forms, especially on the
train platform. On several occasions I watched a commuter make a dash for the train —
even though the man (or woman) had watched it pull in mere milliseconds earlier and
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must have known in some corner of his or her mind that it was hardly in danger of
leaving anytime soon — risking bodily injury and virtually unavoidable collisions with
others, just for the satisfaction of boarding a train ahead of the crowd. Some individuals
also crowded the doors of the train, standing blatantly past the yellow line and impeding
those trying to exit as they tried to push their way on board.
Such behaviour is clearly indicative of a focus on whatever lies after the wait,
whether it be boarding a train home or obtaining a piping hot coffee. This goal-oriented
mindset is quite evident in the ways in which commuters attempt to ignore — or, failing
that, to reduce — the delay. The distractions used are just that —diversions that „take [the]
mind off the wait‟, as one man I spoke to on the Gold Line platform put it. By switching
the focus away from the boredom of waiting, phones, books, and distant objects allow
them to stop tormenting themselves with anticipation —to stop „waiting‟ and instead
begin „passing the time‟ so that what they wait for will appear to have arrived sooner than
expected. This impatience is demonstrated also in the lack of communication; observing
the rush of people moving through Union Station, one gets a distinct impression that their
avoidance of contact is a direct result of their hurry to reach their destination — they have
no time, and no need, to have any interaction because it may potentially lengthen their
wait and furthermore will likely be fleetingly short and therefore hold little social value.
And the competition to board the train needs little explanation — if anything, it
exemplifies a selfish, near-single-minded focus on achieving whatever goal one is
waiting for.
How does this impatient behaviour find its roots in capitalism? To more clearly
showcase this connection, it may be beneficial to first examine its association to a more
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intermediate, relatable concept: materialism. American society today is one predicated
on consumerism, an economic perspective that has arguably led to increased expectations
of instant gratification; the expectation itself is hardly new, but as we buy more — and as
the processes of purchasing become more streamlined — we expect more, and our
patience wears ever thinner as our tolerance for waiting for what we want decreases.
This reflects quite accurately the mind of the American commuter — as technology and
public transport improve (as they have; the Gold Line opened relatively recently in 2003,
and further expansions have been planned), the commuter expects a simpler, faster
commute and becomes increasingly less willing to wait for the train. If the commuter
must wait, he or she is liable to take illogical or unreasonable competitive action — such
as running or pushing — in order to minimise the delay and attain the objective, a
behaviour analogous to the „must- buy‟ attitude that has become ever more prevalent in
American society and has led consumers to fight to purchase things they neither need nor
can afford. This self-centred attitude, in turn, is due in part to the growing pervasiveness
and persuasiveness of advertising efforts that encourage consumers to spend; in her essay
on Fijian water, Kaplan discusses the effects of advertising, which improbably convinces
buyers of Fiji bottled water that they are like „the indigene, [able] to restore health like an
imagined indigene‟ (Kaplan 701). Such advertising is also implicated in the lack of
social interaction among commuters; Kaplan also notes that Fiji Water‟s labelling
changed in 2006 to emphasise that it was „untouched by man‟, symbolising the removal
of the human element from the consideration of consumers as they become focussed
more on the product that on the people who produce it, just as commuters become
focussed more on their destination than on the people around them. As psychologist
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Madeline Levine notes, the consumer culture has caused „a shift away from values of
community, spirituality, and integrity, and toward competition, materialism and
disconnection‟.
With its immediate influences in materialism/consumerism established, it is now
possible to make the connection between American society‟s attitude towards waiting
and the same society‟s capitalist system. Capitalism is effectively based upon the
accumulation of wealth; Marx himself acknowledged it as an „immense accumulation of
commodities‟ (Marx 302-303). It is, arguably, this drive to accumulate wealth that has
led corporations to employ the aforementioned marketing and advertisement tactics that
have promoted consumer spending and fostered what both Marx and Kaplan termed
„commodity fetishisation‟— an overwhelming focus on the product and what it promises
to deliver rather than on the human interaction that gives it its value. This consumer
spending and product focus, in turn, have led to impatience arising out of a necessity for
instant-gratification, as well as a loss of social interaction. Marx termed a commodity as
some „thing that by its properties satisfies human wants‟ (303); in America‟s capitalistic
society, individuals are in large part freely allowed to procure these objects, inevitably
leading to an expectation of — and a fixation on — the feeling of satisfaction. Ultimately,
therefore, the intolerant behaviour of American commuters with respect to waiting for
their trains is heavily effected by the capitalistic society by which their lives are driven.
There is, of course, a gaping hole in this argument. Who is to say that capitalism
is responsible for American impatience, and that it is not simply a characteristic of the
human mind that it desires satisfaction with decreasing tolerance for delay? Will not a
Communist at a train station become irritated if his or her train is delayed? In response, I
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have two points to make. Firstly, my purpose is not to contend that capitalism is the sole
reason for American train-waiting behaviour; rather, I seek to point out that the multiple
connections between this specific behaviour and the broader influences of capitalism
suggest that the two are linked — namely, that capitalism affects our perception of having
to wait, and as a result our impatience is intensified relative to that of, say, a Communist.
Secondly, in the absence of a Communist to observe in the environment of Union Station,
I ask that you consider the case of the homeless. Los Angeles reportedly has the highest
concentration of homeless citizens within its city borders, and a good number spend the
night at Union Station, making it nigh impossible not to notice them — especially
considering that I arrived there before many of them had awoken. Though perhaps an
extreme example, it is nonetheless true that these unfortunate members of society are not
bound by the capitalism around them. They have „human wants‟, just as the r est of
American society does; they are capable of losing their patience if required to wait too
long, just as the rest of American society does. What sets them apart is that due to fiscal
difficulties they are unable to act on these influences, thus rendering them incapable of
participating in the capitalist economy and freeing them from the influences thereof.
The difference is quite noticeable. These men and women show little objection to
waiting, simply because they have no reason to act otherwise. A customer at Starbucks
may become irritated if the cashier takes too long to return his change; a commuter on a
train platform may become annoyed if her train is delayed; but take unnecessarily long in
trying to extricate your wallet from your pants in order to check for some spare change
(as I did, while sitting in the waiting room), and the homeless individual before you will
remain unfazed. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that he desired the money I offered
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him, but the very fact that he was unable to spend enough to contribute meaningfully to
the capitalist economy meant that he subsequently had no overriding goal to achieve — no
commodity to purchase — and thus he held an extremely tolerant attitude towards waiting.
Ultimately, then, an individual‟s attitude toward waiting must be dependent on that
individual‟s spending ability, and since America‟s capitalist system seeks to develop and
encourage consumer spending, American society as a whole is comparatively less patient.
Observations of behaviour in Los Angeles‟s Union Station show that a number of
characteristics of the American commuter‟s attitude towards waiting are markedly similar
to the effects of a capitalistic economy — too similar to be ignored. Upon closer
examination, each of the main aspects of this attitude can be traced back through
consumerism/materialism to its roots in capitalism; further comparison and contrasting
with the behaviour of Union Station‟s homeless, as a non-capitalist group, prove that the
level of irritation an individual experiences when forced to wait for something is directly
influenced by that individual‟s ability to spend. As a capitalist nation, then, the American
commuter is understandably in a constant state of haste.
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Works Cited
Kaplan, Martha. “Fijian Water in Fiji and New York: Local Policies and a GlobalCommodity.” Cultural Anthropology. November 2007: 22 (4). Pp. 685-706.
Marx, Karl. Excerpts from Capital in the Marx-Engels Reader , edited by R. Tucker Norton and Company, 1971, pp. 302-308, 319-324.
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