impatience as a reflection of economic system and standing

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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