The Moscow Metro
На втором занятии Эдвард предложил мне в качестве домашнего задания прочитать пост про московское метро в его блоге. Боюсь, что он уже воспринимает это как роковую ошибку, потому что мы мутузим эту тему вот уже почти два месяца. И я всё никак не могу остановиться, потому что он задел меня за живое. В результате я фактически разродилась рецензией на его пассаж.
Metro Zombies Review
Describing new cultural experience it is very important to go deeper than superficial explanations and try to recognize the real roots of phenomena. At first it could be difficult to get free of standard paradigm and all previous knowledge, but this approach would pay off especially for travelers who like to verbalise their experience and share it with other people.
The Moscow metro is a good example of the phenomenon that could be described and interpreted differently based on initial ideas. Strangely enough, very often people mix up the metro as a transport system and the metro as a mass of daily commuters. For those who are focused more on the second notion, the metro could become an inexhaustible source of insights. The metro could be treated as a catalyst of social behaviours including a deviant one, because metro commuters are usually in rush, deprived of personal space, surrounded by strangers who are sometimes rather unpleasant. In such stressful conditions even the calmest start to lose self-control.
An observer who is focused on social behaviour finds signs of metro long before the descent to the underground. That could be either shaurma stands, smoking rubbish bins, stray dogs or whatever else that honestly has nothing to do with the metro itself. An attempt to classify passengers based on their appearance and behaviour is another widely spread method. However, it is doubtful whether the spectator would be able to analyze the situation and find core explanations for that. If we go further than just superficial description, we could be able to find new answers to the questions that initially seemed so self-evident. For instance, the gloomy faces of metro commuters could be interpreted either by big city stress and severe history, or by the fact that Russians prefer to express only sincere emotions and do not smile at strangers not to be misunderstood.
What is more, if we want to make judgments about something, we need to compare comparable things. So, if you describe the metro as a transport system, you could compare it with the metro systems of London, New York or Paris, based on such criteria as, for instance, regularity, reliability, number of passengers or design of the stations. Similarly, if you compare behaviour patterns of metro passengers, you have to compare the behaviour, such as level of politeness, number of beggars or desperate babushkas. Otherwise, the lack of frameworks analytics turns the story into a description of topic-related emotions that tend to become a scenario for a hair-raising horror movie.
Summing up, travelers that want not only to tick off the places they visited but to gent into the realm, should leave their prejudice and learned explanations and try to keep the mind open to everything new. Together with critical thinking this strategy will enrich and extent understanding of the world around.
Metro Zombies Review
Describing new cultural experience it is very important to go deeper than superficial explanations and try to recognize the real roots of phenomena. At first it could be difficult to get free of standard paradigm and all previous knowledge, but this approach would pay off especially for travelers who like to verbalise their experience and share it with other people.
The Moscow metro is a good example of the phenomenon that could be described and interpreted differently based on initial ideas. Strangely enough, very often people mix up the metro as a transport system and the metro as a mass of daily commuters. For those who are focused more on the second notion, the metro could become an inexhaustible source of insights. The metro could be treated as a catalyst of social behaviours including a deviant one, because metro commuters are usually in rush, deprived of personal space, surrounded by strangers who are sometimes rather unpleasant. In such stressful conditions even the calmest start to lose self-control.
An observer who is focused on social behaviour finds signs of metro long before the descent to the underground. That could be either shaurma stands, smoking rubbish bins, stray dogs or whatever else that honestly has nothing to do with the metro itself. An attempt to classify passengers based on their appearance and behaviour is another widely spread method. However, it is doubtful whether the spectator would be able to analyze the situation and find core explanations for that. If we go further than just superficial description, we could be able to find new answers to the questions that initially seemed so self-evident. For instance, the gloomy faces of metro commuters could be interpreted either by big city stress and severe history, or by the fact that Russians prefer to express only sincere emotions and do not smile at strangers not to be misunderstood.
What is more, if we want to make judgments about something, we need to compare comparable things. So, if you describe the metro as a transport system, you could compare it with the metro systems of London, New York or Paris, based on such criteria as, for instance, regularity, reliability, number of passengers or design of the stations. Similarly, if you compare behaviour patterns of metro passengers, you have to compare the behaviour, such as level of politeness, number of beggars or desperate babushkas. Otherwise, the lack of frameworks analytics turns the story into a description of topic-related emotions that tend to become a scenario for a hair-raising horror movie.
Summing up, travelers that want not only to tick off the places they visited but to gent into the realm, should leave their prejudice and learned explanations and try to keep the mind open to everything new. Together with critical thinking this strategy will enrich and extent understanding of the world around.