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Unit 2 Space Invaders

Richard Stengel

At my bank the other day, I was standing in a line snaking around some tired velvet ropes when a man in a sweat-suit started inching toward me in his eagerness to deposit his Social Security check. As he did so, I minutely advanced toward the woman reading the Wall Street Journal in front of me, who, in mild annoyance, began to sidle up to the man scribbling a check in front of her, who absentmindedly shuffled toward the white-haired lady ahead of him, until we were all hugger-mugger against each other, the original lazy line having collapsed in on itself like a Slinky.

I estimate that my personal space extends eighteen inches in front of my face, one foot to each side, and about ten inches in back — though it is nearly impossible to measure exactly how far behind you someone is standing. The phrase \space\has a quaint, seventies ring to it (\gratifying expressions that are intuitively understood by all human beings. Like the twelve-mile limit around our national shores, personal space is our individual border beyond which no stranger can penetrate without making us uneasy.

Lately, I've found that my personal space is being invaded more than ever before. In elevators, people are wedging themselves in just before the doors close; on the street, pedestrians are zigzagging through the human traffic, jostling others, refusing to give way; on the subway, riders are no longer taking pains to carve out little zones of space between themselves and fellow-passengers; in lines at airports, people are pressing forward like fidgety taxis at red lights.

At first, I attributed this tendency to the \explosion\and the relentless Malthusian logic that if twice as many people inhabit the planet now as did twenty years ago, each of us has half as much space. Recently, I've wondered if it's the season: T-shirt weather can make proximity more alluring (or much, much less). Or perhaps the proliferation of coffee bars in Manhattan — the number seems to double every three months — is infusing so much caffeine into the already jangling locals that people can no longer keep to themselves.

Personal space is mostly a public matter; we allow all kinds of invasions of personal space in private. (Humanity wouldn't exist without them.) The logistics of it vary according to geography. People who live in Calcutta have less personal space than folks in Colorado. \would wager that people in the Northern Hemisphere have roomier conceptions of personal space than those in the Southern. To an Englishman, a handshake can seem like trespassing, whereas to a Brazilian, anything less than a hug may come across as chilliness.

Like drivers who plow into your parked and empty car and don't leave a note, people no longer mutter \me\when they bump into you. The decline of manners has been widely lamented. Manners, it seems to me, are about giving people space, not stepping on toes, granting people their private domain.

I've also noticed an increase in the ranks of what I think of as space invaders, mini-territorial expansionists who seize public space with a sense of manifest destiny. In movie theatres these days, people are staking a claim to both armrests, annexing all the elbow room, while at coffee shops and on the Long Island Railroad, individuals routinely commandeer booths and sets of facing seats meant for foursomes.

Ultimately, personal space is psychological, not physical: it has less to do with the space outside us than with our inner space. I suspect that the shrinking of personal space is directly proportional to the expansion of self-absorption: people whose attention is inward do not bother to look outward. Even the focus of science these days is micro, not macro. The Human Genome Project is mapping the universe of the genetic code, while neuroscientists are using souped-up M.R.I. machines to chart the flight of neurons in our brains.

In the same way that the breeze from a butterfly's wings in Japan may eventually produce a tidal wave in California, I have decided to expand the contracting boundaries of personal space. In the line at my bank, I now refuse to move closer than three feet to the person in front of me, even if it means that the fellow behind me starts breathing down my neck

空间入侵者

理查德·斯坦格尔

1 几天前，我去银行排队，队伍沿着松松垮垮的天鹅绒围栏蜿蜒前伸，这时一位身穿运动套装的男子急不可耐地从我后头向前挪步，想尽早办理社会保险支票存储业务。当他这么做的时候，我只好谨小慎微地向排在我前面阅读《华尔街日报》的女士挪动步子。她略有不快，于是侧身向她前面那位正在涂写一张支票的男士走去，而这位男士则漫不经心地拖着脚走向他前面的银发老太。这样我们的队伍就变得七歪八扭，原来慵懒的队伍活脱脱变成了个“机灵鬼”1。

2 我估计我个人空间的范围身前有18英寸，身后10英寸，两侧各1英尺——尽管要估算某人站在你身后多远几乎是不可能的。“个人空间”这个词组带有一种古雅的、70年代的味道(“老兄，你侵犯了我的空间”)，但这是一个能让全人类一下子明白过来的令人满意的词组之一。就像我们国家拥有12海里领海权一样，个人空间就是我们的边界，只要有陌生人穿过这个边界，就会使我们感到不安。

3 最近，我发现我的个人空间比以往任何时候所遭受的侵犯都更加厉害。电梯里，人们抢在关门之前拼命挤进来；马路上，行人奋勇向前，在人流中穿梭，推推搡搡，拒不让路；地

铁中，乘客不再刻意在自己和别人之间留出狭小空间；在机场队伍中，人们拼命向前压上，就像等待红灯时烦躁不安的出租车一样。

4 最开始我把这种趋势归结于“人口爆炸”以及无情的马尔萨斯理论。该理论认为，如果现在居住在地球上的人口比20年前多一倍，每个人得到的空间就缩小一半。近来，我怀疑是不是季节的原因：穿着T恤衫的天气使彼此靠近更具吸引力(抑或使吸引力大大减少)。或许是因为曼哈顿咖啡厅的激增——数量每3个月翻一番——将如此多的咖啡因注入原来就已经烦躁不安的当地人体内，使他们更加难以离群索居。

5 个人空间基本上是个公众场合的问题；私下里，我们允许对个人空间进行各种各样的侵犯。(没有这些“侵犯”，人类不可能存在。)如何界定个人空间的大小因地而异。住在加尔各答的人比科罗拉多的人个人空间要来得少。“别踩我”这句话只可能是由拥有大牧场的人杜撰发明的。我敢担保北半球的居民比南半球的个人空间的概念要宽大。对英国人来说，握个手简直就是擅闯禁地，而对巴西人来说，不给你来个拥抱就会给人一种冷若冰霜的感觉。 6 就像司机撞上你停着的空车连个条子也不留，人们撞上人再也不说声“对不起”。世风日下，哀声遍野。在我看来，礼貌就是给别人以空间，不冒犯他人，允许别人有隐私。 7 我还注意到，那些我所认为的空间入侵者们的规模在不断扩大，这些小小的领土扩张主义者们带着舍我其谁的架势堂而皇之地侵占着公共空间。这些日子，在影剧院中，人们霸占着两边的扶手，吞并手肘的全部空间；在咖啡厅里和长岛的铁路上，往往一个人就占领了面对面的火车座，而这种座位本来是给4位顾客或乘客的。

8 归根结底，个人空间是个心理上的问题，而非物理上的问题：与其说它与我们的外部空间相关，不如说它与人的内心空间相关。我怀疑个人空间的缩水直接与自我专注的扩大成比例：那些只关注自我的人根本不屑于关注外部世界。这些日子，甚至科学研究都聚焦于微观世界而非宏观领域。人类基因组工程正力图绘制基因代码的全貌，神经科学家们正使用加强型磁共振成像机捕捉脑神经元的飞速漫游。

9 正如日本一只蝴蝶轻舞飞扬可能最终引发加利福尼亚的一场海啸，我决心一己之力拓展不断收缩的个人空间。在我办事银行的队伍中，如果前面有人，我一定和他最少保持3英尺的距离，即便排在我后面的人的呼吸在我脖颈上都感受得到也在所不惜。