Psychology of traffic jam
Recently traffic jam is becoming part of life in Chennai. I was noticing that it happens with no real reason. Obviously the number of vehicles on the road is growing. But that is not the main cause for some of the traffic blocks here.
Some one told me how to measure the value of time is. When you cross the road and you are not careful for a second a vehicle can come and kill you. So the price of a second can be life or more than that. But, is one second worth paying your life for it? I don’t think so. But here in Chennai I have seen people think otherwise. When the traffic signal is turned red and the vehicles from other side started moving some people want to squeeze through with their life.
I always wondered about the psychology of these people. Once Jesin and I were going in a bike and another person overtook us and went past. I tried to catch up with that guy. Jesin told me “You are better than him in lots of other areas. Why are you worried when that guy overtakes you on now, It is not worth proving that you are better than him in this area( driving ) let us leave him.”. Then it occurred to me that may be the inferiority complex and peer pressure are what makes people do this suicidal act.
The main reason for traffic is crowd does not obey traffic rules and no one has the patience to wait for a second.
Long back you need lot of courage to break laws. Police will arrest you and put in prison. Now the situation has changed. You need lot of courage to obey the law when all the others are breaking it. You need to withstand the peer pressure, control your inferiority complex.
This is the same psychology in breaking the queues. In
When I google it I got an article from Pshycology today. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is_v21/ai_4757174/pg_2"> Waiting is a power game
“The power principle, then, is a triad: First, making a person wait is an exercise in power. Second, powerful people have the capacity to make others wait. And third, the willingness to wait acknowledges and legitimizes this power.”
If you can and willing to wait, others can’t use their power on you. So they stop possessing the power to make you wait. The authors Robert Levine, E.B. White quotes from Siddhartha to explain it. Unknowingly I was using Siddhartha’s strategy so I was wondering why people are worried about waiting for a second. This explains few things.
I need to re-read Siddhartha( Herman Hesse) again. Siddhartha is a beautiful poetic novel. I read it few years back and one concept I remembers about this book is Siddhartha talks about Budha. “Budha’s way is the right way only for him, others have to find their way on their own and nobody can do it for them” You may see a similarity between J Krishnamurthy and Hesse here. Herman Hesse is the grandson of Hermann Gundert whom the Malyalis can’t forget.
Is it something to do with our education system? Or time is money and every one want to make money? May be the values are changing when globalization is set to change the world.
posted by Chathan @ 9:48 AM
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