beauty in transit

Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the till and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3 year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly, as the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced them to move on.

45 minutes:
The musician played. Only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace.
He collected $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ….

How many other things are we missing?

For the full report check Washington Post online. I read the text on http://blog.coldewey.com/allgemein/2009/07/03/einfach-zum-nachdenken/

how to detect a hypocrite

seeing that so many people complain about hypocrites i was wondering how to detect them..

the first obvious step to me seemed to look up what the word itself actually means. here are my findings:



so, if i understood correctly, hypocrites are people whose behaviour seems to diverge quite noticeably from their stated opinions about how one should behave. of course this seems to be bad - especially in situations when a person is expecting things of others, which they are not willing to provide for themselves. so i understand people, who get very annoyed or frustrated by this behaviour.

On the other hand, i felt occasionally, as if people complaining most about hypocrites fail to understand that it can be very difficult to live up even to one's own expectations of a good life. even people having very high ideals in life and trying very hard to fulfill them might not be able to close the gap and perfectly practice what they preach. so i wonder if it is really possible for anyone to judge them for it?

i guess we are never really in the position of finding out how much someone is putting into being sincere in their behaviour, so i find it very hard to just hate so-called hypocrites so much.. especially as this hate could quickly turn the hater in a hypocrite as well (except in the presence of very low expectations to behaviour ;) and this really isn't helping. probably exactly the opposite - non-judging - behaviour could improve the situation: if somebody aware of failing his own standards still feels accepted by another person, they will much easier admit that they are not perfect, and maybe even reflect what is causing this gap. quite a chance for improvement, i'd reckon.