Elbow Space

Everyone that’s ever flown economy class on a plane knows about the “elbow space dilemma.” Basically, a typical row might have 2 seats next to each other but only one arm rest in between. And if you’re like me, you really want that extra armrest. So you and the person next to you might engage in a frustrating battle over that elbow space. Whoever puts their elbow down first might feel that they’ve established the armrest as theirs for the rest of the flight. But logically being there first doesn’t matter because you both paid for the commodities included with the airline, insufficient as they usually are. This might make the guy without an armrest feel resentful and maybe try forcing his own elbow in.

Why am I talking about armrests and elbows?

Because small behavioral tendencies that people tend to overlook can really tell us a lot about individual human psychology. And more importantly, it could tell us how that same psychology plays itself out in mass herd behavior.

I recently spoke to a Palestinian friend about the modern day Israel-Palestine conflict as well as the history that led it there. I also dug as deep as I could to find alternate opinions on the subject. Despite still not knowing nearly enough to have my own stance, it seemed to me very similar in a few ways to other violent conflicts that plague the history of mankind. Here’s the main similarity: they’re all essentially territorial battles predicated on the question of whether it belongs to whoever got there first.

The most developed societies in the world have relative peace for a number of reasons. And one of them is that there is no dispute over which identity group the land really belongs to. I’m talking about the largely ethnically homogeneous countries such as those in Scandinavia. Everyone shares because everyone feels like family. But in Sweden, something really remarkable has happened in recent years with an influx of Muslim immigration: as soon someone new came to “Thanksgiving dinner” and they didn’t look familiar, the quality of the conversation went down and the tension went up.

Let me explain what I mean by that. Sweden has accepted more Syrian and Afghan refugees per capita than any other European country. A country of just 10 million people took in around 400,000 refugees in the past 5 years according to a Bloomberg article. The same article (written by Amanda Billner and Rodney Jefferson) claims that Swedish liberalism has been weakened by Sweden’s immigration policies. And anti-immigrant sentiments have skyrocketed in particularly impacted areas. And what else skyrocketed? Violent crime.

Swedish nationalist sources will often put the blame on the migrants themselves. After all, they are new there and now there’s suddenly more crime. But my suspicion is that Swedish nationalists, just like anyone else who insists on their group’s claim on a piece of land, are inciting a lot of these crimes (e.g. prejudice) and thus feeding a cycle of ethnic tension.

Okay let’s move on from Sweden. That was just a modern day example I used to give some context. Think about Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. The most destructive war and simultaneous genocide of recent history happened because one of the country’s ethnic groups had bought into the idea that there were impostors in their midst. They bought into the idea that a territory that was originally theirs belonged only to them. Guess what? That same country was previously among the first to give Jewish people full political rights and equality. Scary how quickly things can change, huh?

So what if it really all just comes down to this simple psychological tendency to stake our claim on a living space and defend it however we see fit? In that case it’s pretty obvious that 21st century human beings, smart as we may be, still haven’t figured out how to share our elbow space.

Filip, again.