Pedestrian traffic in Grand Central Station is a bit of a miracle. Thousands of people, all walking quickly, in almost non-Euclidian chaos, headed toward different trains. And no one collides.
We see the same thing at a more dangerous clip when a four lane highway merges. The cars are just a few feet apart (or perhaps a few inches) driving a mile a minute (faster than a cheetah) and yet, collisions are rare.
If one person, just one, running late for a train and carrying a hot pizza, starts shouting and running through the train terminal, the crowd will part and he’s likely to make it to the other side.
It might even work if two different people do it.
It doesn’t scale.
What we’ve learned from thousands of years of practice is that the only way to avoid collisions is to find the confidence and empathy to yield… the shortest way to get to where we’re going involves cooperation and the resiliency that comes with empathy and awareness. When we exchange appropriate spacing and yield when we can, connections occur and we can flow forward.
Selfish brutality might work in the short run, but it always breaks.
