Hot town

I'm camping out here in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Manhattan, helping some friends prepare for their wedding. And I am growing in my already abundant appreciation of the clear, not-so-humid atmosphere of my home in the Pacific Northwest.

So as I was walking to my friends' apartment this morning, I saw a truck driver honk and call out to a young woman who was wearing too-tight jeans and a low-cut tank top. She didn't react at all. I was stunned, not because I'm a prude (which perhaps I am), but because I'd never actually seen a man behave that way toward a woman. So I guess I'm just sheltered. Neither the truck driver nor the pedestrian woman nor anyone else around seemed to find this behavior either unusual or unacceptable.

And it got me thinking: how do we, as a society, actually show respect toward other people -- particularly members of the opposite sex? Are there ways to encourage people to treat each other respectfully? Are there ways to demonstrate the value and dignity of the people we meet, whether briefly or over the course of our lives?

Then I remembered a newscast I saw this morning, a town hall meeting with some politician, and how frequently I heard the words "my" and "me", and how rarely the words "ours" and "we" came up. And it occurred to me that our cultural tendency seems to assume that each individual is isolated from every other, and only has relationships of choice. But what if we recognized every other person as a member of our common family? What if each of us saw every other person as connected to him-/herself, a member of one's own body?

True, I'm an idealist, and I don't know if such a worldview could ever become common. But isn't this an ideal worth striving for?