Everyday I make my way along the subway into downtown Toronto for work, a commute of nearly an hour and a half. I have never disliked the commute, it gives me a blessedly peaceful opportunity to sit in one place, read a little and think to myself. Sometimes I listen to music, most of the time I watch the people around me. Some of the most interesting conversations and situations that I have witnessed have occurred on the subway cars of this city. Lately though, the commute has become more tedious for me and it's only this week that I started thinking about why that might be.

The first leg of my trip ends on my arrival at Sheppard-Yonge station, a hub through which I transfer onto the Yonge southbound line. The daily stampede of frazzled commuters crossing through Sheppard-Yonge is one I can barely describe, and something that is really understood only after witnessing it for yourself. The doors to the subway, crammed to capacity, inch open and immediately hundreds of commuters run, jog and push their way down the escalators onto the north-south platform. They acknowledge each other only to the extent that they try to go around each other. I'm no stranger to public transportation or to subway hubs, but there is nowhere in Toronto where I have seen anything like this. One day last week, I stepped aside from the platform as the rush was getting under way, and bought a cup of coffee at the Cinnabon. There was another lady next to me and together we watched the throngs descend. The young girl behind the counter shook her head, and the three of us started chatting about the absurdity of this situation. A few minutes later, when calm had more or less been reinstated, the lady and I began walking down to the next platform. Before we left, the girl behind the counter thanked us for stopping by to chat. From what I understood, she doesn't get a lot of business because to the commuters, she is really just a part of the scenery. To acknowledge her would be to recognize an obstacle in their way. How incredibly lonely.

As frustrating as this experience is for me, for one aspect I am grateful: at least in those brief moments when everyone is chasing down a position on the elusive southbound train, there is some passion, however reticent, to their motion. There is also some interaction between them, even if it only comprises trying to take everyone else down. The rest of the time, the commuter society I witness daily is a beige mass of reclusive automatons, head down/eyes closed/ipods in ears. People don't talk to each other or even look at each other for the most part. They channel their personal soundtracks into their ears and surround themselves with their own world, increasingly disengaging from the public society. I won't go so far as to blame this increasing disconnect on the ipod (that bane of interpersonal culture!) but it is an interesting phenomenon for me. As I write this, in a downtown Starbucks over my morning coffee, the barista prepares to take her 10-minute break and quickly puts on her ipod earphones before walking down to the bathroom. She can't even relate to the environment around her in the moments it takes to go the bathroom!

In social anthropology we discussed last year the ascent of individualism and how it gave rise to more personal and romantic relationships since we involve ourselves more now in those relationships that fulfill us emotionally and appeal to our personalities. I wonder though if that individualism, extended, will eventually compromise those same relationships? The ipod is a unique manifestation of that individualism and its potential consequences. I think it's popularity in great part has to do with control - we control what we listen to, and therefore in part our surroundings, in so far as our "surroundings" include that peculiar environment created by what we are listening to at any given time. If sitting on a subway car I listen to the voices and conversations of those around me, I interact with them. The ipod-listeners on the other hand have no such interaction; it is entirely a self-created and self-serving environment, a contained bubble removed from the external society. The more we sink into such a separate existence, the more unexpected interruptions bother us. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to my ipod walking on the street when someone stopped me to ask me for directions. As I pulled the earplugs out to hear what they were trying to say, I remember looking around me at the several ipod-less individuals around me and wondering why she stopped when I clearly had something better to do. The second that thought reached me, I began considering my, for lack of a better word, "ipodacity".

I can just imagine a future where everyone walks around completely oblivious to the unique identities and personalities around them, where fullfilling relationships disappear because we can't lose control enough even to let someone else into our spheres. My commute this morning was entirely ipodless, I didn't even bring it with me. I missed a little bit listening to my music on the way in, but on the other hand I did overhear a 5 year old tell his mother he hoped he would marry someone who would cut his sandwiches like she does... and that I think will add more enrichment and amusement to my day overall.