One of the 1st things that came to mind in sarajevo was
finding a place. or places, that have a smoke free air.
I was assured that no such places exist in sarajevo.
How come?
It’s the war, I was told. It’s a shared hardship that we have – and smoking brings us together.
Following such remarks and promises that there are no smoke free places such as cafes, I found a few. (a cafe at a bookshop Bookstan is non smoking, Espresso Lab cafe has a non smoking space. Pink hoodini, and http://www.franz-sophie.ba/ are non smoking too. )
Perhaps the fact that there are smoke free places, points towards an ignorance by the people who told me about smoking here.
However, even if they were slightly ignorant about places in the city they call “their own” – it seems that there’s something interesting about how cultural repetitions may entrain people.
Even when such entrainments operate in a social, personal and political self destructive – perhaps brutal – ways.
A few days ago, when talking about a person, I said:
He looked rather good.
Nobody noticed anything to tell me off about. My mind went: “hey, these people don’t seem to mind imposing a gender upon a person we don’t know..”
Isn’t it a curious kind of an entrainment?
It reminded me an episode witnessed in a party on my 1st weekend here:
“Hey, woman, what’s your name?” I overheard. Nice they weren’t called a “girl” at the age of 20 or so?
The nameless person replied with:
“Don’t call me a woman.” A pretty clear and seemingly reasonable demand. After-all, how does it feel if someone starts calling you Kooi, you say don’t call me kooi. And the caller, instead of apologising, demand you should accept their right to call you Kooi.
“You look like a woman, I can call you a woman!”
I thought their exchange will end with that, and that perhaps other people who must have over heard, will say/do something.
What followed is that the offended person proceeded with an exchange of fb details and a promise to meet again.
Ok.. I don’t know what is going on..
When i don’t know – i know not, therefore ask.
Apologising for a question out of the blue, i asked the seemingly offended person whether indeed they felt offended.
Yes! they said?
Huh?! I went.
Yes. He was SOOOOO rude! In fact, I am glad you asked.
Nice to hear, however, Why so glad?
..and here came the entrainment bit:
Since I know there’s no one else I can share with. How uncomfortable the whole episode felt like.
Perhaps that’s how wars brutalisations go on and on?
At times of violence cultures imagine having to accept un-acceptables. Once violent becomes ingrained and entrained, How do we rid ourselves from it? (even the line wishing to get rid, isn’t entirely out of being brutal..)
A few entrainment connected links?
in social media – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4782991/
in music – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279445641_What_is_Entrainment_Definition_and_applications_in_musical_research
in circadian rhythms – https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Social-entrainment-of-the-circadian-rhythm-in-the-Marimuthu-Rajan/c01d575f3aba11c5c0013d082c335b8348898713
Timescales of Massive Human Entrainment – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.8105.pdf