Looking in the eyes

Rita, Helena, and I just got back from two weeks of work in Recife, a city that can be wonderful in many ways... but ethics on the bus cannot be included in that list.  There, commuting is a war, where the drivers of jam-packed busses wrestle their broken-down machines past each other, jerking and accelerating so much that the dozens of strap-hangers can only keep their feet by falling into each other.  Shin-kicking, stepping on feet, elbows... it's all part of the morning in one of the world's most violent cities (the connection between murder rate and bus behavior is not, I think, a random one).

One of the few rules that people obey on the bus is the social obligation to give up a seat for a mother with a baby (sadly, people don't give them up for old or handicapped people).  Over the last several years, however, we have observed a growing exception to this rule: if you don't see the baby, you're not obliged to give up your seat.  As such, on crowded busses, people make a conscious effort to avoid eye contact with any standing mother.

As Rita rode one particularly crowded bus last week, swaying dangerously with Helena in one arm, I counted seven young men who began to "sleep" only after we made it onto the bus, and a couple more people suddenly fascinated by whatever was happening out the window.  Finally, one man let his eyes wander, and Rita's eyes met his.  With a sign and a feigned shrug of "Oh, sorry, I didn't see you," he stood and gave up his seat.

I could write pages on the brutality of public space in Recife (a great part of Rita's PhD dissertation addresses exactly those issues), but here I want to talk about eyes.  What is it about eye contact that inspires responsibility?  Why can we ignore our responsibility to others as long as we can pretend that we don't see them?  And how can we "pretend" this when we, the person to whom we are responsible, and in fact everyone else around, knows that it is a lie?