The Recline and Fall of Western Civilization 座椅少倾一度，文明多进一步.docVIP

The Recline and Fall of Western Civilization 座椅少倾一度，文明多进一步 　　The woman sitting in front of me on this plane seems perfectly nice. She， like me， is traveling coach class1） from Washington to Los Angeles. She had a nice chat before takeoff with the man sitting next to her， in which she revealed she is an elementary school teacher， an extremely honorable profession. She， like me， has an aisle seat and has spent most of the flight watching TV. Nevertheless， I hate her. 　　Why？ She’s a recliner. 　　For five minutes after takeoff， every passenger on an airliner exists in a state of nature. Everyone is equally as uncomfortable as everyone else. The passengers are blank slates2）， subjects of an experiment in morality which begins the moment the seat-belt light turns off. 　　Ding！ Instantly the jerk in 11C reclines his seat all the way back. The guy in 12C， his book shoved3） into his face， reclines as well. 13C goes next. And soon the reclining has cascaded4） like rows of dominos to the back of the plane， where the poor bastards5） in the last row see their personal space reduced to about a cubic foot6）. 　　Or else7） there are those， like me， who refuse to be so rude as to inconvenience the passengers behind us. Here I sit， fuming8）， all the way from IAD9） to LAX10）， the deceptively nice-seeming schoolteacher’s seat back so close to my chin that to watch TV I must nearly cross my eyes. To type on this laptop while still fully opening the screen requires me to jam the laptop’s edge into my stomach. 　　Obviously， everyone on the plane would be better off if no one reclined； the minor gain in comfort when you tilt your seat back 5 degrees is certainly offset11） by the discomfort when the person in front of you does the same. But of course someone always will recline her seat， like the people in the first row， or the woman in front of me， whom I hate. 　　What option do we， the reclined-upon， have？ You can politely ask the person in front of you not to recline. But then the p