Would you pay $3.99 to cover an airplane TV?

Описание: I found the strangest product in a Hasidic Williamsburg shop. It was a sticker to cover an in-flight television! I was quite surprised by it, and when I took it off the shelf, the shop owner told me an interesting story about how it came to be.

I often experience the secular world as being surprisingly dismissive of human foibles. There’s an attitude that we are all totally rational beings, and that all we need is a bit of self-control, after which we are entirely the makers of our own fate. In reality, we are social beings with complex psychology, behaviors, conscious and subconscious, shaped by those around us and by primal forces inside us. We often act in totally non-individualistic ways, but as part of herds or out of animalistic instinct.

In the Hasidic world, this aspect of human psychology is completely intuited and implemented. It allows for individuals to rise above social forces, marketing, and ironically, various forms of “brainwashing,” and to be more self-led. This awareness can lead to products like an airplane TV cover: a product that understands that humans, on an airplane with hours to kill, will have a hard time resisting the urge to watch. If you don’t want to watch, you’re not an idiot for investing $3.99 in the commitment to stay off the TV. You’re actually practicing more individualism than whatever is sold in much of the trendy wider world, no matter your opinion of this individualistic approach.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues with how people come to believe they should stay off the TV, or that Hasidim aren’t oblivious to some of their own psychological group behavior. But in the context of a secular plane, this insight into how to prevail over our desires is profound.