Every once in a while the debate over whether priority seating on public transport should be abolished flares up again.
Some argue that society has become more civic-minded and that it is now common to see passengers voluntarily relinquishing their seats to others on public transport.
They argue that priority seating should therefore be abolished on all forms of public transport and that this would have the dual benefit of stopping heated arguments erupting over priority seats; and also put an end to priority seating needlessly remaining vacant during peak times, which could otherwise be used to alleviate overcrowding.
Finally, they argue that removing priority seating would also relieve the significant moral dilemma that passengers feel when pondering whether or not they should make use of an empty priority seat.
The People with Disabilities Rights Protection Act (身心障礙者權益保障法) made it a legal requirement for a proportion of seating on public transport to be set aside as priority seating.
If the law is amended, a large amount of time, labor and capital would have to be spent converting thousands of priority seats into ordinary seats, all because of a handful of priority seat “moral warriors” (道德魔人) kicking up a fuss on public transport.
Several other questions are also thrown up by this argument.
Would removing priority seating actually solve the problem of the moralizing fundamentalists?
In addition, if following a limited number of disputes confined to Taipei having being blown out of all proportion, the government decides it must reopen the legislation, would the needs of the rest of the nation be taken into consideration, or would it be a case of Taipei leads and the rest of the nation must follow?
Also, if we get rid of priority seats, would the moralizing extremists suddenly go into hiding?
Not only would it fail to stop disputes from happening, the opposite would happen: Removing priority seats would simply widen the “priority seat Taliban’s” field of operations to take in every single seat on a bus or train carriage, which would result in even more altercations taking place.
Instead of renaming priority seating, authorities need to revisit the concept of offering one’s seat to another, in particular the requirement to do so.
In a dispute over a priority seat, there is usually a gap between the way of thinking of the two parties involved.
Society’s moral warriors dogmatically try to compel their heteronomous philosophy on others and force ideas gleaned from books or theories that they have absorbed into cast-iron rules. Their overly definitive and formulaic way of thinking leads moral warriors to form mistaken judgements about a situation, resist making an objective analysis of the situation and to direct orders in the name of morality to their “social inferiors.”
Morality is about autonomous action distinct from laws and regulations created by society to compel our behavior. However, while both autonomous morality and society’s laws and regulations are a product of human nature, morality acts to restrain human behavior; its purpose being to uphold a relative form of justice.
It is based upon the premise of the importance of regulating oneself and should not be extended to the moral values of the other, forgetting one’s own moral discipline and blaming people other than onself.
If you reproach someone for not giving up their seat, the very act of loudly telegraphing your views to others in a public space is in itself an immoral act.
The nation must reform the overly dogmatic way in which society educates its people.
If people are not free to critique the arguments put forward in textbooks, and to question the rules and regulations of society; to think and reflect independently; the nation would simply continue to produce an army of robotic moral warriors, pre-programed with ossified, dogmatic ideas, who are unable and unwilling to communicate with people who hold views different from their own.
Chuang Mao-chieh is a postgraduate student at National Taiwan Normal University’s Graduate Institute of Mass Communication.
Translated by Edward Jones
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