At 3:45pm yesterday, I boarded my Amtrak train home. The conductor assigned us seats based on where we were going. He told me seat 5, but I picked 6, since it was in the same spot, but a window seat. Ordinarily I dread some weirdo sitting down next to me on long trips like this. But I started feeling optimistic when a dude in a motorcycle shirt sat down next to me and started cursing about how long of a walk down to the train it was.

And within five minutes, I somehow had this guy’s entire life story. I could tell you right now the last three jobs he’s had, and where he’s lived and worked for at least the last thirty years, and a history of health problems. I know he’s got at least two kids, where his siblings live, and that his mother is 89 years old and lives near him in Florida. He showed me photos of his front yard, which the neighborhood association was always on his ass about because he kept it as a “jungle.” Last year he picked 61 pineapples in his yard, which is no bigger than a regular suburban lot. He told me about how he caught his last girlfriend on the phone making plans to fuck some other dude while he himself was in the house right there asleep, and then kicked her out - for the seventh time, he said. But this one was for good.

It’s just funny how open some people are. And not just funny, but great. I know if he’d caught me in a different mood, I might not have been so receptive. I might have strained to put my headphones off and vanish back into my thoughts. But somehow I did not. Somehow I listened eagerly to stories about his days as a pot-smoking engineer on freight trains, and the two times that his train hit cars on the tracks. He asked me if I’d ever “smoked grass” and I responded emphatically yes. Then he told me about how his son had “white powder” and a “fat one” waiting for him at the end of the line in Toledo.

One other awesome thing he showed me: he used to work in a factory which made jet engine components for the military. They’d made a particular engine for one of the stealth planes, only for the government guys to say it wasn’t powerful enough and scrapped the whole thing. Somehow, this guy had managed to procure one of the old engine housings, and had turned it into a composter for his garden. He showed me the picture.

Ordinarily, I go around like your typical conspiracy theorist, seeing the shrinking of personal privacy and liberty. The Surveillance State seems to loom large on the horizon to me. They made us show ID’s on the train, for chrissakes! But none of that would matter to a guy like the one who sat down next to me. He was just eager to share his life with any and everyone equally. All you had to do was be receptive and maybe share something back. Hell, I heard him tell at least two other people the story about how many pineapples he picked last year…

One time, a couple years ago, I was discussing with a coworker how Baltimore City was installing a whole bunch of cameras in public places - ostensibly to cut down on crime. He said something to me which I’ve heard parroted elsewhere endlessly, “Why should I worry about all that, if I’m not doing anything wrong?” I’m sure most “regular” people think this. They’re out there, playing the game, and and they work hard to (mostly) follow the rules. So why should they worry about referrees and penalty boxes?

I guess at one point I was more interested in “convincing” people that they should care. That the rules were going to be changed on them, and the borders of the playing field would be redrawn if we weren’t paying attention. But meeting my friend on the train has given me a new perspective on the whole thing.

I once came up with the idea that fame is nothing more than having people think about you while you’re not around. And I think this is somehow applicable to the fantasy of surveillance and tracking. It’s nothing more or less than the idea that somebody somewhere gives a shit. That your actions aren’t in vain. That they aren’t just vanishing into the ether. That they are being recorded, shared and analyzed. “Huh, why did he do that? Oooh, what a dangerous little scamp she must be? Did you see the books they bought at the store? We’ve gotta keep track of these two!”

It’s sort of like that Andy Warhol quote about everyone in the future being famous for fifteen minutes. The Surveillance State will give us a chance to feel famous - or at the very least infamous. If you want to see how the Surveillance Wars will be fought, just look at Hollywood celebrities and their eternal war with the paparazzi.

I’ve wondered before why on earth a government would want to put all of its citizens under constant surveillance. Where’s the money in stamping out freedom of expression? It seems stupid. In all likelihood, I think we’ll find out that it actually is not that at all. That hardened conspiracy theorists need to remember to “follow the money”. I think at the other end of it we won’t find windowless secret jail cells (well, some of us might…), but products and advertisements tailored perfectly to our personal profiles.

In any event, I think we’re left with the question: well, what do we do? Do we just give in? Do we just adopt the asinine notion of “If we’re not doing anything wrong, we have nothing to fear?” I don’t see the use in that. But I’m beginning to understand that none of us really have anything to fear. What do any of us have to hide anyway? The very weird idiosyncracies and inane details of our lives are the very things which make us who we are. We can sit like a dragon in a cave hoarding them, or we can share ourselves and our experiences with people. Sure it might make a stranger feel weird if you start telling them about your drug habits or your garden or your cheating girlfriend. If we spent more time telling each other our life stories, maybe we’d feel less need to be inundated with the ridiculous tales they try to tell us on TV. We’d see right through them as fake and hollow, because they were missing the weird, gritty, and sometimes embarrassing details of real life. It’s time to take off the headphones and actually talk to the person sitting next to you. At the end of the day, it’s real and it’s honest and it’s human. In a nutshell, it’s us.