This morning as I got off the subway, there was a body on the floor of the 42nd Street station. It looked like a man, except that the head was covered with a large floppy hat that hid the features. The body was sprawled straight out, as if it had been stiffening there for a while. There was no way to determine whether he was alive or dead.

Amazingly, just two feet away, a cluster of at least two dozen people waited on three separate lines to get to the machines and buy Metrocards. They were standing there, gazing at their cell phone screens, reading newspapers, or staring blankly into space, and not even acknowledging the fact that there might well have been a dead man on the floor just a few steps to their left.