Just a few more seconds and the doors would open - and then, in a split second, the high-speed but deliberate rush for seats would play itself out yet again.

The doors opened and I barged in with the best of them. On my way in, I knocked a young woman, who complained audibly.

And only then did I suddenly realize that I was getting off at the next stop. There was no point in sitting down for such a short distance, and all my aggressive, anti-social storming into the carriage had been pointless.

An embarrassing moment, and one that gave me cause to reflect on the situation of the millions who use Shanghai's public transport network every day.

The reason I barged onto the train so selfishly was not simply that I needed, or wanted, a seat. It was that I had been conditioned into making a grab for a seat, by watching everyone else do the same thing and deciding to copy them.

Trying to get a seat on the Metro is a shining example of natural selection. The fastest feet and the sharpest eyes have the best chance of winning out. Small people might as well give up - their lower weight makes them easy to push aside - while wearing heavy-duty construction boots is useful for literally stamping on competition.

Of course, nothing is going to stop people from trying to find seats on trains. The problem that needs addressing is not that.

Living in a fast-paced city like Shanghai is clearly a brutalizing influence on its citizens. With traditional office hours being eroded by the 24-hour society, more and more people seem to find themselves caught up in a rat race to get things done fast, and first.

It is inevitable that, in such circumstances, they will be motivated only to look after number one. It is this spirit that also causes those duels of brinkmanship between the city's erratic taxi drivers and its determined jaywalkers.

It is not easy to instruct a city of 16 million to suddenly change their ways, to give more thought to other people's welfare whether they know them or not.

But the task of humanizing people's behaviour towards each other is ultimately a matter of common sense.

We are not put on this world only to make life comfortable for ourselves. We owe it to each other to work for the common interest, to create an environment that will be pleasant for everyone to live and work in. It should happen, but I have no confidence that it will.

This is a city that values the short-term rewards of money over the long-term goal of peace and harmony. And me? I had soon forgotten the error of my ways, and on the way back I barged back onto that train again.

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