unenlightened self-interest

They they stand, in every rush-hour subway car, like sentries: commuters against the edges of the doors, forcing those exiting and entering to squeeze between them, single file, slowing everyone, even themseleves.  They are the totems of limited human intellegence, of the power of the lowest common denomenator of workaday, small scale, self-defeating greed.  I think of these people every day: they force their crummy little lesson upon me.  They tell me that we are greedy, stupid and boorish.