People
I try to be a nice person, I really do. People make it awful hard sometimes.
People suck. Your average person is a decent enough fellow, but people … well, they suck.
The hardest part about getting along in society is trying to not treat a person like you’d treat people. As hard as it is sometimes, you have to treat every person as an individual. A completely new encounter.
…
I’m not explaining this right at all. No matter how many people blow right past you when you hold a door for them, never expect the next person to do the same. That 1 in 100 is maybe going to say ‘Thank You’ (rare these days, I know), but more importantly that 1 in 100 might think, just somewhere in the back of his mind, ‘Not everyone’s a dick.’ No matter how shitty a day you’ve had, no matter how pissed off you are that the guy in line ahead of you has 35 items in the fucking express lane you truly have to give your best effort to not lump everyone you meet in with the assholes.
In a way, this is very much the same phenomena as racism. I mean, racism is essentially expecting every member of a race to behave in a certain way. It is just as easy, or hell, even easier, to expect ever person to act the same as every other asshole you’ve ran across today.
I can’t honestly suggest that you treat every individual you encounter in the course of your day equally as if you’ve not encountered any number of assholes before but in the interest of civility I ask that you try. I try. I don’t always succeed and I often find myself being someone else’s asshole but I do try. I suggest you do the same.
You should not read this as a plea to everyone to be a doormat. I’m suggesting no such thing. If some asshole knocks into you in his hurry to get who-gives-a-shit-where and you feel the need to say, “Hey, fuckstick, watch where you’re walking.” by all means, let loose. All I’m suggesting is to not be the first asshole.
When I was in the police academy (yeah, there’s a bit of personal history) we were taught to always let the other guy dictate your behavior. Essentially, this means that you approach every encounter at a normal human polite level of behavior and you leave it to the other guy to decide whether or not you’ll get nicer or turn into a complete dick that just beat him senseless.
This really turned into a whole lot more of a ramble than I first intended.
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Lots there. Of course, we generalize because that’s the nature of a thinking beast like humans. Generating meaning out of jumbled collections of facts and testing those hypotheses against the real world is just part and parcel of being human, whether we realize that is what we are doing or not.
Often, in today’s society, such generalizations are denigrated as “racism” or “bigotry” when–again, often–they are no such thing but simply observing like behavioral characteristics of classes and assessing individuals–one at a time–against generalizations drawn from experience.
Bigotry is actually the opposite; it is creating classes from arbitrary, superficial characteristics and plugging people into classes without first observing and classing according to bvehavior.
Generally, I do class people according to behavior into two general classes: assholes and not-assholes. Further refining of the asshole class yields politicians *spit*, Mass MEdia Podpeople, pubschool administrators and the like. Once a person places themselves into one of those classes, the onus is on them to demonstrate that they are atypical of the class.
I am always leased to find someone who is atypical in an asshole class (semi-drivers who obey traffic laws, or who simply drive safely, for example, since I have seen so few of them in my *mumble-mumble* more than 40 years of driving). Such exceptions that test the rule are delightful.
BTW, the cultural differences among different “races” can result in some valid trait classifications, though I’ve not seen any that usefully inform my primary paradigm (assholes/not-assholes) for classification of humans.
I always live by the credo, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, though even when they are assholes I tend to still be nice. I have an emormous amount of patience, and that helps.
However, every-so-often I am forced to live by the credo, “Do unto others before they do you in.” That one is a lot more fun, and sometimes far more satisfying.
Good ramble.
I try to remember that for all I know, a person I encounter may be having the worst day of their life. We have no idea what is going on in the lives of strangers and they have no idea of our lives either. I think the far majority of people are decent to others. It’s hard to keep that in focus though when the assholes, like the squeaky wheels, attract all the attention.
This is why I feel less human interaction everyday is better. Self Checkout, Papa Johns pizza ordered online with a credit card, Wawa (Eastern PA, South Jersey convienence store chain) with touch screen deli ordering, all these things make my life more pleasent because it’s less human interaton.
You are correct sir.
Armed Geek,
you make some good points here, as do the other commenters to the thread.
It takes real work to be nice to others, and little to no effort to be an asshole. I should know, it comes naturally to me.
I remember once, many years ago, when I worked at a Napa Auto Parts store running deliveries. One time I was out delivering some stuff to a guy who lived out in the boonies a bit, and it had snowed the night before, so the roads really weren’t good at all. Anyway, as I’m going down this gravel road, some asshole in a Ford truck flew past me, and almost made me run off the road. It really pissed me off. About a mile down the road, there was the asshole with his truck in a ditch, and he was stuck but good. I couldn’t help rolling down my window and relaying some “useful driving tips”.
Years later, I told this story to my wife, and she told me that I was an asshole, and that the guy might have been driving so fast and recklessly because he was on his way to the hospital to see his wife who was in labor. I thought about this for a moment, and then asked her if that was the case, what the fuck was he doing so far out in the sticks where there are no medical facilities?
She again stated that I had been an asshole and that was it. Oh, well.