TOW: People Suck

My friend Liz and I have been have an ongoing, slightly amusing (for me) slightly stream-of-consciousness-faux-rage-induced-in-the-moment (for her) argument about whether or not 'People suck.' 

First, Liz's argument:  "People suck.  I like individual people, but people as a whole, suck.  They're stupid."

There might be more to this argument, but as far as I can tell, I've heard this particular line several times.  (Please also note that the latest iteration of this argument happened while looking for a parking stall at IKEA on a Sunday.)

So the question must be: do people, in groups of certain kinds, fail to perform as well as individuals?  Do people 'suck' while a singular person, as bad as they might be, is still be better than an average mob of dummy denizens? 

Everyone has, at one time or another, heard the term herd behavior or herd mentality.  Freud studied it.   Nietzsche was famous for describing it.  And anyone who has gone to a Walmart during peak hours has experienced it.

Herd behavior, simply put, is the individuals acting together without a planned direction. Demonstrations, riots, and mobs are all examples of this.  But even when groups are planning, they still don't accomplish very much.  Watching people drive around in circles for a parking stall is a good example.  This activity is often fruitless, and even when it is, someone always manages to make another person angry with bad driving, talking on their cell phone, or by causing an accident.  Two or more people have activities which cause them to experience friction...stress.  And yes, in that moment, people seem to suck.  Why?  Because from our viewpoint, whenever we discover people acting without thinking, they are often doing so without considering how they might make others feel.  These people are rude, inconsiderate, and quite frankly, often ignorant of the pain they cause.

From this perspective, \Liz is right.  People do suck.  Such behavior is sad at the best of times.

Perhaps the fact that being in public means being in a highly uncontrolled space full of individuals who are only partially aware that you exist, and therefore only partially care if they cause you any injury.  But as humans, we can't help it.  We can't help but look at what's most tantalizing or most distracting.


And yet, much can be accomplished by these masses of non-individuals.  Student demonstrations, hippy marches, heck, even people protesting gay marriages with signs, they're all trying to accomplish something.  They're trying to make their feelings known, as a group.  And people coming together intentionally, even if they all arrive there for different reasons, is something that I can't help but admire. 

People, in public spaces, will always frustrate us.  But people in small groups, at a pub, that's a group of friends.  Running into a gaggle of strangers that you get to chat with for an hour, that's special.  It's often that we do want to lean on the negative side of things when we think of unorganized groups of individuals, but many of those groups are very life-affirming, and necessary, even if they frustrate us at the same time.