Skip to main content

I don't like people

A few days ago, I changed my tagline on my Google profile to "I don't like people".

This tagline has helped many people ridicule my comments with Your tagline says it all and has got a good many people who know me and care about me extremely worried. Hence this blog.

The inspiration for this line came about from a Dilbert animation, wherein Dogbert says this at the start of the animation. Somehow, this line resonated very well with me.

Why, you may ask. Good question, but the answer may not be to your liking.

Actually, as I write this post, I wonder whether I should just hit the delete button, as it is extremely difficult to put in a coherent and cogent answer on a post which is available publicly.

People, I find can be just as mean as they can be magnanimous, with more people tending towards the mean side. Consider the Milgram Experiment or the Stanford Prison Trials. However, I don't need psychological experiments to prove my case. Even in everyday affairs, we see people behaving in ways that are just ridiculous and sometimes, downright wrong. I shall not talk of the incidents in Indian politics now, that is for another post, but I will give the example of the occupy movement. Scott Adams posted his views in his own blog post. However, the occupy movement shows how people can gang up to remove a perceived threat, and how people blindly worship false gods (I think that too will be a separate post).

Ever wondered how lynch mobs form? It is not unnatural, given the basic worse-than-animal-istic tendencies of people. A modern day lynch mob is not too different from medieval witch hunts. People just gang up against any one person, the object of hate subject to ridicule, torture and much worse. At this point, I will recommend that you read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. To quote Jackson's explanation of the story.

Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.
You may say that Jackson took an overly dark view of life and people, but even the darkest of views are inspired by some truth.

My own experience which figuratively sealed the tagline was on Google Plus, the same place I use that tagline. It happened with a case of copyright infringement (yes, people do infringe copyrights; in poor countries, people don't know about intellectual property and don't care if they steal). Suddenly, the entire community, which otherwise showed so much of love, appreciation and harmony suddenly broke out into a lynch mob, or a witch hunt, take your own version, with such abuse showered at the violator that the violator was violated.

Note that I do not condone what was done on either side. However, the true nature of people is seen only when they are under duress. People can claim to be extremely benevolent, magnanimous and wonderful, but the stark truth is that they are not. People essentially have two personalities, one when everything goes on well, and one when things don't quite work out. It is the personality that is seen under duress that scares me.

Hence, "I don't like people".

Comments

  1. Raj30 December 2011 at 10:10

    I agree we are all hate-worthy. And there are a lot more reasons than the ones you mentioned. Its just the way we have been made.. Freewill, emotions, intelligence contribute to a lot of that! Most animals, on the other hand are simple and love-able..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Harry Potter and why I dislike the series

There could not be a better time for this post. There could not have been a worse time for this post. Now that the penultimate movie of the series is out, and my facebook wall filled with people who loved the movie. But this is something I really wanted to say, and I shall say it anyway. Harry Potter is pathetic literature. Now, you must be wondering why I say that. There are many reasons. Firstly, the storyline itself is flawed. When a writer sits down to write anything, he/she must set up some essential rules about what is happening. These rules must remain constant irrespective of how many times he/she changes his/her mind. This is so that the readers are allowed to have some sensibility in what they are reading. In the fourth book, Rowling goes ahead and kills Cedric. Then, at the end of the book, the horseless carriages are there again. Nothing special. We all knew that they are horseless. But then comes the fifth book, and BAM, the horses are actually winged beasts that only thos...
18 comments
Read more

On the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

This is a post that I have been meaning to write from quite some time. Long hours spent typing code on my computer left my hands fatigued, and left me with a lot of pain in my wrists and fingers. That is when I decided to use the Dvorak. But I have got the same bad habit as Dr. Watson, to tell a story backwards. Of course, you must be wondering what the Dvorak is. The story of keyboards starts with the invention of the typewriter. Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, tried with a two row piano style keyboard. But then, he got into many difficulties with the design. Then he finally settled for a four row design. This was similar to the QWERTY layout that most computers and typewriters today possess. The engineers at Remington, to whom Sholes had presented his design modified the layout a little further, and then the QWERTY was born. As typewriters became popular, people got used to the layout, and started practising touch typing, i.e. typing without looking at the keys...
Post a Comment
Read more

The paradox of government

I'm fascinated by the concept of government, and the paradoxes it presents. On one hand, governments grant us a certain set of rights or liberties. On the other hand, they work to strip us of the very liberties they promise. Now, I don't mean that all governments strip people of liberties, but there are liberal regimes, and there are sufficiently restrictive and dictatorial ones. Both models may have results to show, it does not mean that people in a restrictive regime are unhappy (refer to Dan Dennett's TED talk , where he states that ideas or memes can be dangerous when taken from one part of the world, where they are widespread, and, using the virus analogy, where people are immune to the memes; to a part of the world where they are foreign, where people may not be immune to the memes and where people may get infected). History has shown that people were sufficiently satisfied with autocratic governments with a benevolent dictator, and that people in other parts of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more