Sans Fig Leaf
w
"Sampling"
22 May, 2008
Several years ago a friend
was lamenting the impending collapse of civilization. He said he
couldn't see how society could last more than 3-5 more years, because
stupid dysfunctional people had become the overwhelming majority.
When I asked him what made
him say that, he cited certain very lowbrow daytime "talk shows" that
he'd been watching. Every day he saw those crazy people there: people
who had affairs with their mother-in-law, people who talked
their young children into trying drugs, and all sorts of insanely
stupid things. I hadn't realized how much he was watching those shows,
though since he was working evenings at the time, it made sense. He was
at home alone at the time most of us were at work each day.
I tried to argue that just
because he saw a few really messed up people each show, that
didn't prove the whole race had gone nuts. But he countered that if
people that screwed up were rare, the TV shows couldn't
keep finding more of them to appear on the show. He'd been watching
them
for months, and the shows had been going for years.
I asked him what he
thought the population of the country was. He guessed 250 million
(which was close at the time--I said this was a number of years ago). I
then asked him what one-tenth of one percent of that 250 million people
would be. He answered, "250 thousand."
Then I said, "So, if an
average of six people out of that 250 thousand appeared on one of these
shows each day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, how long
would it take before all of them had had their moment on the air?"
Other people would have
balked, but like me, he had been a math major at university, and he
thought for only a few seconds before saying, "Over a hundred years...
no, worse than that, over one-hundred and fifty years."
"So even if the lunatic
fringe is only one-tenth of one percent of the population, it isn't
that hard to parade new ones day after day on a program that actively
seeks out these outrageous people," I said. "Not to mention the extra
incentive of an all-expense paid trip to the city where the studio is,
and the allure of being on television. Which probably encourages some
of them to act a lot crazier than they really are."
It's now 20 years later,
and while many things in the world are in less than fabulous condition,
we haven't actually collapsed back to the stone age, yet.
More recently, I told the
tale of a crazy homeless person I encountered at a bus
stop. She was yelling at me for whining about being dead, among other
things. One of the people who heard the story launched into a rant
about how that's why they stopped riding the bus. Every day they ran
into scary people.
I had to point out that
every day I run into buses full of very boring people who are just
trying to get somewhere. Many of them are very nice, friendly, and
helpful. I've been riding the buses in this city for nearly 25 years,
to and from work almost every day, and only run into troublesome people
a few times a year.
Maybe this person really
did have the bad luck to run into horrid people as often as they said.
I
suspect it's more likely that they just don't remember the times that
nothing bad happened.
And it would be quite
outrageous of me to suggest that if the person is encountering this
trouble as often as they say, perhaps it isn't just a matter of luck.
Surely they aren't behaving in some way that provokes other people.
That couldn't possibly be the case, right?
Just because you notice
something more than once, doesn't prove the thing is commonplace. There
may be another explanation. And we must always remember that sometimes
the problem isn't them, it's us.
Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from
your own. You may both be wrong.
--Dandemis
.