I used to like doing jigsaws, with my grandfather, when I was young. It's about finding the patterns, the side pieces, the corners, filling in, connecting. Today I wondered if there was a long sequence of connections, spanning chronologically and geographically from the Middle East, across Europe, down to Australasia, to the north American continent and back again, resting very close by and most obviously in one defining connective way, and that is: that the majority of people do in fact fall into the 65% of what we might call the obedient. They do what they are asked to do. The more I thought about this, as a theory, as a sequence, the more I felt the importance of anyone who loyally, honestly, watches your back. Then I saw a young father carrying a child on his shoulders and felt grief hit me like a wagontrain, so it goes. And this theory of obedient actions - from not replying to an email (very bad business etiquette) to, well, doing something that I would not do in all the circumstances, it kind of all came together in one awful saddening indictment of people. The big fat truth that people will, and do, do what they are told. Despite the fact that they could, in many of the instances I see in the sequence, think for themselves and perhaps not do it, or do something a little creative, of their own accord. But they don't. I'm still waiting on that email. You'd think a life was at stake.
If you think about it enough, it's pretty disgusting, it makes you sick. Because you can tell people anything. You can give them all the good reasons to do something, or not do something. And they won't think for themselves, let alone act for their own evidence. At least, that is how a lot of things seem to me. People can be so damn stupid, and I really don't like stupidity, non-thinking, the easy way out. I'm sick of it. There are too many people I want to ask the question of: how could you just do that?
I hope I'm wrong. But you know, I don't think so. I really don't think so. People are idiots. I feel very lone-ly when I get to thinking like this. I don't mean I want company (laughs), I mean, I really wonder if anyone else gets it, or am I seriously alone. And this is just what I know. But it is what I know and what I know to be true is: most people don't understand what a dangerous place this can be. I do, and what others do freaks me out, because of their innocence. I guess if they knew what I know, they'd freak themselves out and they wouldn't do what they do. This is very saddening. Hardly 'things I like' but who gives a sod anyway?
