| A Big, Long, Long Long Long Looooooooong Ramble About Lots of Stuff
So here's the thing. Ever since I have been aware of the world long enough to make a judgement of other people and their actions, I have had a peculiar habit. I have made the attempt, with all of my mind, to see other people as generally having good intentions in the beginning of what they do. To properly explain this, I shall use a recently discovered example of mine.
The general manager of the Cheesecake Factory I work at is a very fun man. He does extreme sports (last vacation he talked about, he was climbing a frozen waterfall somewhere), loves his family, and has a certain way with people that of course makes him a rather successful business man and allows him to get people to accommodate and like him very quickly. His job, as he tried to describe it in one sentence to us, was to protect the staff of the restaurant so that we could provide a comfortable feeling to our guests... guests being customers. The way he talked about this-- and he talked about it for a good two hours or so-- made it obvious that he really believed that he was making others feel better by doing his job. He loves his job. One of the things that makes him so likable is that he really does enjoy those around him.
Also, though, he is tasked with the care of an entire restaurant, staffed by approximately 150 or so people. Another part of his job description is that he must create an environment for his restaurant to be able to compete with the other Cheesecake Factories across the country. This means in profit, in secret shopper reports (which are directly determined by how good the staff is), in customer feedback, and in overall efficiency. This means that he must make sure that we, the staff, produce. And if we do not, it is then his job to ensure that we do, or that we are no longer in a position to bring down the restaurant's production-- as in fire us. Now, firing someone is a curious thing. There are not many human beings who delight in depriving other human beings of a means of livelihood, and those select few who do fall generally into the highly scientific term of "assholes." Since the classification Asshole is frowned upon without special explanation of why one must be an Asshole, one prefers to avoid taking action that would turn him/her into an Asshole unless absolutely necessary. So even if just by fear of what others might think of him/her, one tries to be in the polar opposite scientific category, "Not an Asshole."
This man, this general manager, I believe, does not like to reprimand his staff, does not like to have to fire his staff, he does not like to have to come down on anyone if they make mistakes or otherwise do not perform up to company standards. But, he is charged with upholding those standards, and is forced to do so. Being in such a position for so many years, having to keep such rigid enforcements, can change a person in such a way as to be so focused on results that they fail to remember what the purpose of their endeavors was to be. This, then, prompts such cases as him telling me to cut my hair, because "everything about [my] image looks professional up until [my] head. It goes against everything this restaurant stands for." This, then, prompts the response of "oh great, you look human now." the next time he saw me.
This was an Asshole thing to say, to be sure. But seeing this man and the look he gets when he talks about helping someone, about giving a family a free meal when he found out their house had just burned down, about him celebrating a staff member's engagement by frying twinkies in the back, causes me to stop and wonder if he is naturally an Asshole, or if years of business school and number-scrutiny and a total focus on efficiency have affected him just enough that he has evolved into something a little different than what he intended to be.
I do not think that he wonders about this. I don't even think he's paused once within his tenure as a general manager and thought, "is this what I intended to become?" I'm sure he enjoys being as successful as he is, and being in a position to help people as much as he does. I am saying that, in short, his overall focus is most likely not close to what it was in the beginning of his advent or even into his career.
I'm also saying that something in me chooses to see him in this way. Another way to see him would be as a corporate sellout who cans people as soon as they begin to cost the restaurant money, and only likes the waiters who consistently make high sales. I do not like when people take that kind of a view on anyone, because it doesn't seem fair to assume immediately that a person is automatically a bad person from seeing them in any one environment.
Everyone has a work mode, a play mode, a thinking mode, all of those, and I think that what defines us is a combination of all of those. Someone can be extremely nice and efficient at work, and be a complete asshole slob when they get home and kick back. It's the whipped cream topping of a person's wonderful makeup to discover their idiosyncracies, because that is what makes them who they are and not anyone else. Also because of this, it is ill-advised and wrong to ever assume that the way someone is in one instance is the way that they always will be, in any circumstances. And don't get me wrong, I do not mean to say that everyone is a product of the environment they find themselves in; on the contrary I think that the largest display of one's character is what they do with the environment within which they are placed at a given time. I believe that everyone is beautiful in their own way, and that it is not fair to judge someone until one truly gets to know them.
Going back to my original statement, it does not make sense to me why one could believe that humans-- for the most part-- are naturally inclined to do bad things to people with an initial intent of harm. We start off, from birth, as pack animals; we cannot really survive on our own. If, for some absolutely illogical reason you do not believe me, try to go through one whole day without asking anyone for a favor, or talking to anyone to relieve stress, or yell at someone because they are stupid, or rely on any other human being for anything whatsoever. It will be quite difficult.
But anyway, we learn from birth to need other people, and we find very quickly that not being nice to someone is a very good way for them not to want to help you. So, even if someone is selfish, they are inclined to want others to at least think generally well of them. Also, destruction in any form is just that-- destructive-- and does not contribute to the overall wellbeing of anyone... including anyone who might cause such damage.
Thus in summary of all this, I shall state that I cannot believe that, with small exception, most human beings do not willingly engage to harm someone else without some kind of outside circumstance to make them value something else over the wellbeing of another person-- whatever that thing is.
And think about it-- have you heard of someone intentionally hurting someone else just for the hell of it, and really, truly having that as their only intent? Save the mentally deranged, of course. Even serial killers (the absolutely scary ones who act perfectly normal and sane save for their habit of ending others' lives), from what I understand, have an ulterior reason for murdering so many than just for pleasure. Ted Bundy only killed women who fit a certain appearance pattern of someone who had rejected him a long time before he started killing. The Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, only murdered prostitutes who resembled his mother, who he may or may not have hated/loved in an inappropriate way. Plus he was mental.
What I'm saying is, we are not designed to want to hurt each other.
This has created a problem, though. This way of thinking, for me, has bled over into a belief that most of the people I will meet have good intentions for others in their actions. It is a fair enough argument to say that people do not initially intend to hurt other people in their actions. But it is slightly too far and illogical to assume that the majority of people always have others' well being in mind when they act. This way of thinking, I fear, is bleeding into naivete about the workings of the world. I was recently called naive, several times, when I read the intentions of certain people correctly as inappropriate and chose to see them in a different way, because I would have liked to believe they were better than that, less base. This ended in causing much more problems than should have happened.
You see, human beings are amazing animals. No others think the way we do, no others are as industrious, as emotional, as caring as we can be. But also, in contrast, no others are more predictable, more incompatible, more hateful, more destructive, and more idiotic than we are capable of. For we, as humans, are the absolute vessels of potential, that is one of our most wondrous tools. We can adapt into anything we wish to be, simply by deciding to be so and having enough time to practice. And since we have such potential, and there are so many of us, we humans have evolved across every level of the spectrum, from absolutely, Sir Galahad pure, to utterly apathetic, wad-of-dough neutral, to low, base, Darth Sidius evil.
And it's all up to us. For, if you noticed, I said that our potential is one of the most wondrous tools at our disposal. The most powerful instrument in our arsenal, I believe, is the human will. It is so powerful that we use it even when we do not intend to. It is so complex that most need half a lifetime to learn how to use the damn thing. It allows me to ignore sleep to write this post, it permits you to read this in spite of any boredom you may be experiencing; it gives us all the energy we will ever need to accomplish what we want to do, if we desire it badly enough. Many people much more intelligent than me have stated that knowledge is nice, physical prowess is very nice, ability is very nice, but a person is nothing without the will to use what one has to one's full potential. That is what makes us so absolutely extraordinary.
So. Back to the beginning. I think that people, for the most part, have good intentions in the beginning of actions they take. We do not endeavor to be destructive. Is this true all the time? Absolutely not. Is this true half the time? Most definitely, no. But at this moment, I am using my will to refuse to believe that we humans hurt each other, with our original goal being to do just that. We may have been told to do so by religion, we may believe that we are accomplishing a greater purpose by doing so, we may momentarily forget what will and will not harm someone, we may be blinded by emotions (which are, also, another extremly powerful tool-- even more so than a jackhammer), but we cannot willingly cause harm just for harm's sake. You may believe me naive for this, you may disagree, believe I am wrong, and I most possibly can be.
But wouldn't that suck? Like, a lot?
Ramble Over
Discuss. Talk amongst yourselves (imagine me saying this in a Mike Myers, Coffee Talk New York accent). Comment. Take a nap, if this put you to sleep.
Over and out. |
