Morning brothers. Today, I’d like to talk
about how we have false interpretations of human nature.
Now before you both fall asleep, don’t
worry, I’m going to make it interesting.
A couple of days ago, I was sitting with a
few co-workers, (cause of course I don’t have any friends) watching one of
Adele’s concerts on youtube. Now one of the nicest things, I think, about Adele
is that she’s really a very raw, down to earth kind of person, at least in
interviews and things. In this particular concert, she walks out on stage, and
the first thing she says is ‘Albert (I think) f**king Hall!’ Not only is this
hilarious, but quite endearing. She is still just as surprised and amazed by
her success as anyone else, and isn’t being Justin Beiber about it.
But here’s where my topic for the day comes
in. One of my coworkers, who to be fair I never had a great liking for, says,
and this is a verbatim quote from immediately after this line:
“Wow. And here I though she [Adele] was a
respectable, intelligent person. Geez. Is there a single famous person whose
actually a decent person?”
Now I could list all the surface problems
with this statement… So I will.
You can’t judge someone’s whole personality
from three words they say while performing a highly public concert at a
prolific hall. That’s just stupid.
You also can’t form such a powerful opinion
on someone you’ve never met, and likely never will. It takes many meetings to
truly know someone.
You also can’t judge people based on a
public persona. A public persona is carefully thought out way of presenting
yourself to the people. Famous people may be the polar opposite of who they
seem to be.
But what I thought most curious about this
is the underlying tone that was being put forth here.
This person believed that human beings were
simple, that they fell neatly into categories, and he had a preset inclination
that he liked this category, and didn’t like this other one. And it seemed that
the categories that he had were very limited; respectful, intelligent people,
and then the entire rest of the world.
Now I hope that I’m not the one to tell
whoever might be reading this as well as you two, Dan and R. A., but human
beings are complicated. Really complicated. You just can’t believe how
unbelievably, indescribably complicated they are. There are layers upon layers
of psychology and backstory behind every action and every decision people make,
and there are so many variations thereupon that any attempt to categorise or
order people will utterly fail both in the nature of the task, and any system
you come up with the achieve it.
I’ve seen the nicest people burst into
sweary, gesticulation heavy fits of rage. I’ve seen the angriest, grumpiest
people never swear or even raise their voices above a good level of projection.
There are people who go from angelic to demonic in a heartbeat over any sort of
trigger. Cynical pessimists might become heartfelt do gooders at the sight of
puppies (remember Jake, anyone… anyone? Just me then.) So when my colleague
give this shallow, generalised, categorical statement about Adele, it is
important to understand exactly why it is incorrect. There is niceness and
anger in everyone, five syllable vocabularies, and some old fashioned emotive
swearing. And denying or refusing this in any way is to be completely ignorant
of the truth of human nature.
That’s my blog for this week. I’ll post up
my review of our chosen soundtrack tomorrow.
(Parenthetically speaking: Suck it Dan.)
Brothers, I’ll read from you then.
Andrew Lyons.
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