Posted May 2nd, 2009, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc

The following is a little illustration in the form of a hypothetical scenario of why I think that individual behavior makes a big difference.  I end up giving this example to just about everyone that I end up discussing my personal philosophy with.  The hypothetical scenario is not something I invented, but I can’t remember where I got the idea.  I’ve surely altered it a bit but the point is what is important.

[beginning of story]

Imagine a small town.  In this small town, everyone has more or less the same ideas about how to behave and treat one another.

In this town, it’s understood that if you were to find money on the ground outside the local grocery, you would turn it in because that’s what everyone has always done.  And in turn, if  a citizen of the town got home from the market and realized that she didn’t have in her pocket the twenty-dollar bill she had left the store with, she would likely call or return to the store, quite confident that one of her neighbors would have noticed the bill on the ground in the parking lot and turned it in to the management of the store.  

Now imagine that you [addressed to you the reader] moved to this nice little town.  And one day you come across a twenty dollar bill on the ground outside of the local grocery.  You pick it up and stick it in your pocket.  That’s how things are done where you’re from.  You just got lucky!

A while later, one of the town natives calls over to the store and is quite surprised to find out that no one has turned in the money he surely must have dropped between the market and his car.  

At this point, in his mind, it is no longer necessarily an active custom of the culture of the town to turn in found money.  In fact, later on, he reinforces this by not turning in money that he finds outside the market since he no longer believes that it is the normal thing to do.

Since you moved to this town, a chain-reaction has begun that will change what people think is the ‘right’ or ‘normal’ thing to do when they come across their neighbor’s accidentally misplaced money.

[end of story]

I know this is a fairly silly narrative, and I swear it comes across as much more believable and compelling in verbal communication, and I’m sure I could have written it more interestingly, but bare with me,

The idea is this:

The number of interactions we have with other humans in our lives that give us a real sense of how people behave is small.  If you’ve ever visited a foreign place for a few days and left with the idea that “The people there are so friendly and helpful..” remember that it was probably only one or two interactions that gave you that idea.  Maybe you were confused about a train map and someone offered to explain it to you. Maybe it was something else like that.

Later today, or tomorrow or next week, you might see someone who obviously could benefit from the help of a stranger, but you might be inclined to not help them because that’s not really how we do it around here.  But if you do help them, in their mind, it’s likely that it will become the way we do it around here, and in turn they will be more likely to do the same kind of thing for others. 

I believe that a lot of the time, people behave according to how they think other people behave.  The good news (or bad news) is that the opportunities that people have to really get a sense of how people behave are few and far between.  

So in the next 24 hours, something you do in your interaction with a complete stranger could actually have a fairly large ripple effect.  

You can change how people act just by treating people differently.