On Misanthropy - Or, A Secret

Let me tell you a secret.

Most people are, for lack of better terms, good or at the very least nuetral. I mean this entirely objectively, mind you, as I take no stance on the absolute virtue or evil of mankind. As an observer, though, the average human being will find most other human beings pleasant or at least bearable in the majority of interactions. We as a species are social creatures, and part of that is, by and large, we don't spend the majority of our time annoying one another. This holds true. Go on a day out with others, and actually try to keep track. Bet you the ones you like or just notice outweigh anyone who makes a negative impression.

Then you try working with the public.

This is where prior experiences fail. Working with the public, with people en masse descending upon you, that's entirely different from relating with people in a day to day way. For those of you who have never had this experience, we aren't talking about a line of a dozen folks. Working with the public is when you stop talking about groups, about crowds, and start using terms like 'society' and 'clusters'. When you refer to the day in ways which imply less linguistic communication as interactions with biomass.

You deal with one or two or ten or twenty people, and most of them will be nice or kind, and the occasional 'other' doesn't really impinge on your mental well-being. But you start dealing with folks by the dozen, and those negative instances start adding up. At which point some other facts will start making themselves apparent. The first and foremost is the impact of emotional memory.

We remember things better, as people, if we associate it with other things. Emotion is a great anchor. Something irritates or elates you, chances are you'll keep it in mind a lot longer than something that stirred not your heart at all. Negative feelings - dislike, pain, anger, fear, and that ilk - they make an experience stick like glue. Combine that with instances of dealing with the public, and the statistically enhanced likelihood of some sort of nasty run in along the way (or multiple run ins) and you run into why retail and public relations jobs are murder on the psyche. A person will deal with more than a hundred people over the course of a day in even the more basic of those jobs. Chances are, they'll forget the, say, 90% of those people who were fine, where nothing went wrong or even things were rather cheery. But the 9% that was harder, that was spent dealing with harsh, demanding, and bitter encounters - anyone in those jobs remembers those much more.

These unpleasantnesses, as I note, accumulate over time. You don't remember the good people much. You can't forget the bad. It leads to getting jaded, cynical. Ask someone if they've worked retail. Ask them how it made them feel about folks. See if their mouths' twist.

I may be over elaborate - I've waited way too late to start this post, and I am tired. But this is the secret - its easy to remember the negative, so those who see it often sometimes forget the positive.

But there is always that one last percentage point. Those instances that are good enough that, even over the course of a bad day, still stand out afterwards. Sometimes they're just the bright spot. Other days, a really good customer, an understanding client, a helpful associate, is all that keeps the flagging fellow trapped in the service or retail industries functional.

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Yeah. So. I suppose next time I'll try a topic a less esoteric. If I am putting ideas and such here, it would be nice to have some that aren't as snarled.