I hope I’m a decent person. I try to be. I do my best to treat people with respect and I try…. even if I find people who for some reason don’t like me… I try to not take offense and just let things slide. After all, I have been forgiven everything, so I don’t really find it in my heart any more to hold things against others.

I suppose like everyone, I tend to think of myself of firmly ensconced in the center of humanity, in other words, most people are basically like me. I consider myself… average.

What does this have to do with anything?

I was having a conversation about a guy we were working with over the weekend. Once a year, we share a fireworks booth with another group. One of the guys from this group is loquacious. Excessively… talkative. He butts into your conversations even when you are talking to other people, and sort of takes over with his stories. He’ll keep talking until you basically walk away. In fact, for all I know, he may still be talking after I walk away, I just can’t hear it anymore.  

So there was some discussion about why this guy is like this, why he doesn’t seem to have even a minimal clue about how he comes across to others, and how he doesn’t see that he’s being rude?

So, here’s where I tie these together. I hear people complaining about certain societal dynamics. Let’s just say for example, women complaining about the behavior of men. I have tended to minimize it based on my own behavior, which I take as typical: I don’t treat women badly, and I’m the average, so things aren’t as bad as some make it out to be. But then every once in a while, I get a glimpse into what women have to deal with and I realize that there really is an issue.  

I don’t like hearing things like: All men are bad. I think it’s unfair. But one of the ways that I heard one woman explain this recently is: Not all men are bad, but all women have had experiences with men who are.  

So while I don’t see it because I don’t act this way, nor would I hang around with men that do, I don’t want to be too quick to write it off as women overreacting to essentially harmless behaviors. The fact I have to admit, is that there are all kinds of behaviors out there that I don’t personally do, and so tend not to see, but are in fact widespread enough.

This can be applicable to various areas that are political hot buttons right now. There are claims of behaviors that are systemic or structural that I don’t personally see, and so tend to dismiss, at least on a wide scale. But I do need to acknowledge that my own insulation from those things doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

However, on the flip side, if I can minimize behaviors that I don’t personally see, then some people can be maximizing behaviors based on their own anecdotal evidence. Perhaps some are taking isolated incidences and attributing structural or systemic scale where it isn’t merited. This doesn’t have to be the explanation in every instance, but it can’t be taken off the table either.