Unpleasant Truths That Will Make You Feel Better

I’m going to tell you a few things and they may make you uncomfortable, but in the end you’ll feel better about yourself and the world in which you live.

Very few of us are willing to stand alone against what is wrong. Statistically speaking, most of you are not among the few with courage but one of the multitude who lack sufficient courage to oppose injustice alone. In Nazi Germany, most of you would have gone along with what the government did. You each might have had your own set of coping methods and rationalizations for doing so, but you’d have permitted the horrors nonetheless.

There is a vast discrepancy between the percentage of people who believe they wouldn’t go along with something like the Milgram experiment — when people were asked to deliver increasingly powerful shocks to people they heard but could not see for answering a question wrong — and the percentage of people who did go along with it. Most people are lying to themselves. You are probably lying to yourself. Accept it. As I said, I will give you reasons to hope and feel good about things later.

The truth of it is, only a small percentage of humans are willing to stand apart from the herd, fewer still in direct opposition to it. This is generally a good thing, as the herd generally does not stray too far from safety, common sense, and reality. I myself, in times when I am uncertain, look to the masses in order to decide what action I should take. There is no shame in that. There is a wisdom to the crowd, and certainly a safety in it. The outlier, after all, is just as likely to be wrong and immoral as right and moral.

Very few of us are early adapters. After all, why should we leave what is comfortable to head over to what may very well be worse than what we now have? No shame in this, it’s just common sense, and the bulk of humanity provides a service to the whole by employing common sense.

But occasionally the herd does get stuck in a situation where common sense does more harm than good. Ants sometimes get stuck in what is referred to as a death circle when what typically works very well for them works in a way not intended. Ants follow other ants to food by way of smelling pheromones. In this way, if one (guide) ant discovers food, the other ants follow it to the food and everyone feasts. But occasionally the trail of ants loops back on itself and the ants begin to follow one another in a circle. With no destination, the ants blindly (ants are blind) march in a circle until they drop dead of exhaustion and starvation.

So too does a society of human beings sooner or later find itself in a pattern that is destructive to the whole. At which point the outliers become the leaders and the hope of the whole. Of course, the majority are prone not to listen to outliers but stick to the safety of the herd. How then does society unstick itself from something comparable to a death loop?

Well, just as there are a tiny amount of people willing to stand alone against the herd, so is there a slightly larger amount of people who admire those with such courage. And so too is there an even slightly larger amount of people who are willing to question things if they see the others admiring the outliers. And so on. The herd that is humankind can, does, and has shifted opinion when conditions change. Humanity has undergone many radical transitions of beliefs attitudes and behavior when previous ways of doing things no longer suited humanity. That’s why you most likely no longer live in a mud hut or pray to a many-breasted mother god.

So it’s okay if you’re not an early adaptor, live-on-the-edge, spit-in-the-face-of-authority kind of person. Many of them are not very pleasant and you can’t build a society around them. The important thing is that you find your place among the herd and along the sliding scale and realize under what circumstances you will oppose the status quo. Know yourself, because at some given point we will all scream in protest when we finally realize society is like a train about to go off a cliff. Know your comfort zone, and don’t delude yourself with the idea that you have to be what you are not. Do this and you will find what power you possess.

Lastly, and this is the part where you are able to truly feel good about yourself: we are all outliers given certain situations. Most all of us are timid as lambs until we are approached with an injustice or a harm that sparks within us our courage. One person may remain silent while a person is being spoken to rudely but won’t think twice about leaping into action to save a child. One person will merely say something should be done about water pollution but will chain themselves to a tree to protect the forest. One person will be extremely bold in defending animal rights while feeling it is not quite their place to advance workplace equality.

The point is, we all have power and courage given the proper circumstances. Likewise, not all of us are prepared to take the lead in every situation. Neither look down upon yourself nor others when you/they do not behave with all the courage you expect. Know yourself, know where your strength lies, and do not be deluded by the idea that you have more courage than you actually do. Because when you expect of yourself more courage than you actually have, you will soon find yourself making excuses for why the injustice you perceive is actually justified and that the majority is in the right, even if deep inside you know that it is not.

In the meantime, if you feel the the herd is headed the wrong way, find ways in which you can refuse to contribute to it. You don’t have to be a hero, you just have to be honestly yourself. The heroes in any particular battle will find themselves. You only have to find your place in the herd instinctually by doing what feels comfortable to you and refrain from believing you are braver than you are. Bravery comes in small increments. It is built upon small victories. This isn’t about you against all of society, or even one portion of society against another, evil, section. This is about all of society, all of the human race, blindly moving forward to a more workable paradigm. And it all relies on individuals being honest about how they feel and what they perceive.

There is no shame in being part of the herd, because the herd is humanity itself. Just don’t lose yourself in it. You fit, you belong, and you don’t have to suppress yourself to do so. In fact, humanity requires that you feel your own feelings, see with your own eyes, think your own thoughts. You, by being completely and honestly yourself, are helping to usher in a more workable paradigm for humanity.

There, that wasn’t so painful, was it?