Trying to Understand People

--by Robert Arvay

 

Most people tend to be restricted to their own social circles, rarely interacting with people far outside their sphere.  The wealthy associate mostly with their peers, the poor with the poor, and people in the middle with their neighbors.

 

Those who are most likely to read this commentary, tend to be interested in academic subjects, social theories, and the arts and sciences.  They gravitate toward each other, and usually avoid people outside their social and economic class.  Most people are not interested in the kinds of subjects that interest me, and presumably you, since you are still reading this. 

 

Most people are only peripherally interested in the larger society, and only on certain occasions.  Otherwise, the things they care about are less intellectual.  They involve themselves in tasks, in making money, in seeking pleasure.  Most people, in all classes, show some degree of dishonesty, and among the poor, they tend to be more physically violent, and more abruptly so, than people of comfortable means.  Of course, exceptions abound, but they are after all, exceptions.

 

The poor tend to be less educated than the economic higher classes, a fact which increases their tendency toward poverty.  Those who strive to be better educated are often stymied in their efforts, first by educators whose personal self-interests compete with their students, and even by the culture of poverty, where learning is considered “acting white.”

 

One altruistic teacher who visited some of his seemingly intelligent, but poorly performing, students, was dismayed by the chaotic environment of inner-city poverty.  Amid the continuous, loud, raucous cacophony of music and violence, it was all but impossible to focus on study.  There was no realistic escape from those circumstances.

 

Out-of-wedlock motherhood is well known to be a severe disabling factor that impedes upward mobility, and it is exacerbated by loosening standards of sexual morality.

 

Among the upper economic classes, the disconnection with the lower classes is profound.  Many people in the upper group promote theories that seem to them to be commonsense solutions to poverty, but which make matters only worse.  They are no more moral or hardworking than those in the lower class, but they can more easily find social environments which are conducive to their wellbeing.

 

In the middle, the average working man has little time or energy remaining in which to actively involve himself in his community.  He tends to be far more interested in sports than in politics, far more likely to visit bars and nightclubs than libraries, and sadly, willing to abdicate his parental responsibilities to a corrupt education system and government.

 

Drug addiction and alcohol abuse have greatly increased the morbid behavior of large numbers of people in all classes.  These social ills are literally killing tens of thousands of people, and ruining the lives of their loved ones.  Especially tragic is the incidence of child neglect, and worse.

 

People are not inherently good, but they are redeemable.  That is the true condition of human nature.  The sooner that is recognized, the better society will become.

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