Brushing Off Invisible Spiders

There are few things that can make you feel as impotent as watching an angry burly fellow chucking trash on the ground. What can you do? Risk your safety to make a point about the environment? Why would anyone throw garbage onto the street like that anyway? It just doesn’t make sense.

Why are people getting so drunk that they can’t stand and then taking swings at random passers-by. Why are people raising their kids to lack respect or the skills to be a decent human being?

And that’s the crux of this. Why are so many people so bad at being decent human beings and what can we do about it? Well, I’ve figured out a mental trick that makes all this rage go away.

'Everyone is a fucking idiot’.

Not a pointed piece of abuse to make me feel calmer. Simply an explanation of behaviour.

No one is getting judgemental and frustrated by a tiger’s behaviour. Ants have tiny brains, but no-one is trying to change them into decent examples of ants. Birds snap their frigging necks by flying into windows. But when it happens we feel only pity. We don’t put them in a list with other birds that have taken themselves out of the gene pool and call it the Darwin Awards.

We have such a high opinion of what we feel the fabric of human endeavour should be, that we get frustrated when it unravels. Our expectations are simply too high. It’s all we can do to repress our natural inclination to be a fucking idiot all the time.

Question: Why is that guy throwing beer cans and polystyrene into a protected wetland environment?
Answer: He’s a fucking idiot.

It’s a simple explanation. Of course he’s acting like that. He’s a fucking idiot. That’s what fucking idiots do.

Question: Why is that driver risking his life and the lives of others by speeding and cutting people off?
Answer: He’s a fucking idiot.

It works for everything.

Question: Why is Bayer trying to strike down a law that would allow them to marginally increase profits at the cost of exterminating almost all bee colonies?
Answer: It’s filled with people who are fucking idiots.

Question: Why would someone publish such a useful piece of information but use such reactionary language?
Answer: Because I’m a fucking idiot.

And this can help you get on with your life. Are you ever overwhelmed with guilt for foolish decisions you’ve later regretted? Well it turns out that when you made those decisions you were a fucking idiot. You were a primate that had barely made it off the plains of the Serengeti dressed up in plastic cloth and cow skin, packed into a monkey hive filled with far too many others and forced to sit still moving your fingers and refolding your poor little brain to deal with cinema trailers and wedding RSVPs and YouTube comments and product packaging.

You weren’t created perfectly adapted for this world. You didn’t even evolve for it. You’re just another animal confused and trying to deal as best you can, like a sparrow caught inside a classroom.

You’re a fucking idiot, and this will be your salvation.

And if you’re lucky you won’t snap your neck next time you run into a glass door...

You fucking idiot.