People fascinate me, and I love to contemplate what I've observed over the years. The connections between each other are intrinsic to how we view society and society views us. We like to pretend that we are all individuals, but that really is only part of any equation to our nature. How we treat others and how they treat us changes the way we view the world.
What if we began to think how every interaction affects not just the people involved but everyone that observes the interaction, and subsequently all future people any of them come into contact in the future, would we do anything differently in our day to day interactions? Would it change our view if we knew quantum entanglement explains that even a slight change might create a massive ripple later? Most of the western world like to believe that we are individuals and we control everything that happens to us. However even the most improbable interactions have a ripple effect. Quantum entanglement refers to when things occur, even hundreds or thousands miles away, they eventually can affect someone else that wasn't even in the current situation, even months or years later.
For example, I used to make a mental note of people I would meet with certain names. The ones with an excessive number of people with the same name wouldn't necessarily be the same. A John or Jon rarely are like all the other Johns you meet. In high school, there were more than half a dozen on the varsity football team alone. They were not all alike. However, pick a less used name like Walter. The guy was almost always reserved, somewhat disturbing sometimes in how much so, and even a bit overly loner. Usually kind overall, but in more recent years both the younger ones I've met were "incels". It doesn't apply to people with the same name from Europe. What if Jean or Juan? Still a John technically, but in Europe versus the US? Suddenly there are changes there. It got me thinking to how we treat each other without meaning to. If the way we treat someone by their name invokes in our minds how we think they should behave, which came first? Their behavior or how we treat them?
Similarly people's appearances affect how we treat each other. The more obvious example is how we treat someone that might have visible tattoos. Plenty of people still react to people with visible tattoos as if something is wrong with them. The reaction of most people with a tattoo when they come across someone like that is to ignore it, but the urge to say "take a picture" or "if you don't like it, don't look" becomes overwhelming at times for those that have them. The choice to have a tattoo or not to is their decision. They know going in that some people will judge them on the tattoo and there's not much they can do to change that, right? At the same time, we are responsible for thinking it's any of our business to stare in the first place.
For example, let's say a person with a tattoo is being stared at by one person with that disapproving look and this interaction is observed by 4 people who all have varying opinions of the tattoos. By saying nothing, the tattooed person leaves without making any impact on those opinions at all. Nothing changed, right? Except in reality, most of us feel like we "guessed" the other person correctly, so it actually makes whatever predisposition more deeply ingrained.
Right now, you probably had a vision of the 6 different people, but now consider if the tattooed person is a man. It changes again as soon as you think the tattooed person is a woman. Now think of them as an old Vietnam veteran. A young rap star. An old woman whose tattoo says "Fight Like A Girl" with a pink ribbon. The interaction in your mind just thinking about it changes over and over just by that small change, doesn't it?
So now go back full circle to the name, what if it's a Vietnam veteran named John? Terrance? Margaret? Shu Li? These subtle changes, changed the picture in each of our minds, and thus would change each person's reaction in the same situation. The ripple is the change to us and how we interact, and how we envision each of those 6 people interact.
Now consider if the tattooed person said something? Read those two paragraphs over, each example one at a time, and picture the tattoo person asked, "Is the something I can help you with?" How does it change your perception as you picture the tattooed person is each of those examples? How does it change if you're one of the 4 observers? How does it change if you are the person staring?
The point is every interaction that we have is shaped by things we have stored away in our subconscious. How we think the world is sometimes in spite of how the world actually is. With or without interaction, like where the tattooed person said nothing, we each still had various visions of the scenario. Just a simple question added changed the entire interaction, even more as you thought about the tattooed person's identity. Each change altered your view just by thinking about it. Now imagine that every interaction you have, every day, however benign, you are subconsciously making all the assumptions you did reading this consciously.
Pretty profound, right?
So let's take two 3 year old children playing in a park and one's grandmother grabbed one child away, giving the other child a "dirty look" and telling the one child not to play with them, "not our kind". How does this shape the two children? The interaction will be internalized as will all the reactions of everyone else around them. Imagine how you think it would affect the child scolded and how it would affect the child left to process "not our kind". How does it change if either is a black child, a poor child, a girl that wanted to play with trucks, a hippy parents' child, a Native child, a boy who wanted to play with dolls, etc. Is it even fair any toddler should have to process this? Now how do you think both those children will modify their own behavior in all future actions with any children that they meet who they perceive as the other. That one action by one grandmother directly damaged both, but the future actions of both children will spread that toxic interaction to other children they go to school with, play sports with, hang out with. In one action, two children's natural love of playing with other children was just destroyed with the perceptions of one adult.
Whether we like it or not, these subtle behaviors shape our society from the name you choose for your child to how others react or do not react to their appearance. We have no control over other people. There is no changing it without all of us recognizing how pervasive just simple actions create long term consequences.
How many geniuses have never saw their true potential just because they couldn't afford the right suit? How many complete morons have rose to great power simply by being born on a huge wad of money? How many resumes of the best candidate were thrown away on the names alone? How many toddlers so internalized that above kind of interaction they have difficulty trusting anyone for years to come? Every interaction, and non-action, has a ripple effect.
As always, think about it. Peace.
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