From my recent visit to London, I have learned a profound new thing about people and myself. I realized that, generally speaking, I hate people! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate any specific group of people nor is this based on any -ism to target a subset of humans and it is also not a form of hate speech.
In some way, being a human, I suppose it would only be fair to include myself and hate my own guts, which indeed holds, well, at least occasionally. I don’t hate any single person in particular and I should say that I mostly hate people when there’s a lot of them around.
Now, to defend my position, I shoulds explain the type of hate I feel, as otherwise, one might conclude I would be ready to do something awful to people, like take aggressive action or start some sort of propaganda, a sect or otherwise try to influence others to join a cause or promote some kind of hatred. I assure you that is not the case. This hate is actually mushed together with anger and the feeling of being extremely annoyed.
I think the best way to describe the notion is to say that I hate how people behave in the streets. It’s just that a lot of times, men and women act like they live in their own personal bubble. I don’t mind the fact that they have the bubble (as everyone does have one), it’s just the manner in which some of them carry it around is what really bothers me. I should explain further what I mean, by describing the properties of this bubble.
Say we have a typical subject matching what I’m trying to convey, let’s call him John. So there you see John, walking the streets in his bubble. It is a semi-transparent, sort of blurry at the edge sphere with the center placed in his skull. John can sense everything inside his bubble, including the sidewalk and the usual things occurring in the street. Obviously, the bubble moves as John moves and it is not solid (although it can be warped by physical obstacles), hence other people’s bubbles can spatially intersect as they pass near each other, which is a desired property in most circumstances, as you’ll conclude on your own soon.
You might have noticed that I haven’t touched on an important property of this malleable sphere, namely its radius. Now, this is an interesting feature of the bubble. John can control the size of it, purely by the power of his mind! Indeed, and it’s actually not as difficult as you might expect. Most healthy, sober individuals have a perfectly good ability to shrink and grow their bubble at will and to reasonable magnitudes at that, including John.
I don’t mind the fact that John’s bubble exists and that he’s carrying it around, nor do I really care about the size of it in general, even for other people. I just hate that John never learned to adjust the bubble’s radius to the environmental circumstances, i.e. what’s happening around him.
Ok, so by now, if you have a bit of associative skills, had time to think about it and you weren’t distracted while reading, you would have come to the conclusion that what this hypothetical bubble represents is a person’s attention or level of focus. I believe that most people are selfish and that’s the primary reason why they choose to have the bubble fairly small and often molded such that it’s facing the entirely wrong direction.
I hate the fact that people are selfish in this manner and choose not to be aware of what’s happening around them. They just don’t asses the situation properly and because of this they cause unnecessary congestions, uncalled for and often awkward proximity, undesired contact, in same cases even harm to others and themselves, damage to property, etc.
I could name at least a dozen things people do wrong while they’re on the streets which can easily be avoided altogether. I’ll come back to this point a bit later.
The way I feel when these annoying situations occur, such as someone bumping into me, my instinct and my thoughts of possible responses converge to fantasizing about asking them if they have a license. They would probably ask back: “What license?” and I would reply: “What do you mean what license, the pedestrian license, you ignorant region of unpurposefully occupied space.”, I would then breathe in deeply, calm down and tell the guy “I’m gonna let you go with a ticket, but be aware that on your third strike you’re going back to pedestrian school. I’m watching you, dude!”.
I’m quite certain I would be perceived as a lunatic or a comedian, but in some sense I’m actually quite serious about this, at least to a fair degree. Now that I’m following this train of thought, bare with me as I indulge in the undisputed ingenuity of the very idea.
I propose people should not be allowed out of their homes on their own, without first going through some kind of formal education and certification on how to be a pedestrian. I’m pretty sure a lot of drivers (I am not yet one) would agree on this point as well.
Just imagine this, a pedestrian school! Sounds a bit silly and over the top, granted, but imagine all the benefits, like safety and level of coordination we could achieve if everyone was just adhering to a simple set of rules and if they’d only shed their selfishness while walking the streets. This is why ants, for example, are quite efficient and they basically never cause congestion or otherwise slow down or get in the way of other ants.
I’m not proposing that we should behave like ants or lose our individuality in any way, think of it more as the notion of people having lost their manners down the line and it’s about time we regain some of those.
Alright, so what would this pedestrian school look like? For example, would it have levels of certification? You bet! Would it be mandatory? It sure would. Would people be fined if not certified and caught on the street? Well, in some circumstances.
For the fun of it, let’s assume that this system of pedestrian education exists and that you have just become of age to start learning about it. Furthermore, if you can agree we both now exist in this hypothetical parallel universe, I can drop the awkwardness of using the past-tense form of will (i.e. “would”), which is quite a relief for me.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
Welcome to the pedestrian elementary school!
You are now old enough to walk outside of the house on your own, so it’s time you learn how to behave while in the streets. Our lessons shall cover topics such as attentiveness, speed of movement, safety, efficiency, prioritization, courtesy towards others, resolving conflict and much more. The degrees you earn and certifications levels which are required will also be explained in more detail as we progress. The first level of certification is A-level pedestrian which allows you to freely move in open spaces on your own and participate in traffic.
Lesson 1: Attention and focus
While walking in open spaces, reserve portions of your attention towards your surroundings. The most important rule to remember is: “eyes front”. As you walk down the path, look in front of you far enough so you can spot potential obstacles or danger in a timely manner. This means you will have enough time to react and adjust your movement and direction to avoid them.
After you saw what’s in front of you, make sure to also lower your gaze to the patch of ground nearest to you. The sidewalk or the road may have obstacles or unpleasant patches, also, there might be deep puddles or dog poo in various states of decay, level of moisture and spread. Tend to spot these challenges early and avoid them.
You don’t have to devote all of your focus to the street in front of you. You are free to look around and learn your surroundings so you remember places you’ve been to and also people you came across. This will also allow you to predict the intentions of other pedestrians and enable you to adjust your response.
As stated earlier, if you look in front of you far enough, you actually gain the time to look around. You should frequently re-check your front view to update the current knowledge of what’s ahead.
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Now that we have the basics, I’m preparing the material for lesson 2: Distance and speed.
Let me know what you think!
Should I write an actual manual?
Publish a how-to/for-dummies book?
Print tickets to hand to the ignorant blobs? :)
Start a youtube channel?
A comedy show?
Till next time,
Cheers!