On our way back to school, me and my students noticed that a road was closed for an ongoing renovation.
“Maju dah Bintulu”. I commented.
Then, one of my students suddenly said.
“Cikgu, sini banyak je peluang pekerjaan. Tapi ramai yang masih duduk tepi jalan, mengemis tak nak berusaha dalam hidup.” kata seorang pelajar.
I squinted my eyes, I said
“Such a simplistic way of seeing the world, isn’t it?”
Isn’t it weird? We as humans have this natural tendency to judge strangers just by looking at them. Just because someone acts a certain manner, wears certain clothes, or sounds a certain way, now, with great confidence, we think we know who we’re dealing with.
eg: Mengemis tepi jalan = malas berusaha.
Or so we thought. Talking With Strangers is a book that argues that interacting with strangers is not as easy as it seems.
Here are 3 lessons that I got from the book Talking With Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
1) “I know you’re lying”, well actually you don’t.
Here’s fact No.1. Our judgment toward people is full of flaws and biases, especially towards strangers. And the worst part is, we don’t realize it. Heck, some of us wouldn’t even acknowledge it. We are so confident with our judgment that just by one’s first impression, we can conclude as such,
“Orang macam ini, aku dah boleh agak dah perangai dia, dia mesti……..”
Imagine meeting Hitler for the first time (before World War 2 started). You shook his hand, he prepared you lunch and both of you had a peaceful conversation. Would you ever think of him as a heartless human being whose sole mission is to conquer the world and ready to kill anyone who’s standing in his way? Or you would probably think “Hey, He’s a pretty nice guy.”
This is exactly what happened to the Prime Minister of the UK, Neville Chamberlain in 1938. He went to Germany to meet with Hitler personally. Not just once. And every time He returned, he would convince his people that through his interaction with Hitler, he basically said,
“Hey, Hitler is a pretty nice guy. Ya’all don’t need to worry.”
I’m paraphrasing. But you get the idea.
Then. Unfortunately, World War 2 began.
Some might say that PM Neville Chamberlain was a fool for letting himself be deceived by Hitler and his charm. But wouldn’t we all? Just when we thought we knew someone, either through 1st impressions, a few face-to-face interactions, or our so-called long-life experience and expertise in interaction with people, only to discover that apparently, we don’t. And even worse, we might have been lied to without realizing it, until eventually, it’s all too late. The war had already begun.
That’s life. We thought we knew someone, but we don’t. We thought our judgments were right but it’s not. So first things first, we need to acknowledge that our judgment about others is not always right and that being lied to is one of the possibilities in life. So whenever you stumble into a situation where you think for yourself,
“I should have known he/she is a……”
That means you are human. And your judgment is sometimes, or maybe mostly flawed.
2) You are what I see.
One of main the reasons that contribute to our lack of judgment is that we fall into the trap of ‘You are what I see’ or what Gladwell calls transparency. Which in simple terms means, when a person smiles, means he’s happy. When he frowns, he’s sad. When he laughs, means something is funny. And so on. But is it though?
Take the case of Patrick Dale Walker—a person who tried to shoot his ex-girlfriend in the head. But fortunately, the gun was jammed. He was then caught and sent to trial. I know what you’re thinking. This guy is finished and he’s going to jail for a long time for attempted murder. That’s what I thought.
But somehow the judge, not only reduced his bail from 1 million to 25,000 dollars but also sent him to jail for only 4 days. Yes, I’ll say that again just in case you thought you read it wrong. 4 DAYS ONLY!! For attempting murder. I mean, what the Heck!!?
It turns out the judge looked at Patrick’s clean track record, and his remorse face and thought,
“Hey, this is a good kid who made a bad choice, why not I’ll give him time to ‘cool off’ in jail.”
OK fine. We’ll give the judge the benefit of the doubt. Besides, the judge kan BERPENGALAMAN? Pernah handle hundreds, if not thousands of cases. So he might know a guilty and ‘wouldn’t do it again’ kinda face. And Patrick might be one of them.
But here’s another twist, 4 months later, Patrick Dale Walker eventually shot his girlfriend to death.
The judge saw the guilty and remorseful face of Patrick and assumed he felt guilty and would change. The judge thought Patrick was being TRANSPARENT, but he’s not.
It turns out looks can be deceiving and that “YOU ARE NOT WHAT I SEE.”
I know it sounds like I’m telling you that you can’t trust anyone, especially strangers. 1st (from the first point), because our judgment might be wrong, and 2nd, people are not what they seem.
Not at all. I’m not trying to convince you to crawl into your bed and leave society behind on the fact that no one can be trusted. Instead, interaction with strangers is just a necessary risk that we have to take to become a functional society. Cuz a society is built upon trust, even towards strangers. Take this few examples;
When you went to the grocery store, bought a dozen things, and paid the cashier. Do you check the price for every single item and make sure it matches with the label price? Or do you let the cashier scan everything while you just wait for the total price to be shown?
When you go to the clinic, Do you start by asking the Dr, “Hey Dr, what are your credentials? Are you a real Dr? Or do you straight away explain your sickness, even though you just met him/her?
We trust strangers, to a certain point, because we must. Because if not, we’re going live a life full of questions, interrogation, doubts, and even arguments. But at the same time, don’t be naive, thinking that everyone is an angel with no bad intent. Also, bear in mind that you are not always right.
In conclusion, dealing with strangers is not as easy as we thought. Isn’t it?
3) Context matter
Somewhere around the 1960s to 1970s, there was a huge decrease in the suicide rate in England. Sure there are tons of reasons for that. But one of them might intrigue you, which is the use of natural gas.
Before 1960, most of the people in England used something called ‘town gas’ to power their stoves and water heaters at home. Why is this significant and related to suicide?
In those days, you could literally put your head inside an oven and kill yourself. Because inside ‘town gas’, there’s a deadly substance named Carbon Monoxide. So all you have to do to kill yourself is to breathe inside of an oven. An easy, accessible, and painless way of killing oneself. But by the fall of 1977, the use of town gas was completely replaced by natural gas. Thus, one of the means of suicide is now gone, leading to its decrease in rates.
Now, you may argue that it’s a mere coincidence rather than an explanation. But here’s the thing, if you really want something, let’s say eat a burger, but the nearest burger stall is closed, I’m sure you will go out of your way, get inside your car, drive 10+ km, just to get a piece of burger. What I’m trying to say is, you will do anything to get what you want. The same goes for suicide. We would assume that if someone really wants to kill themselves, but one of the means of doing it is now gone (refer to town gas), then just find another one. Go jump from a building or something. But it didn’t happen. People didn’t find another means of suicide, they just decided not to. Thus the suicide rates drop. Now why is that?
Cuz action/behavior is not just about a person, it’s about context. A person doesn’t just decide to commit suicide. There’s always an external factor that drives someone to do something. In this case, it was the easy and painless means of killing yourself, which is town gas. When you have someone who is deeply depressed and drowns in hopelessness, and you pair that with an accessible tool to end one’s own life, most likely, they will seize the opportunity. And when the means are now taken away (no more town gas), the desire to kill themselves fades with it.
In simple terms, with the presence of inner desire, and add to that, a specific context (eg; an accessible means to kill yourself), you’ll get a dead man inside an oven. Behavior = Person + Contexts.
So in terms of judging a person, we usually focus on the person themselves (ie; their attitude, appearance, action), yet fail to acknowledge and ignore the context (ie; their background story, childhood experience, family, and place they grew up in). Eventually leading us to become the kind of person, who looks at a homeless person and says “Apalah mereka ini, pemalas betul. Cuba lah berusaha sikit, daripada mengemis tepi jalan”. Because we fail to consider their contexts.
Coming back to the dialogue I had with my students, I told him,
“Kita mana tahu, kot2 dia dibesarkan tanpa ibu bapa yang bertangungjawab, tak dihantar ke sekolah, tak dapat pendidikan. In the end, terpaksa mengemis di tepi jalan. Tak macam awak, ibu bapa sayang. Hantar pergi sekolah. Sanggup keluarkan duit untuk awak. Supaya awak berjaya suatu hari kelak”
“Betul lah tu cikgu, syukur dapat mak ayah yang sayangkan kita” said the student.
Understanding the context doesn’t mean we justify one’s behavior. It doesn’t mean mengemis tepi jalan or killing yourselves inside an oven is okay. It means that now we know, a person is not the sole product of his own desire, but also the product of his surroundings. So when it comes to dealing or judging strangers, have a little empathy, would you?