to answer the five-year-old me
When I was much younger, when I first began learning about this wonderful crazy world, picking up clues of adult behaviors from fairytales, news, encyclopedia, and history books, I remember being truly shocked quite a few times, and wondered : How did people let bad things happen?
Why didn’t they do something about it?
Bad things, like genocide, burning books, wars (aka hurting and killing each other and spending a lot of money), and endless indulgence in pleasure that eventually led to the downfall of the great? Things that seem so obvious in retrospect and had many windows of possible reversal?
How stupid do you have to be to let these things happen? This could really make a five-year-old doubt the intelligence of the adults.
So as I grew older, traveled more, met more people, and learned more about the world, I realized: Bad things happen for reasons that are so hard to eliminate, therefore they are still happening in the world today.
1. Not everybody knows
Ignorance is real. Not everyone’s ignorance is intentional. Some people don’t know because they lack the means. Some people simply don’t pay attention.
Plain stupidity, as seldom as it gets mentioned now, does still account for a lot of phenomena.
Then bad things happen.
2. Not everybody cares
This one is even more common.
So what happens once you’ve acquired that piece of information. Now you know something bad may happen. But still, most people, wouldn’t do anything about it. Adults can be shockingly selfish sometimes. To mind one’s own business is already so hard, why would you even bother with others’?
Then bad things happen.
3. People underestimate themselves
Ok, so here we are talking about the ones that do care.
The majority of this group still wouldn’t do a damn thing about what they think is bad in the world.
They think their efforts are futile as individuals, they have relatively no power to turn the tides. The risk is too high. The enemy is too strong. I would probably fail if I try to change the world, and make it better.
So they care briefly, and go back to their original life. Or they make small attempt(s) then decide they are not good enough to stop the bad things from happening.
Then bad things happen.
4. The world is distracting
The world is a distracting place, even more so now than a thousand years ago.
With the amount of sources we can obtain information, everyone’s brain is being fed like a king. So many stories and videos fight for our attention. We are spending more time learning to eliminate the information in our life than to obtain more. With the whole “real news vs. fake news” war going on right now, it’s even harder to decide what to trust and what to focus.
It’s stressful I agree.
So instead of reading about science and politics and actual books, let me go watch a few more kitten videos on Facebook.
Oh wait, it feeds you even more kitten videos.
And more.
Then bad things happen.
5. We don’t agree with each other.
Individuals have different believes, backgrounds, and thoughts, naturally we hold different standards on “bad”.
What is bad? How bad is bad enough? What’s bad for one may be great for another.
We can argue, and debate, and try to persuade each other. The outcomes are most likely: 1. We get entangled in the persuasion process and lose sight of the realistic situation itself (see #4 above), or 2. the good one wins, 3. the bad one wins.
Often the result is #1, and in the rare case #2 and #3 happen, the opposite side is still reluctant to change attitude, and start their revenge plan, then we repeat the process. Because I said, the difference in believes are caused by reasons so essential to one’s being that are near impossible to change. The greater the issue, the harder it is to change someone’s stance on it.
Then bad things happen.
6. Long term-short term tradeoffs
This one I have to explain to you. So in adult world, there is not just good and bad, often there is the gray zone trying to please both sides. And one big strategy of the grey zone is to add the factor of time into the discussion.
People are willing to let bad things happen because they believe pain is temporary, and they are gaining in the long run. Men worry about future, and nothing is more exciting and reassuring than a promising future. The short term events seem negligible in comparison.
Then bad things happen.
7. Somethings are hard to tell at the time
To see ahead of one’s current context is hard.
Not everyone who committed something bad did so out of bad intentions. For all the reasons we’ve mentioned above, even good people can do bad things.
Plus, no one knows what’s ahead, really. People can be assertive and confident about their opinions, use data and their fancy titles to validate their opinions, but the truth is: they can still be wrong about the future. And no one is truly aware of all the consequences of their actions, including the side effects.
8. People forget, fast.
Sometimes bad things keep repeating themselves, because we just can’t remember the pain. Believe it or not.
Sometimes the story is so simple and straightforward, like there should be no suspense. But it doesn’t mean a thing if we keep forgetting the answer. So yeah.
So bad things happen. And they continue to happen.
*Yo if you enjoyed reading, clicking that heart would mean so much to me. XOXO.
