The other day I was driving and it was pouring down rain. I was driving more carefully as the weather demanded it, but not everyone was. I got frustrated with the people that were driving fast, tailgating or rubber necking at accidents. And this was a long three and a half hour drive in the rain so I got frustrated a lot. Then near the end of my drive two police cars zoomed past me with lights going. I instantly thought "Some idiot driver probably wrecked, maybe even got hurt" but it wasn't a sad thought. I was mad and happy that the person might have gotten what I thought they deserved.
This kind of thought isn't uncommon for most people, at least not as uncommon as we might wish or even think. As humans we evolved to care and relate to what we could see and touch. We relate to the people around us but if there's almost any kind of barrier, real or perceived, our brains switch modes. And this is an all too common thing these days, we're exasperated by so many things that can also bring us together.
I'm not proud of what I thought and it shocked me that I could be so callous about someone's life. That I HOPED someone got hurt, someone that is someones friend, coworker, son, daughter, husband, wife, parent. We all have instincts programmed into us by tens of thousands of years of evolution that just don't make sense in society today. This is just one instance of something like this happening. We all need to consider our thoughts and actions carefully.
It's easy to dis-associate with someone but not as easy to relate to them. But we need to more of the latter not the former. On the internet it's easy to see something and to immediately assume the worst but we wouldn't do that near as much face to face with people. Or to say things we'd never dream of saying to someones face. I know I'm late to the part in talking about this subject at least in the tech community with Gamer Gate being over a year old but this is a topic that should never die out and should always be on our minds.
We (the human race as a whole) won't change overnight or in a year or in a decade or in a hundred years. We've made enormous progress as country and as a planet over the past hundred years in how we treat different races sure but we have so much further to go on so many fronts. This is a fundamental problem that transcends race or culture or click in high school. We all have to fight to find ways to relate to those around us. Start small. Life doesn't have to be black and white, not everyone has to be like you, everyone means something to someone else and what you say and do means something to the people you say it to no matter how you express it.
I hope that where ever those police cars were going, that everyone ended the day okay.