Are Seven

One of my multiple book ideas (that will, it probably goes without saying, not ever be written let alone published) is an observation of human behavior on city streets and how, simply by watching how people move, you can start to see the roots of nearly every selfish, stupid and dense human impulse. Spend 10 minutes watching a busy city intersection and you will never again rhetorically ask, “How can people be so &%$!# stupid?!” It’s all right there.

Really, it gets down to this: observing city streets is to believe that society is always on the edge of total anarchy; that it’s only the slightest of threads that keeps us hanging on to order and control. What may seem like a benign, simply-inconsiderate action on the sidewalk can actually be linked to larger human motions of at least conformity and selfishness, if not outright evil.

You might think that all this is the flavor of thought of a massive pessimist, and while it’s true that my pessimism knows no bounds, this is one of the things that keeps me grounded. Here we are, teetering on the brink of absolute chaos, and yet we keep things running with relative lawfulness and comparative control. It’s pretty impressive.

Point being: I’ll have plenty of time to work on that book come May 2nd. Anyone want to hang out with me during the day in a couple of weeks? And by that, I mean: anyone want to buy me lunch?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.