- For the last couple weeks of Summer, (this being a relative term in Calgary) I have been pleasantly surprised by how many times I have been proved wrong. One example in particular was that out of the several hundred homeless people that I’ve passed in these warm, moderate months, I’ve only ever had one ask me for a bus ticket or some change. My error is in thinking that same old line I’m sure plenty of us use when we’re out walking about and see some poor old scruffy soul.
Oh, God, another beggar. He’d better not ask me for anything.
Of course, when the poor souls (or maybe just more enlightened souls who don’t give a crap about what I consider to be important in society) just mind their own business or smile and nod politely, my first thought is to think the next one probably will instead of hey, maybe I’m being a dickwad.
We’ve all been on the receiving end of this kind of thinking, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s not fair for either end of the math.
- Do you drive? Are you under 28? Then you are instantly a hot-rodding asshole who cuts off little grannies in their strollers while rocketing through school zones at 100km/h. At least…the statistics say you are.
- Did you just get married? Hope you signed a pre-nup, because there are even odds you’ll be divorced within 5 years!
- British? Don’t bother opening your mouth, chances are your teeth are terrible!
- Male, Japanese? You poor sucker, I bet you can’t get laid.
- Did you have a tattoo in the last 6 months? Sorry, you can’t give blood because you’re a dirty-needle druggy who’s travelled to Hong-Kong and received anal sex from 18 different prostitutes of varying genders!
- Middle-class and white? Well, I’m sure you drink too much and beat your kids.
- Did you ever pee your bed or accidentally hurt a pet? Congratulations, you are now more likely to become a serial killer!
The problem is that profiling works most of the time because it runs the numbers and plays the odds. You may be the world’s best driver at 18, but the multi-million dollar company that protects your ass in case of an accident is more willing to treat you like a squid with illegal nitrous tanks in the back of your Honda Civic who has a shrine to Vin Diesel in their glove box than a real human being because…unfortunately…they’d be right if we were all just statistics.
It’s terrifying and infuriating to be labelled, condemned, tried and punished because a noticeable and predicable percentage of your demographic acts like you don’t. Sexual abuse? Instantly a man’s fault. Missing cash? Blame it on the immigrant. She goes to Church? Instantly a fundamentalist Darwin-hater. Tattoos? Gang/drug related for sure! But this isn’t even a matter of the big examples of Race, Sex and Age, it works in so many smaller ways. Powerbook open at the Starbucks? Pretentious Mac-Fag. Blackberry in hand? Text-addict. Yoda-backpack? Viiirrrgin! Dyed black hair? Emo! Kids screaming or crying in the supermarket line up? Obviously that mom or dad has NO control over their kids and they’re horrible parents.
And whenever anyone is confronted on this…myself included…the standard fallback is always “Okay, maybe not you, but most of people like you…” and this excuse works 9 out of 10 times because the math is more-or-less correct. “History shows…” or “The trends are…” It’s not enough that you are held responsible for your own mistakes…now you have to answer to the mistakes of an entire species, gender, country and/or vehicle ownership.
We are always compared to the norm. From day one, we pop out and are weighed and measured and compared to a handy little graph that has the median average from all the other little babies that popped out in your same demographic. (And yes, this chart exists, Simeon gets to be measured against it every few weeks). Everything about our physical bodies, our mental capacities, our social skills and habits, and our talents, strengths and weaknesses have all been catalogued and compared by people who track these things so they can be used to reinforce these numbers and prove that life can be explained, controlled, and understood. Are we so scared of the unknown that it makes us all breathe a sigh of relief to find out we are within 2% of everyone else?
No wonder I never liked stats in university. It’s depressing for an optimist like myself to see everything reduced to a bell curve or progressive median.
Maybe next time I see a homeless guy on the street and think he’s about to ask me for change, I’ll have to remind myself that he’s probably thinking I’m heading home to beat my wife and kid, which will likely lead to a messy divorce later this year. Of course, this is assuming I make it home at all…I’ll probably smash into a school-bus full of orphans at 200km/h and explode. (at least according to my insurance company…)
I don’t want to always be right and have the most likely answer when it comes to people. I always prefer to be wrong when it means someone has beaten the curve, bested the math, and made the exception to every shitty rule.
Fuck the odds.
Posted under Manifestoes
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