Everybody is terrible?

Easier for people to recall negative memories over positive ones. Part of the reason why negative news stories get attention. Human nature designed to keep us safe from the same danger. This does however end up clouding decision making. Some great insights can be found in Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. Book called lord of the files covers the idea everybody can be awful. The main idea from the book that everybody can be evil. A real-life example that inspired the book was rather different. Group of boys all worked together to survive. Somebody broke a bone the boys carried him around.

The majority of people are not acting out against each other. Most people are hard-working and follow the law. Of course, things not black and white, some grey areas but on average we not that terrible. Society has become desensitization always expecting the worse from people. Unfortunately, this does have policy consequences, extremes are seen as normal. Happens all the time with doctors or social care workers. Sometimes feeding on worse impulses resulting in poorer outcomes. Recent example UK government expected people not to follow any lockdown. Refused to consider it as an option, delaying the later response. In reality, a big chunk of the people acted first avoiding unnecessary behaviour.

Need to be careful not to get stuck in thinking everybody is terrible. Most people live within the grey zone, not angels or demons try to avoid causing harm. People can make poor choices based due to products that help exploit people. We don’t directly see it happen. Good example is cheap food production, helped by pushing down conditions for HGV drivers and pay. Most people have short memories when comes to these stories. Another example would be climate change, you don’t directly feel the impact but somebody else does.

Role to be played here for strong institutions and legal framework to help protect people. Fixing undesired outcomes by making them not viable. Group think that we are uncorrputable better than other nations as slow decline happens. Reducing or damaging rules or institutions as general voter looks away is the worse outcome. Voter apathy may suit some people but does long term hard to fix damage.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Self reflection is required and we should ask tough questions. Needs to be some serious debate about what sort of nation we want to be. Sometimes that means making unpopular but neccessary choices that benefit people.