Why are people always jerks?
I had just returned from the shops when, on my way back, I had to swerve abruptly to avoid a taxi that was mistakenly driving in my lane. Upon reaching home, I vented my frustration on Twitter, expressing my annoyance with a considerable amount of intensity. I was sadly met with a lot of disagreement and insults from two fellow countrymen.
It got me thinking, why are people always jerks?
I went on the internet and searched around until I came across this piece by Sam Moss on Quora:
The short answer is because society has enabled people to bully others without any punishment. People don’t get punched in the mouth enough for being jerks so they keep being jerks. If you do punch them, you will be the one suffering the consequences far worse than a punch. A society that enables jerks to be jerks without consequences for their actions will produce more jerks. Whether it’s through people being cowardly and not standing up for themselves, through the government punishing very harshly those who do stand up for themselves, or society saying it’s not acceptable to stand up for yourself (the emasculation of society).
Some people don’t know they are jerks but in most cases that people think others are jerks, the person is a jerk because of their self-centeredness. Why have respect for others when there are no consequences for not and you get what you want? It’s like when a dog pulls on its leash, it gets where it wants to be faster, but so does the human, so they never take the time to train them out of pulling.
The opposite of “an armed society is a polite society” is a society that rewards people for being jerks through legal and social consequences and breeds more jerks.
I have limited knowledge about human behaviour, but his response truly resonated with me. A very wise man I must say and may he be blessed tenfold!
