JOIN USThis might sound far-fetched. Nonetheless, it is a true story. A group of fresh collegemates who were also hostelmates of a professional college, got together to dine at a nearby restaurant on a lazySunday afternoon. Though there were wide discrepancies in their cultural and personal backgrounds, a common thread bound their feelings: they were all homesick.
Yet, the one hour of coming together in kinship over a meal and sharing their heavy heartedness seemed to melt their sadness into triviality. At the end of the meal, they felt like one family. A new sense of jubilation in their newfound closeness replaced their poignancy dominant just a while ago. As they finished their meal and the plates were cleared, the students were served finger-bowls with warm water and a slice of freshly cut lemon immersed in it. One of the six present, ignorant about the practice, enthusiastically squeezed the juice out of the lemon and drank the solution in one gulp.
This no doubt rocked the rest of her friends out of their wits. They exchanged glances wondering who in the group would bell the cat and reveal what she just did was faux-pas. In an instant moment of empathy, another student, however, did the same, and then another, until the whole group had drunk the warm water with the lemon squeezed into it. Though their act went against the norm, it brought with it a sense of conformity on the group. When as a whole they mimicked the wrong model, the wrong seemed right. The mirth and bonhomie in the air continued unabated as the group chose to model the wrong because it meant the easier way out of not causing embarrassment to another, and in the process instigating ill-feelings.
The above incident is but a harmless, milder and miniscule version of what happens in our homes, society, country, and in fact, the world at large. We begin doing things knowing them to be wrong or incongruent, initially maybe to please others, until the habit of doing them wrong becomes a habit so dogged that it is difficult to break. But, why break these habits? Everybody is doing them anyway. So, it ought to be a sensible way to move with the flow even if it is not altogether a right way to move.
Human nature at work
Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, brought to the forefront the hierarchy of human needs. He studied the behavioural patterns of such exemplary people like Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt and Frederick Douglass, as well as the healthiest 1% of the college student population. From his study he concluded that a man’s most fundamental needs are physiological, safety, love and belonging and esteem.
He thus established that once a man’s physical and safety needs are met, he looks for love and belonging among his family and society. According to Maslow, “Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance among their social groups, regardless whether these groups are large or small.”
To belong and to feel in place dominates a man’s desire. He is most happy when he is in union with his counterparts. He lives, loves, thinks, works and reaches his highest potential when he is a part of a larger assembly. He pours his energy and resources into an immediate inner circle that may include family members, intimate partners, mentors, colleagues and confidants as well as into a distant outer circle that could be clubs, co-workers, religious groups, professional organisations, sports teams and gangs. Remove him from the safe haven of his family, friends and associates and put him in isolation, he is stifled like a fish thrown out of water. His oxygen for most part comes from the closeness and camaraderie he experiences from his fellow human beings.
It then follows that man looks for acceptance. He figures that one simple road to acceptance is to be on common ground, in one homogeneous form. He rationalises that if from his interior disposition to his exterior actions he can achieve oneness with his counterparts, recognition and approval become inevitable. From this reasoning is born man’s fundamental nature of following others.
Besides, several other natural conditions at work constantly push man to follow another. From infancy we learn the fine art of imitation. We try to follow our parents, siblings, friends and companions. Whether it is curiosity or compulsion, early on, we somehow figure out that following others around us is a sure way to feel part of a group. Thus neighbourhood children will move around in groups following one another, playing cricket and hide-and-seek. Even when they are a menace around the locality and are on the want-list for breaking window panes around the neighbourhood, they feel secure in a group.
They will cautiously hide behind another and claim innocence. Behind the power of a group their mischievous acts are sanctified. And as there are several neighbourhoods, with several groups simultaneously playing the game and several windows getting smashed by the sixes of the budding cricketers all at the same time, it really is no big a deal. This philosophy gets deeprooted and sticks through adolescence and much of adulthood.
Shifting focus from following others, there is yet another facet of man that drives him to be like others. Called the ‘mimetic theory’, it is that deep-seated human nature residing in a man to mimic or copy others. Espoused by Rene Girard, the Franco-American philosopher of social science, after his study on human behaviour and human culture, the model throws light on the tendency of man to desire what the people around him desire. He concluded that man seems to want something not necessarily because he needs it, rather because other people need it. In other words, man seeks those things that others seek. He acts in ways others act. And consequently, man is constantly mimicking others in society. He does not stop to examine the right or the wrong of what he mimics. As long as he is mimicking others, he gets to feel significant.
The double effect of following others and mimicking others seems to be at the root of the excuse of everyone-is-doing-it. As a society, we have all come to follow one another, and to mimic one another, even if it means doing all that is irrelevant, irresponsible and irrational.
From minor offenses such as throwing garbage, smoking in a non-smoking area, cutting lanes in traffic, parking in no-parking areas, breaking queues, disorderliness in following a file, keeping the cell phone on in silent zones, polluting the air through badly maintained vehicles, liberal and wasteful use of water and other resources, indifference towards the environment, sloppiness at work, tardiness and the like, to more serious offences such as giving and receiving bribes, breaking laws, evading tax, accumulating black money, defrauding others in business dealings, partnering in illegal activities, cheating and slandering individuals, modern man seems to be caught in the web of wrongdoing without an iota of guilt or shame. He seems to consider that it ought to be the accepted norm with everyone in the society engaged in these transgressions at some point of time or the other to a lesser or greater degree.
Let’s face it
Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian novelist, essayist, and philosopher, rightly observed, “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” It is high time then to face the truth that “wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it, and right is right even if no one is doing it.”
Doing something wrong collectively does not make it right for any one individually. In fact, a society that takes cover under the excuse that ‘everyone is doing it’ can only be a regressive one. Dr Laura Schlessinger, one of the most popular talk show hosts in radio history and well-known author, rightly commented, “The everybody’s-doing-it excuse amounts to dropping humanity to its lowest common denominator.”
When we use a faceless ‘everybody’ to guide our choices, we are in fact forfeiting our right to use our knowledge, understanding, values and principles in a way they have to be used, namely, independently and responsibly. In such a situation, there is also the danger that when these choices prove to be faulty, foolish and lacking in moral and ethical values, we will have no one to fall back on.
When we adopt the ways of others and mimic them for its own sake, we are susceptible for exploitation and are puppets in the hands of the trendsetters. We become victims of circumstances. We can be influenced and in fact cheated at the will of the ‘everybody’ who does it. We have read and laughed at the fate of the thoughtless monkeys who simply followed and mimicked the cap-seller in a popular children’s tale that went like this: A cap-seller travels by walk through a forest to a nearby village. As it was a sunny day, the cap-seller decides to lie down under a tree and take rest for some time. He soon drifts into a nap. While he is asleep, a group of monkeys come down the tree and pull the cap-seller’s bag. They open the bag and find the colourful caps inside it. The monkeys pick up the caps and climb back up the tree.
The cap-seller, on waking up after a while, is startled to find his bag open and the monkeys having his caps. Devastated and angry, the cap-seller shouts at the monkeys on the tree. The monkeys shout back at him. Further confounded, the cap-seller throws stones at the monkeys. This time the monkeys throw the fruits they had in their hands at the cap-seller. This surprises the cap-seller and instantly an idea hits him. He removes the cap he is wearing and throws it on the ground. The monkeys, watching him, also do the same. They throw all the caps down in no time. As the cap-seller collects all the caps, the monkeys are left high and dry at the stupidity of what they had just done by mimicking the cap-seller blindly.
When we take cover behind the veil of the excuse that everyone is doing it and so sanctify all our wrong-doings, it is bound to hurt us. Like the monkeys in the story, we will have to suffer the consequences of the wrong-doings in unison. All are left poorer. We all lose in the process. This, however, is not how a progressive society works. A progressive society is one where everyone wins all the time. It is time that we rose up to face the truth that the ‘everyone’s doing it’ excuse is drawing all towards collective doom.
Precedence will always allure a society and its members in its functioning. A good precedence can safely be allowed to perpetuate. But where the precedence is clogged with ignorance, injustice and mistakes, its continued adoption spells doom and destruction. Thus a paradigm shift of moving from the excuse that ‘everybody’s doing it’ is the need of the hour.
Taking personal responsibility and breaking from erroneous ways require much effort. Taking the road less travelled along the right way is a challenge. But, as Robin Sharma, author and motivational speaker, would point out, “Blaming others is excusing yourself.”
Standing up, doing what is right even if that means standing aloof and correcting the flawed ways of the world is no ordinary task. But one that will produce results, propel personal efficiency and set a person aside as a mover and shaker in history. Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and many other prominent figures in world history stood tall not by birth, money or glamour. Rather by questioning the wrong practices in society. They stood for what they believed to be right even if it meant imprisonment and death.
“Ideals are like stars you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny,” said Carl Schurz, a German revolutionary, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army General in the American Civil War. Unless society learns to live by worthy ideals, the risk of doing things wrong all the time and masking them as right because everyone is doing them is forever a lurking reality. It is as real as the gravitational force of the universe.
But we need to break free from this pull and move farther away from the excuse to chase a worthy destiny. This will require a good blend of timeless wisdom, intelligence and courage. As Dr Frank Crane, an American minister and renowned speaker, put it, “We must correct the errors of our fathers if we would enable our children to correct ours... We are on our way to the Golden Age. The momentum of what has been must be supplemented by the steam of original conviction and guided by the intelligence and courage of the present.”