A Fraction Of People...

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The population of the entire world is eight billion plus, and it goes to say that no matter how rich or famous we are, no matter how widely traveled we are, we’d never be able to meet every single one of them. There are just so many people in the world that it’s not even realistic to achieve in a lifetime. Hell, even in a country, state, or town. There is no way you can ever really meet everyone.

It might happen in small villages, knowing every single person who lives there, but before you can know that much, you’d have lived there for an extended period of time. This is just a fact. At every single moment, we’re only dealing with a fraction of the population of the world. As a matter of fact, less than half of a fraction even.

And yeah, for many of us, the decisions we make end up affecting people on a grand scale, people that we may never meet or even realize what we caused for them. But in reality, we’d only ever meet a handful of people in our lifetime. From the high hundreds to a few thousands, depending on how social and outgoing we are. When you factor in the brief encounters, the failed friendships, the ones who passed on to glory… all in all, they will only ever amount to a few thousand.

Now, compare that to the total number of people all over the world, and then you realize that you really haven’t met people yet. You’ve only met some people, not everyone. And this is the reason I find it irksome when people judge an entire demography based on the ill activities of a small group of people. When one person gets their heart broken, they immediately tag it as something unique to that particular gender, making it seem like every one of them is the same.

These are part of the things that fuel controversial issues like racism, tribalism, and religious extremism. Maybe at one point or the other, you had an unfavorable experience with certain people. Hell, it was even more than once, making it seem like a pattern. But then, when you consider the total number of those people that actually exist in the world, you’d realize that maybe you had been too hasty in lumping them all together. Imagine judging 3 million people wrongly over the sins of just 12 people. How is that fair?

But then again, this has also turned out to be a sort of defense mechanism for us all. Because we find ourselves resorting to this when we feel it favors us, or when we believe it’s in our best interest. We judge people wrongly simply because we don’t want to get hurt. This cuts across several controversial topics, but I won’t go into much detail. But I’d share one major example, one that I’ve always talked about in this space: the Police.

Due to past experiences with the Police, nobody has ever had something good to say about them. And most of the time, people prefer to endure criminal acts that are harmful to them, just to avoid the trouble that comes with getting too entangled with them. You could call them in an emergency, and they’ll fail to respond. When they eventually come, the danger will have been averted, but they’ll pick everyone in sight. They could be used as tools for oppression by those who can actually afford them. It’s just a crazy pattern.

And as a result, many people prefer to just stay away from them. And just seeing them is enough to get everyone’s walls to climb up. You see them, and at once you imagine them as being untrustworthy and aggressive, even violent. There are about 150k+ (not sure about this number) number of active police officials in the country, and you’ll only ever meet a handful of them, but everyone has the same reaction when they come across a police officer.

Of course, thanks to social media, we’re able to hear stories of other people who have gone through similar things like us, making us sort of trauma bond with each other. On social media, we find other people who have suffered from police brutality and whatnot, reinforcing our distrust in them and reminding us why we chose to stay away.

But then, on the same social media, there will be those who come online to praise certain officers as well, talking about how they did their job really well, and they were a breath of fresh air from the norm that everyone was used to.

And that’s the beauty of social media: while you can only physically meet a few thousand people in your lifetime, you can meet millions through social media. And through that, we’ve seen that every story we thought we knew, there will always be something to counter it. Stories that painted people as angels or villains turn out to be something totally different.

Many people still view the world through the stunted lens, and I can’t blame them. But I feel it’s high time we stop blaming people for something others who belong to the same demography did to us. Don’t go around breaking hearts just because your ex broke yours and you feel all of them are the same. Don’t go around hating on police officers, or a certain religion, tribe, race, culture… because I can assure you that what you think you know is ridiculously little.

If you actually take out the time to do some research, you’ll find enough to actually convince you to approach every new person you meet with a clean slate. Not hate, and not love. Just neutral. Give everyone an equal chance to prove themselves. Because in the end, it will always be a personal decision to be a villain or a hero.

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_{Thank you for this. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I would love to know what you’re thinking. Till we meet in the next post.}

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_{N.B: All images used in this post are mine. The thumbnail was designed using Canva.}

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