We Aren’t Selfish After All: In turbulent times, people go from “me” thinking to “we” thinking. By Jim Davies April 29, 2020
There is an unfortunate myth that a crisis means society goes into an “everyone for themselves” mentality.
TIme and time again, in crises all over the world, communities mostly pull together and look to help each other. There are isolated cases where the added stress gets the better of people and these are exacerbated by a click-bait model of journalism that has become the norm in recent times. It seems likely that the reason these isolated incidents get such interest in the media is not because it’s the sort of “degeneration of society” that we might expect to see in a crisis, but because it’s surprising to us.
Try that on for a minute.
The reason these incidents get such interest is because they go against what we expect to see. They are not what we think of as normal and that’s why they capture attention so easily. Like a two-headed gorilla, or a cat goal-keeper. But enough hype and narrow-minded thinking can get us to mistake fights over toilet paper as being what’s expected of people.
Personally, my experience has led me to a much higher opinion of people. And the data back me up.