23 Skid Do

Dearest D.,

For whatever reason the other day at work my thoughts drifted to a moment you and I shared the evening we attended the performance of Cirque du Soleil at around Christmas time a couple of years ago. While the entire evening proved to be rather curious. It’s the time we spent waiting in the line for the shuttle to take the return trip to the parking deck where we were parked and the brief discussion we had after getting off the shuttle that proved to be quite telling.

As we were leaving the tent to find the correct place to line up for the bus, we took a wrong turn and ended up at the front of the line rather than the end. We found our way to the end of the line and queued up with the rest of the masses to await our turn. After we’d been in line for about 15 minutes there was a massive surge forward in the line due to the loading of two carriages that had arrived. When the crowd surged forward we became separated due to the fact that rather than move in rhythm with the crowd you instead chose to push your way forward through the crowd with little regard to my inability to do so at the same time due to a couple standing in front me blocking my way.

Therefore, I spent the final 30 of our total 45 minute wait listening to a drunken group standing next to us getting progressively louder and more obnoxious. The most interesting part of eavesdropping on their conversation was the lamenting out loud as to whether they’d make the final water taxi back to Virginia or be trapped at National Harbor all night. All the while, seeing you standing ten feet in front of me looking around at the crowd like a lost dork through most of it and me getting evermore annoyed at the fact you made absolutely no effort to work your way back to where I was standing but rather left me standing alone for 30 minutes.

That kind of says it all doesn’t it?

Having arrived back at our parking destination and getting off the coach, as we were walking to the car I jokingly asked, “I wonder if that group of drunks made their water taxi?”

You looked at me and yelled, “Why do you even care? They were drunk! They deserve whatever happens to them.” as a horrified couple walking in front of us turned around to see what you were yelling about.

“It’s a funny thing I do baby,” I quipped, “I care.” I then pulled my cell phone out of its case, checked the time and said, “Uh oh. 11:17. Two minutes past shove-off time, let’s hope they made it…” You continued to march forward without saying a word.

What I forgot in the moment that evening as I was confronted with your inexplicable lack of compassion and anger is the psychological theory in which your reaction to the situation is basedthe just-world hypothesis or more aptly the just world fallacy. As the wiki page for this phenomena states, “[the] just-world hypothesis, refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is just so strongly that when they witness an otherwise inexplicable injustice they will rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it.”

Along with the need to believe the world is just, individuals often have the need to believe the world is a fair place. Because as stated on www.sociopathic.net , “According to the just-world hypothesis, people have a need to believe the world is fair so that they can maintain feelings of control over their own eventual fate.”

I can recall on at least one occasion you claimed that something I did wasn’t “fair” from your viewpoint. What I didn’t tell you at the time, which might have proved beneficial at the time (or not) is that I find it beyond annoying when someone tells me that something isn’t fair. Ask a parent with a child who is born with a serious health condition or someone stricken with a terminal illness if the world is a fair place and you’ll most likely get an answer lacking support in such a hypothesis.

So given you expressed to me that you believe people deserve what they get and you think there is a certain amount of fairness/unfairness to the world then you must ascribe to the just-world fallacy, I assume. That if anything unfortunate happens to anyone, it’s deserved regardless of circumstance.

If one is to follow such logic I have to wonder, did Yeardley Love deserve to be brutally beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend George Huguely who out-weighed her by nearly 100 pounds? Did Sakia Gunn deserved to be stabbed and killed while waiting for the bus at 3:00 a.m in Newark, N.J. by a complete stranger (Richard McCullough) who was angered by her disinterest in his sexual advances due to the fact she was a lesbian? Did Matthew Sheppard deserve to be pistol whipped, tied to a fence, and left for dead by two young men (Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson) who has voiced the intent to rob a gay man to their respective girl friends?

I would hope any rational human being would say no.  None of these individuals deserved what happened to them.

Which leads me to wonder, did I deserve the passive-aggressive subtle bullying you exhibited toward me via email and in person? Did your friends and my friends deserve the same that I witnessed you exhibit toward them? No, neither I nor they deserved it. But you did it just the same, and on some level I allowed it.

It’s funny like the person who rationalizes that a victim of a crime must have some how deserved it. It’s so easy to rationalize the behavior of the perpetrator just the same. But he’s such a nice guy when he’s not angry, drunk, in the middle of ‘roid rage…

Never again will I allow it.

As always, sending you much love!