As I pass people in the street, in a store or some other public place, I tend to greet them with a smile. I wish I could say that this was a pure of act of beneficence, but the truth is I am always curious as to how people react to being greeted. Some people look away and are silent. Some smile and look uncomfortable. Some give you wild stares that suggest you are being mentally gunned down with a machine gun. Some give you the dirtiest of dirty looks. And, depending on which part of the world you’re in, sometimes people may greet you back with a big smile.
This social game of greet-or-puke arises out of our two logical choices in such situations – either we embrace the stranger as a fellow human being, or we reject them as foreign basterds who we share nothing in common with. We are often unsure what our duty is. For example, whenever I get my hair cut the hairdresser or barber starts talking to me as though we’re on a speed-date. Must I humour this person and provide the right answers to her questions, or is it permissible to slouch there, silently cursing the end of an era in which such professionals would work in silence?
Of course all this changes if the stranger turns out to be one you approve of. After a few minutes, you might be pleasantly surprised. “This person isn’t a very well-trained gorilla. This person likes important things.” (Important things are those that I feel are important). In this case you might be happy to discuss the things you both like and hate, reaffirming your own positions on such matters. But this seems entirely random, surely? Are there no rules on the matter? No governmental white papers, no amusing adverts, no NGO studies on the matter?
Naturally, I searched religion for an answer. “Love your neighbour” was one, but this problem concerns exactly those people who aren’t your neighbour. This concerns people you encounter, deal with, handle, or are subject to, those that come and go faster than Ted Bundy in a graveyard. I’m talking about waiters, people in the lift with you, traffic cops, shop assistants, home affairs workers, suburban paedophiles, and any other strangers you encounter during the day. Is there any rule that covers our required social interactions with these people, or is it all just subject to our random assessments at the time?
Of course, the answer is ‘no’. But wouldn’t it be easier if there were such a rule? I believe it would be, and so that’s how I came up with A.R.S.E., the Arbitrary Reaction to Strangers Exercise. What ARSE entails is devising a list of attributes, character traits and prejudices that you can keep your eye out for as you go about your day. Any arbitrary stranger you encounter who has one of these attributes you will automatically be rude to or disregard entirely as another human being. If you cannot spot anything about a person that is on your list, you treat them kindly, courteously and with dignity and respect.
The trick to ARSE is to keep the list relatively short, so as to avoid a situation where you are trying to remember your list when you could very well be giving someone dirty looks or ignoring them. My list was written over several weeks, and these are the people that I will be rude to:
1. Anyone with a visible tattoo.
2. Anyone with a lisp or who speaks very slowly.
3. Anyone with that kind of smile that says “I’m happy, but only because I’m stupid.”
4. Women.
You may copy this ARSE, or come up with your own list. The important thing is that you have a regulated system that decides how you treat people with no further justification required. Not only does this help your choices, but it also helps to explain why other people are rude to you. For example, the other day I was giving dirty looks to this woman with a lisp, when she told me to “sod off”. But I did not take it personally, because I realised that she must have a list of her own! Clearly, she intended to be rude to people who wore black, or didn’t wear glasses, or perhaps who did not wash. Either way, her list was entirely arbitrary, as is mine, and this means that we can rejoice in the fact that in these small social situations, we can take nothing personally, but also nothing for granted.
George Carlin: Have a nice Day
