Intruding on the Default

It is a curious society that we have created where we have to put up with intrusion.

Humans don’t truly respect one another in our modern society. We constantly intrude on one another and take advantage of our unwillingness to create conflict, giving the advantage to the intruder.

Take concepts like silence and darkness. By default, silence is the norm. You can’t create silence, you can only protect it. Noise is created. And when loud enough, it intrudes on another’s silence. Similarly with the dark of night. The cycle of day and night is what we have evolved with, and humans are a diurnal species, as much as we try to fight it. And again, humans intrude on one another with artificial light.

Your front door has long been an invitation to intrusion by door-to-door salesman, creating long standing issues and complaints. The invention of the phone has created an invitation to intrusion by telemarketers, thieves, pollsters and other uninvited persons. Same with invention of e-mail and even the traditional post office mail itself. By default your door, your phone, your e-mail isn’t an invitation to bother you. To intrude on you. But we treat them like they are.

In many communities, the fight to have the right to have access to fresh outdoor air is lost to those wishing to have outdoor wood burning fires in urban areas. If someone’s fire is causing smoke to enter your home, you have to close your doors and windows.

Your very presence is an invitation to someone else intruding on it for their own gain. For their own benefit. Even if your default wish is to be left alone.

And your only recourse is to complain. To create conflict. Because you have been intruded on without invitation. And you can be blamed for creating conflict, even though you are the victim and have been harmed.

“While it is possible to empathize with [the complainant] for the sleep disruption he has endured, there is no excuse for the course of action he threatened and the action he took in knocking on [the president’s] door in the early hours on one morning. What is even more troubling is that during this hearing, [the complainant] expressed no remorse for his threats and action and no understanding that what he did was wrong. He excused his actions as the only way to get the board’s attention.”

It is a curious society that we have created where we have to put up with intrusion. We have no right to be left alone. We have no right to silence, or to sit in the dark. We have no right to an untroubled nights sleep, or even to fresh air.

Our de facto default is to give credence to the intruder. Our laws say otherwise, but they’re an inconvenience to enforce. So we are asked to accommodate the intruder, to find common ground.

But how do you find common ground when you don’t want to be intruded on at all?

That we don’t respect one another enough to be considerate in advance of intruding on one another is one reason I am not that surprised about how we behaved to one another during the COVID pandemic. We don’t respect the other’s right to life, dignity and the pursuit of happiness. We respect our own, and we don’t care that by doing so we deprive others of theirs.

A society where individuals don’t care for one another, don’t respect one another, that regularly intrude on each one another is a society destined for conflict, division and polarization.

The primacy we place on individualism has created a society where I have the right to trample you in my pursuit of happiness, and I dare you to complain.

Humans don’t truly respect one another in our modern society. Until we fix that, we are lost.