Schopenhauer's Whip : or a Treatise on Intrusive Behavior among Humans and Imperfect Evolution

Even in so-called polite society, people always knowingly or unknowingly, and often for the transgressor, imperceptibly, intrude into each other's personal spaces. While the examples I am going to cite might appear trifling to a broad majority of people, those of a more sensitive disposition, those that prefer decorum and logic in their actions, those that are given to considerable reflection, might feel extremely violated by such callous behavior, and even those that like to feel part of the herd might be given to under-estimation of the magnitude of the problem unless directly faced with it themselves.

Noise would be a commonplace and identifiable problem, and thus a good place to start with. Many human actions such as moving around, listening to music, cooking food, snoring in sleep, clawing on a blackboard, or making love involve setting the ambient air into vibrations, that then get carried over to other people's spaces as sound, which would then inevitably impinge on their eardrums, fire some neurons and occupy brain space. Sounds can be pleasant too and sometimes carry important information, but casually emitted sound by one person, such as by whistling to himself for one's own merriment, might cause a great deal of irritation to another. The greatest problem with noise, especially loud and shrill noise, is that it interferes with one's ability to concentrate. Thus the selfish pursuit of pleasure by one person could wreck the productivity of another. Noise also interferes with sleep, further degrading a person's productivity. Music that is pleasant to one may not be so to another, or the other may not be in the mood for the same kind of music that one is listening to right then. This leads to a sense of violation in the other person, who grows irritable because she has to receive all these sounds that do not interest her, have this despicable other-personly feel about them and reduce her control over her personal space. The solutions are simple : go as far away from other people as you can when you have to make noise, try to keep noise minimal, buy a headphone, emit sounds at the correct frequencies (preferably ultra- or infra- sonic so that it's beyond human hearing range), keep doors and windows shut, do not gab unnecessarily, keep calm, etc.

Sights could be a considerable source of anguish too, unlike what popular perception might seem to suggest. No object should be made to be an assault on the optical nerves. A garishly painted house or car or a bad piece of artwork could be an eyesore. Dressing is very important here, since the garb is intimately connected to the social representation of our selves. Public exhibitionism, to cite an extreme example, would be a gross violation of one's right to visual decorum. Solutions are even simpler than for noise : do not look very ugly or carry ugly objects, fit in with prevalent dressing norms, strip only in places designated for it, do not patronize bad art, if you indulge in genocide bury the corpses, etc.

We could go on about all the senses : people shouldn't emanate foul smells in others' presence, shouldn't touch or feel up another person without consent, and the like, but you get the gist already. So next we address the complicated question of direct human behavior. Certain forms of human behavior such as bullying, bonhomie and bedding other people, by definition involve interaction with other person(s). Often however these overtures can be of a highly intrusive nature. Even if we were to leave aside extreme and malicious instances of such behavior such as abuse or harassment, unintentional intrusion can be almost equally painful. Take the example of proposing to a person after being romantically smitten by him/her. The irrational people who indulge in this behavior are usually guided by their own selfish feelings to possess another, and often without much care for the feelings of the other. A proposal is entirely redundant actually because if you try associating with the person you are attracted to, for sometime, you automatically figure out whether the feelings are reciprocal. Proposals usually come from selfish, irrational people looking to force a quick binary response from the other because they lack in the patience and skill to engage with him/her for some length of time in a non-intrusive manner. The way our social norms work, men are expected to propose while the women play coy and hard-to-get, and most people actually play by these stereotypical rules. The men considered more successful in the mating game can churn out factory-made proposals without much ado, and the women who are better at hard-to-get can also turn them down without so much as a thought. However the sensitive and reflective individual can be greatly disturbed by such overtures. It seems to me that being an attractive woman of reproductive age must be especially irksome, since you would have to deal with a lot of male attention, verbal and otherwise, all the time. Of course popular perception suggests that women enjoy all the attention. While that may be true for bimbos, I refuse to believe that if I had a pair of ovaries and some extra flesh and curves in places, I would become a very different sort of person, in fact reduce to an "attention whore". I would hate being a woman who had a lot of intrusive attention focused on her all the time. Sometimes I wonder if smart women actually subvert traditional stereotypes of beauty to reduce the level of attention they'd attract. All is not easy for an unintrusive thinking man either, since we get pushed out by our more intrusive chest-thumping counterparts all the time. That is intrusion at another subtler level. Social evolution is far from perfect where sexual behavior is concerned (actually in all respects), and humanity needs to perfect itself to the extent where a lot of such artificial elements could be excised.

Leaving aside sexual politics for the time being, let's come to the politics of the intellect. There are pompous people all over the place, whose verbiage considerably exceeds their abilities and accomplishments. Such people are prone to airing their views, suggestions, opinions, and make other statements that do not fit any of these descriptions, sometimes in extremely condescending, didactic and pedantic ways. They essentially require listeners as an ego-boosting selfish exercise. Such people can be massively intruding because of the following possible reasons : a) you don't care about their opinion but they'll still let you have it, b) you disagree vehemently with their views but still they'd declare them to you, c) they're basically dumb but would conduct themselves extremely officiously. All these would be irritating to you, you would be tempted to give it back to them, and thus waste a lot of time and energy in the process, without actually succeeding in bringing around the person to your viewpoint (such people would love to debate you, but would never budge from their own stands).

This also links up with the question of abuse of power. People in power can intrude into the spaces of people lower in the hierarchy just to feed their own powerlust and megalomania. This is what typically happens in a classroom where the teacher tries to force their way into the students' minds, while wrecking some of their innate creative potentials in the process.

There could be hundreds of other such examples of intrusive human behavior. Such problems do not get highlighted much in the popular consciousness. Social evolution needs to work a lot more towards a more intrusion free society. No doubt this aspect of our primate behavior led Sartre to declare : "Hell is other people". And he was damn right. And things aren't going to change unless we become more tolerant, respectful, and non-intrusive of each other.

This was inspired by Schopenhauer's views on "noise" I merely generalize the idea of "noise" to other possible sources of perturbation that we have to face all the time from our fellow humans.