Complex Numbers

Faithless

PROMPT January 11th

Do you tend to be skeptical or trusting when meeting new people? Is your first impression of someone generally accurate, or does their true character surprise you?

Depends on if they open with "Let me tell you about this wonderful business opportunity | charity | religion | diet."

There was once a subdivision project I worked on where the primary road had to cross the main gas pipeline serving my city. I designed the road, taking due care with the gas main crossing, but one problem remained: while I knew how deep the gas main should have been buried, we didn't know how deep it was actually buried, or even if it was where the drawings claimed it was. So I allowed for some leeway in the design.

Prior to construction, the contractor used a backhoe to dig - very carefully - a test pit over where the gas line should be, and behold, it was in the right place horizontally, if slightly deeper than expected vertically. I went out to inspect the site. I saw not one, but two mains, maybe 8 or 12 inches in diameter. As I was watching them take measurements, an old dude - I'm not sure what his affiliation was: city, developer, contractor, landowner, whatever - came up to the pit smoking a cigarette.

One of the most important lessons in civil engineering (and, I'd wager, other disciplines) is risk management. You not only have to take into account the probability of something happening, but the potential result of failure. For example, if you're building a dam and it has maybe a 1% chance of failure in its 100 year+ lifetime, it matters whether there's a town downstream from it or not. If there isn't, then the 1% chance of failure might be acceptable. But if there is, you maybe work to reduce that chance.

In this case, the chance of there being a gas leak in the main was very slight, though nonzero. But the potential result - if a stray spark from the cigarette touched off a natural gas flare - could be catastrophic. Moral: don't smoke around an open pit with gas pipelines at the bottom, you fucking idiot.

The point of all of this, as relates to the prompt, is that I apply the general principles of risk management to people. Most people aren't murderers. Most people aren't thieves. Most people, even if they don't care about you, won't actively do something to harm you. But the chance with someone you don't know is nonzero. You can't go through life simply avoiding everyone - well, maybe some people can, but I don't trust them worth a concrete barrier that blocks a river - so you take some risks.

Unfortunately, a lot of people generalize this to "people suck." But this ignores simple math: the vast majority of people don't have ill intentions. People don't, as a rule, suck. It's like the folks who say "there's no such thing as a bad dog; only bad owners." Well, I can say that about people, too, though "owner" is definitely the wrong word there, and is probably the wrong word for human companions to dogs.

I realize that this flies in the face of common knowledge, but common knowledge is often neither. There are whole religions based on the idea that we're fundamentally bad and have to work hard at being good. All you have to do is to look at the people who say, "people suck." Do the people who say this suck? Mostly, no. They're saying this because someone did something that didn't live up to their standards. They have standards. Therefore, they're not as bad as the person they're complaining about and generalizing from.

So I go into meeting people with the assumption that they're decent human beings. Most of the time, I'm right. Probably they're self-interested, but hear me out here: it's in most of our self-interests to get along with other human beings. It's part of our nature, along with curiosity and going "awwwww" when we see Baby Yoda on The Mandalorian.

Fortunately, I am immune.

But I digress. I knew a kid when I was a kid who went on to do 20+ years for murder. That's one I know about; I probably knew other people who did bad things. Those people are in the minority. I also knew people who became doctors, firefighters, scientists, etc. What was I going to do, not have any friends because a few of them might grow up to be convicted felons?

So yeah, we have to be careful. Trust might not come easily, but people at least deserve the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

As for "true character," I have some concerns about that phrase. None of us are angels (hell, angels aren't always angels), even if the worst things we've done don't quite measure down to my felonious former friend. Many people, seeing someone get angry or do something bad, assume that's their "true colors," when they might just be having a bad day. That's part of their character, sure, but it's not all of it.

My father, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, was no saint. I wasn't really abused apart from the occasional spanking for misbehavior (which, I will reiterate, wasn't considered abuse at the time), just... well, I'm not going to go into it here; I knew him better than almost anyone, and I saw all sides. But later in life, when he had Alzheimer's, a disease that seems to reveal who people "really" are, one day I went to visit him in the nursing home and it happened to be time to eat. Seeing that I had nothing to eat, he offered me some of his meager meal. Another time - or maybe it was even the same visit; I can't recall - he literally offered me the shirt off his back because I was wearing a t-shirt and he thought I looked cold. And he didn't even know who I was.

Even if you think you know someone, you don't. You have to have a little bit of - this is going to sound strange coming from an atheist - faith. But not faith in something numinous or overarching; I mean faith in humanity. Because as bad as some of us can be, they're outnumbered by people trying to do the right thing.

And because I found out yesterday that Neal Peart, objectively the greatest drummer of all time, passed away this week, today's musical selection is from Rush, and the lyrics (also by Peart) relate to this entry's theme. Thanks, Neal. You will be missed.

I don't have faith in faith
I don't believe in belief
You can call me faithless
You can call me faithless
I still cling to hope
And I believe in love
And that's faith enough for me
And that's faith enough for me

And that's faith enough for me