Jack Seay - May 8, 2001
There are no people, there is only a person. There are no men and women. There is only a man or a woman.
When I use the word "psychology" as I do below, I am speaking of popular psychology as found in many popular books and in hundreds of denominations of psychiatric counseling. I am not speaking of the technical discipline of psychological study of memory, brain chemistry, learning ability, etc. Those are separate branches.
Yesterday, I listened to a book by Judge Judy. She claimed often to be able to know all about a person instantly. She often said men are like this and women are like this. All on the basis of psychology. This is a dangerous approach to law, to deciding the fate of people and the disposition of their lives and property. If there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that I can know virtually nothing about someone by looking at them or in a short amount of time. I used to be an avid people watcher. I would look at crowds of people and try to figure out what individuals were like by looking at their appearance. I have stopped doing this because it is futile. Every one is an individual. When I know nine things about someone, I am not safe in assuming I can guess a tenth thing about them. Perhaps I may be right if I guess. But I can't know it until I verify it. Sociology says things like 57% of men are like this, based on surveys. This may be crowd psychology of a sort, but it tells nothing about individuals. I can't look at an individual man or woman and say they are like this because 90% of a group fits this category. Individuals are exactly that. Each and every attribute of that individual is an unknown until I find out and verify it for that person individually. Psychology is the religion of thinking it is safe to apply the statistics of sociology to individuals. It is not safe. People can't be put in boxes and labeled like popcorn. There are no cardboard walls to group us into categories of buttered or cheeze covered. We are all individual kernals. And just because there may be outward similarities of appearance or action, it is not safe to assume that, based on past experience or someone else's opinion, we can know what is inside someone.
We cannot know someone's motive for doing something until they tell us. There is no basis for guessing. That is making an unwarranted assumption without evidence. It may be true sociologically that 80% of people who do X do it because of Y, but that tells us nothing when an individual stands before us who has done X. We do not know. We can guess Y and be right 80% of the time, but we are gambling with someone's life if we are deciding their fate based on that. I don't believe I would fare well in Judge Judy's court, because I rarely agree with the majority on most things. Sociologically, I am in the minority most of the time. But no one agrees with the majority position on everything. So when someone is judged based on "Oh, he's a man or woman and men or women are like this" an unwarranted assuption has been made that an individual person can be judged based on statistics. I call this injustice.
Have I been guilty of injustice? Yes, many times. I used to believe in psychology. I used to believe I could know someone's motives or thoughts by looking at them, or assigning them to a "personality type" after a short acquaintance. I was wrong. Now when I look at someone, I only see their outward appearance. I can say they dressed a certain way today or they are smiling. But until I ask, I don't know why they are smiling or why they dressed a certain way today. I can guess and maybe be right, but I can't know until I ask.