All up in my grill

Friday night was a complete disaster on most accounts. The bars were packed and the crowd was bad. I drank too many vodkas and got into an argument with a friend. Or maybe the argument came before the vodkas, hard to say. Either way, the argument wasn't the interesting part. What both amazed and surprised me was other peoples reaction's to my description of this argument and my reasoning behind it. Some of my friends immediately understood it with little explanation needed. Others were completely baffled as to how I could have possibly been upset about something like that.

Being the somewhat odd person that I am, I decided to do a little bit of research into why people get so offended in social situations. "People" being myself in this instance. As it turns out, people don't really act rationally. Unless they are brain damaged that is. Rationalism is just a myth perpetrated by economists who don't have contact with other humans, only money. In fact, experiments have shown that people will often act irrationally if they perceive that they are being treated unfairly. They will respond by "punishing" the other person for treating them badly rather than acting in their ultimate best interest. I was going to give an example of this from my own personal life but there are so many I became overwhelmed and couldn't think of just one.....hmmmmm. Shocking. Apparently, our ability to judge whether or not we are being treated fairly emerges before our language skills do. Maybe since I have an advanced vocabulary, I also have a highly fine tuned sense of fairness.............damn those GRE flash cards. I guess there is something to be said for reading at a sixth grade level.

The final leg of my research revealed another interesting fact. For better or worse, my sense of morality and fairness is not only triggered in response to a perceived slight against myself. I also have been known to become highly incensed on behalf of both friends and strangers. Some friends, particularly those who avoid conflict like the plague, find my strong public reactions upsetting. For example, several months ago I was riding the train and became highly agitated that a man was preaching against gay people. I think he was talking to this girl on my left with a pretty red flag homo hair cut. As everyone else tried to go to their happy place I proceeded to tell the man that he was actually diarrheaing in his mouth and then try to stick my toe in his butt. Granted it wasn't the most mature response but one that I felt was fitting given the situation. Relating this story to a friend later she was horrified and unable to understand why I felt the need to react or respond. Well to her I say, because it is science.
These moral enforcers are vital to society. Frans de Waal writes that experiments with macaques show that if you remove the individuals who perform this policing function, hostilities increase among the entire band.
Keeping the social order my friend, keeping the social order.

This is all to say that hostilities are an unfortunate but inevitable part of social exchanges. Fairness and reciprocity are ingrained and if slighted we will react. We will also react on the part of others. So I guess it is only natural that upon hearing my story some people reacted to my offended sense of fairness and other were offended by what they perceived as a the lack of fairness on my part towards my friend.....

What a sticky wicket.