Immune to social “bad” epidemics is almost missing in us
The film “Communist” was screened in 1958. If we leave the ideology and other external “accessories” aside, it was a talented and innovative work for its time, which incidentally won the international recognition. There is such an episode in this film: the main character (whose role was playing by a very gifted young actor Yevgeny Urbansky) must get the train with food to the destination, which had stopped because of no fuel. Two employees of the railway station remain not implicated to the urgings of Urbansky’s hero to help with something. And at that time, he takes the ax and starts cutting huge trees. One day, after uninterrupted working, the two “lazy” joined him. These two people did not become communist, they simply were infected with the faith of the hero. The psychological mechanisms of being infected with good and bad things are not fully studied.
Like millions of young people around the world, I smoked my first cigarette in the school restroom. Of course, not because I had an irresistible desire to enjoy nicotine (fortunately, I have never had such a desire) but just to communicate with my peers easily. Smoking was a mechanism of social adaptation. If the majority of my peers had gone to a gym after classes, I would probably be infected with it. Thus, we always face a choice: to be infected with useful and harmful behavior or emotions. But agree that being infected with harmful behavior is more likely, and the studies of the psychologists proves it.
The scientists of the University of Groningen, the Netherland, were especially leaving the bicycles under the signboard which banned doing it, they were taking the carts for carrying food to the parking place though there was also a signboard urging not to do it. It was a “proof” for the rest of the people that you can do the same. Moreover, being “inspired” by this bad examples, people began littering in the same placed and walk on the grass. Indeed, professor Preobrazhenski from the “Dog’s Heart” novelette noted rightly that the destruction first occurs in our heads.
There is also one nuance. When the campaign against wrong behavior is accompanied by the publication of statistical data, it may have just the opposite influence. For example, if a serious sociological research is conducted and found out that let’s say, 86 per cent of Armenia’s traffic police are corrupt, then it will be a signal for the ones passing by this case that this is an exemplary behavior for the “traffic cops”. If the 86 per cent is as such, then why I should not be one of them. People usually tend to an “average arithmetic” behavior, otherwise, your community, your group and your nation may “look at you askance”. In this case, if you are a traffic police and are not one of this 86 percent, then it is very likely that they will not accept you and will expel you from this “brotherhood”. Being loyal to the standards of some exemplary groups is the most powerful incentive of human behavior.
What is the majority of Armenia’s population infected with? With various good and bad things. One of the latter is to spend the “free time” with the “poor” talks about the “state of this country”. These conversations are extremely infectious, more infectious than the swine flu or even the plague, as in the case of these epidemics, there are chances that there is immune in people’s body but the social immune is almost missing in us. If during these conversations, you say that it is not “this country” but our state, it will be perceived as a strictly marginal point of view, more marginal than the stance of the “traffic cop” that does not take a bribe. The social epidemic has quickly spread out in 25 years, certainly, like all epidemics, having objective grounds. Immune is almost missing with average and older age people, and we do everything possible to break the resistance with young people too.
The solution is simple: to teach children from kindergarten that remaining in the minority in any issue is not reprehensible and abhorrent, as well to teach others that if a person is different from the “main mass” in something, there is nothing terrible in it. For example, I’m left-handed but when I went to school in 1967, the Soviet pedagogy was insisting that it will be perceived badly. Therefore, I am writing with my right hand.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN,
“Aravot” daily
