We Really Don’t Like to Violate Social Norms
Did you note all the folks milling around outside the shooter’s building? They were pointing, talking and trying to get the attention of law enforcement officers. While hard to tell from the brief video clips, they must have been just 10, 20 or 30 yards away.
First, and without reservation, hats off to them for noticing and trying to raise attention.
But some other things jumped out at me. A guy with a rifle was just yards away, clearly getting ready to do something despicably awful, yet people were milling around casually like they were viewing something in a zoo, with some magical protective wall between them and the source of violence. At that point, no one knew this idiot’s intentions. Was he just hanging out of a roof with a rifle? Was he going to take shots at the stage? Or was he about to unleash a “kill as many MAGA hats as I can” rampage?
I also noticed that efforts to get attention were, in the scope of all this craziness, relatively tame and, for lack of a better word, polite. While it may have happened, and I just didn’t pick it up on the videos, the witnesses didn’t lose their collective minds to raise attention to the matter.
Believe me, I’m not criticizing those there. Again, kudos to them for being observant and making an effort to do something. What I am saying is that we all have a seemingly insurmountable aversion to doing things outside of our society’s definition of normal behavior. It would seem socially awkward to start screaming at the top of your lungs and making a scene in public, wouldn’t it?
If we see something so entirely unexpected like this, or a guy walking into a restaurant with a gun, are we prepared to make a public spectacle of epic proportions? If you saw something awry, would you, without hesitation, do something like break through a door or window where you “weren’t allowed to go” to escape before something bad started? I’d postulate that our brains are so strongly wired not to do crazy stuff like that in public that it would be a big mental hurdle to overcome in a split second.
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