Annotated 41-7
I appreciate the poetic paradox that Chrissie’s breaking out in panel 3, enough to say to her, “Yeah, that sounds like it can’t possibly be true, AND YET…”
But Xan, while more paranoid than I am, is strangely also chiller than I am, and panel 4 is one place where his low-key nature serves him well. Another kind of nerd would’ve doubled down on his general mistrust of authority and refused to give an inch until the other side conceded or the shouting match was exhausted. But as he did earlier with Shanna, Xan knows how to make peace with an individual by guiding them back to tasks that will help them with their goals.
It’s not that he doesn’t have emotions (and if he’s somewhere on the autism spectrum, he’s not as far into it as he comes across). But still waters run deep with him.
Any ol’ medicine is poison when applied in wrong dosage.
Heck, even axe was probably first tool (granted, could have been hunting tool, aka more killing, but…) before someone thought to whack someone else with it.
It’s any number of movements that first came to be from noble ideal of defending and supporting those who needed defending and supporting, just to devolve into just another side fighting the “good fight” against anyone who doesn’t agree.
Heck! Police are an absolutely vital part of systems. People are greedy, selfish little sheits on average. Just how much you really, really need that X in your life and how little you care about others in your way to getting that McGucchiPS5, that you DEFINITELY deserve, ‘cose you’re a human being and that makes YOU important… Sometimes needs someone there to stop you and tell you you’re doing something wrong.
…
And then there are the people who are greedy, selfish pigs who also happen to be police. And there’s a lot of them. ‘Cose again, people on average lean towards me, me, me. Even a lot of times when they are altruists, it’s because it makes them feel good.
And still systems like police are absolutely vital. And there are definite heroes, saints and saviours the humanity never deserved among them. The system itself isn’t bad.
But there are really bad people using it.
“People are greedy, selfish little sheits on average”
I don’t agree with that.
People do behave greedy and selfish when you expect them to be and treat them accordingly — because they’ll know it’s no use putting on any better behaviour for you.
And you yourself will behave greedy and selfish vis-a-vis people whom you believe to be greedy and selfish, because you think that otherwise they’d just use you.
And done is our little self-fullfilling prophecy!
*Almost* all people are pretty nice towards people whom they think are also nice. Sometimes that fails due to different perceptions of what being nice actually means, but mostly it’s simply lack of trust that gets people to double-cross others.
Exceptions to this rule are either psychopaths or otherwise notably bad people.
Or people who are deep in the self-fulfilling loop you just described, which I think is actually a depressingly large quantity of people.
At this point I have to mention that being greedy in this context is partly used as “if you desire anything over your most basic needs” and selfish being “you have taken what you desire with no thought given to whether what you’re taking would fulfill someone’s basic need”.
There isn’t really too many people who give beyond their capacity to give. Actively harming themselves so that others may benefit in their stead. And even those people do so usually from some moral geas that would leave them feeling lesser if they didn’t act upon it.
Even your example exacted a toll of “being also nice” for people to act similarly nice in return. That is wanting something out of the other before something is given. Or at least the expectation of it becoming such potential for the future.
Then how much indeed people expect to get, for whatever reason, is really the key. Wanting more food when you only have enough to go by is just normal. Wanting more than someone else because you have reasons you believe making yourself more worthy of it than the other are very commonplace. Wanting it despite having no justification for it is sadly usual as well, but is already what we associate with words like “greed” and “selfishness”. And wanting it even if it is removed from another is just as daily and clearly bad. To an extent. If only one of you can survive with the food given, well… Just one of you will survive or you both perish.
And rounding my ramblings back to the comic. There is quite always a want, there is a way to take it, but there will many a times be others who want it too and are willing to take it just the same way you are.
I was just inspired by Xan’s bleak look on life. XD