I have, for some years now, subscribed to the notion that different people live in totally different worlds. I mean this in the sense that two people can look at approximately the same data, and come to two completely different conclusions about that data.
The first time a really remember clicking to this was back at SFASU, in Dr. Legg’s recreastion management class. We were discussing campsite design, and why all the campsites you see in state parks are right up next to the roads, parking spaces, and each other. All of us outdoors-lovers in the class thought this was terrible; we wanted to put the sites way back in the woods surrounded by trees, where you didn’t have all those ugly cars and noisy other people around. As Dr. Legg pointed out, this was exactly what we would want, but this was awful for people who spent all their lives living in cities. A person who has lived his entire life surrounded by high rises knows, deep down in his bones, that it isn’t safe in the deep wilderness like that. There are things, like bears or snakes, that could get you. This, of course, was very funny to the students in the class; of course a random bear isn’t going to run up and eat you in a tame state park because you’re thirty feet from the road instead of ten. Dr. Legg then asked how many of the people there would be eager to walk around in Houston’s Fifth Ward alone. Not many hands raised. And yet, as he pointed out, there are little old ladies who walk through that area every single day to buy groceries and talk to their neighbors, perfectly safely. It’s only the silly rural folks who believe, deep down, that inner city areas have things, like drug dealers and murderers, who could get you if you walk around there.
His point, and it’s a good one, was that you can’t design public facilities to be used by people who think like yourself; you have to plan for everyone. But there’s another thing I drew from it, which is to what a huge degree your experience influences your perceptions.
Two people, both educated and both intelligent, can look at one campsite. One of them will think it’s pretty uncivilized; it’s so far from a road, or a real building; there aren’t any street lights; it’s like being in the jungle! The other person thinks it’s only one step from camping in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. And they’re going to have a very difficult time relating these things to each other.
You see this in a lot of places. Look at history. Go stand a U.S. citizen and a British citizen next to each other and ask what the War of 1812 was about. It’s fascinating. Look at how different historians interpret famous events.
This was made clear to me at a D&D session the other night. Assorted people playing assorted characters. Noteworthy is that this group of player characters contains, essentially, a big pack of morally ambiguous ne’er-do-wells with hearts of gold and one single paladin. Fight scene vs. monster of the week, a wererat, occurs. Rat-man is cleaning our clocks, but timely magic puts it to sleep. Great. Fight is over. All the edgy petty criminals of the group begin figuring out how we’ll tie up or cage the rat and transport it to the authorities to stand trial for murder, possibly after making it reveal its nefarious plan to us. Paladin hesitates not a moment in standing over the rat-man and trying to deliver a coup-de-grace to it while it’s helpless.
Most of the players there were fairly surprised by this. I know I was. Not because the player of the paladin would want to finish off the monster once and for all rather than taking the trouble to transport it; that’s standard behavior for him. Rather, that a player would do that with a paladin character. Paladins are the stereotypical knight-in-shining-armor good guys of the D&D system; they actually get mechanically punished for doing things which aren’t good and honorable and so forth. For me, at least, killing a helpless foe is a clear-cut evil action, and likewise not particularly honorable. It’s often pragmatic, and I’ve had characters coup-de-grace helpless foes before, but it was always to demonstrate that those characters were being evil or dishonorable.
It was odd to realize that the player in question didn’t have that association. It’s one of those points that you don’t realize you haven’t yet examined. A thing that is obvious but not universal. That interests me.