Battleangel

StoryBox: Something that I’ve never quite been able to understand is why people are so eager to confuse and even disrespect social roles. And I’m not referring to their own but rather those of others.

They just don’t get it.

On the one hand I can see how an individual will seem very singular to the casual outside observer. Psychological theories suggest this and provide the explanations for it. But that is not really the issue. Rather, I am curious why one would choose to interact with the same well-known person in different roles under different circumstances. I.e. in a case where they know all the roles a person play (or at least several of them and interact with multiple roles) and also know that this person is forced to act a certain way in certain roles. They must also be aware that what they do to a person in one role is bound to come back and haunt them as that person takes on the OTHER role which they also interact with. Ehrr, anyway …

For example: Imagine that you interact with someone in the context of work or university. Would it be OK to have a barbeque with your colleagues, go and have a drink, interview someone for some unessential reason, have a romance with someone that you meet on a daily basis other otherwise engage in socializing activity beyond the call of duty and OUT OF CONTEXT?
At any rate this is what people do. In fact they don’t seem to view this as strange or inappropriate in any way.

As far as I am concerned this type of behavior is incomprehensible. I would even go so far as to call it unprofessional. In some cases we even depend on keeping things separated. Fraternizing to a greater extent than is absolutely necessary seems more like a liability than a survival tactic. Yet people are eager to blur the line. And those that do seldom realize what it is they are doing. The more mixed up everything gets the better it is for them. And I’m not complaining here and saying that it is the end of the world or anything but it does mark a certain unrealism and infantile, unprofessional view of things.

Are we really this desperate? That we have to treat the person next us as probably, possibly the last person we’re ever gonna meet? Like we are Robinson Crusoe stuck on some godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere.