People
Individually, a human being can be thoughtful, calm, curious. Capable of reasoning, empathy, invention. But once absorbed into ‘people,’ everything blurs. Logic dissolves, nuance vanishes, and what’s left is a kind of choreography of chaos—a crowd perfectly organized to be disorganized.
Take something simple: vacations. Two whole months to travel, sixty days to rest, escape, live differently. And yet, every summer, millions of people choose exactly the same days, the same roads, the same destinations. As if some invisible signal whispered: “Now. Go now. With everyone else.”
The result? Endless traffic jams, exhausted kids in the back seat, gas-station sandwiches, and lukewarm coffee on highway stops. Everyone complains about ‘people,’ without realizing they are part of them. It’s fascinating—collectively, we hate what we collectively create.
But this isn’t just about vacations. It’s universal. Sales season, new product lines, public outrage over a single word, panic-buying over gas prices—it’s all the same pattern. Humanity has a synchronization instinct. A herd reflex disguised as free will.
Individually, though, everyone acts logically. You want to avoid the crowd, but you don’t want to be out of sync. You want to be cautious, but not the odd one out. So you follow, almost unconsciously. Because it’s easier. Because thinking differently often feels lonely.
There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s deeply human. Our instinct to move as a group once kept us alive, helped us build cities, civilizations, digital worlds. But today, it makes us predictable. Predictable to the point of absurdity.
Watch any social moment—a limited-time sale, a viral post, a new outrage cycle—and you can almost time the reaction. You know exactly when the crowd will rise, how long it will rage, and when it will move on. It’s rhythmic, cyclical, almost musical.
Maybe that’s what society is: a giant symphony where everyone believes they’re improvising, when they’re actually playing the same melody as everyone else.
That’s the paradox of people. Taken one by one, they’re capable of thought, kindness, creation. But together, that same intelligence becomes noise. The sum of consciousness somehow produces less awareness, not more.
So yes, ‘people’ often make terrible collective decisions. But not because they’re foolish—because they’re together. Being together is comforting, safe, and dangerous all at once. It’s both a cocoon and a cage.
And maybe the goal isn’t to escape the crowd, but to stay awake within it. To see the wave without riding it. To understand the movement without losing yourself in it. To watch the world as a play you’re part of—but one you can sometimes choose to applaud, or quietly walk out of before the curtain falls.