The masses

It's natural to assume that a crowd of people will behave like water or an amoeba or a nest of ants, creeping and probing until it discovers a path. But a human crowd isn't focused on discovery; it's focused on desire. It's goal-oriented, like a lightning bolt or a cobra. When an event occurs -- a spreading rumor, an opened gate, a shouted order -- each individual calculates what effect it will have on his or her immediate personal objectives and the crowd reacts suddenly and unpredictably.

The best way to control a crowd of humans is therefore to never present it with new information.

Leaving Flatland

I spend almost all my social life thinking fast, spinning, smashing into one face after another. Like a billiard ball. Clonk! Clack! Thud!

All abstraction; no time for anything more accurate.

Yesterday, on a hike, I lingered on the top of a hill while my friends walked away from me. They shrank to the size of my arm, then my hand, then my thumb, and then they were just a part of the forest that I happened to know very well -- bouncing hair, black coats, cocked elbows. They became concrete. I'd never felt so protective of them, or so proud.