Benchsitters: One of humanity’s biggest problems is that we’re all so different. Well, maybe not everyone. There are a lot of people who think alike. But there are still a lot of people who approach the same given situation in different ways. It comes natural; it’s just what they do. In some ways, diversity of mind is good. But it also causes car accidents and wars and law suits (why else would we have so many lawyers?).

Let’s go back to driving for just a minute. There are laws that supposedly define which car goes and which car yields, along with stop signs and traffic lights. But there are still a lot of places where it’s a judgement call. And every now and then, there’s a conflicting situation where one person thinks that the other guy should stop, and it just makes perfect sense to the other guy that he should go. And then, CRASH! Happens every day, even when both drivers are fully alert. Then add in some distractions and alcohol and sleepiness, and you see why there are so many tow trucks and car body shops out there. If all the roads were perfect and everyone always followed the law and drove responsibly, accidents would go way down. But there would still be a base number of traffic accidents that could not be eliminated due to mental diversity.

This also helps to explain why the Enlightenment was a such failure with regard to government. For a while there back in the 17th and 18th centuries, European polite society thought that the scientific revolution would carry over into the world of government. We would surely find an optimal way to govern ourselves — utopia would be realized, war and crime would vanish. Well, after all kinds of experiments with egalatarianism and democracy and socialism and communism, we still don’t have a system that fits all circumstances. Actually, we hardly have any ideas that help in any circumstances. Democracy? Works OK in some places (India), bombs out in others (Russia). On both the micro-level of the individual and the macro-level of the nation, there is just too much unexplainable variation in how we think.

I believe that there is an evolutionary, biology-related explanation for the wide diversity of opinions and contrasting ways of thinking about the same given set of facts. It probably helps the human species to survive if the majority of people think “inside the box”, i.e. in ways that conform to the dominant social / environmental conditions and challenges. But it also helps to have some rebels, a few contrarians, a handfull of freaks and weird-o’s in every crowd. For the most part, those people will be outcasts, people who don’t follow fashion trends, people with a wide range of ideas and opinions and styles that the majority will never take seriously. But just in case the world changes, just in case the winds and tides suddenly shift, it’s remotely possible that a small handful of these outcasts will know what to do. The mainstream crowd (and the other weirdo’s who randomly don’t have behavior patterns that match the new environment) will either get in step with those former misfits, or go the way of the dinosaurs. Someone will always be able to survive and lead the community to adapt to the new environment.

But big changes like that (whether they relate to weather or geography or social and political conditions) are far and few between. So for the most part, we outcasts remain on the bench, like field goal kickers in a football game. (No, even worse; most field goal kickers get out once or twice in the average NFL game, whereby the average outcast remains an outcast all his life.) Most of us go thru life waiting in vain for our time to come, marching without stop to our different drummer. But still, it’s good to know that we are here for a purpose, that Nature has a reason for our isolation. So, to each and every oddball and misfit out there (or at least the harmless ones like me), a tribute. As Milton said, “They also serve who only stand [or sit!] and wait”.