By Jason Lim
The craziness came on suddenly.
In northern Virginia, where I live, everything was normal on Tuesday. Coming back from a quick errand on Tuesday afternoon, my wife stopped by a local gas station to fill up. Nothing was amiss. By Tuesday evening, however, cars were lining up around the block to fill up not only their cars, but all manners of tanks, drums, and other creative storage vessels. Within hours, most of the gas stations near my neighborhood had hastily handwritten notes taped on their pumps, apologetically informing customers that they had run out of gasoline.
Then we saw that it wasn't just us. In fact, it was worse down in the southeastern states, from Georgia to North Carolina. The mainstream news and social media alike were lit up with random videos of people panic-buying gas in huge bulk. Hardware stores must have made a killing selling gas canisters, because those red plastic containers certainly made lots of appearances everywhere. I even saw a guy basically fill up what looked like a hot-tub-sized tank on the bed of his pickup truck. I also watched incredulously as a lady filled up a supermarket plastic bag with gas ― double-bagged, thank God.
All this happened because of the highly publicized ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, which supplies up to half of all refined gasoline to the U.S.' East Coast. The attack shut down the pipeline network and was expected to cause a shortage for a limited time while they dealt with the cyberattack.
When I first heard of the news, I reacted in a way I would expect most people would: by asking who was responsible and how it happened. I interpreted it through the lens of national security, infrastructure protection, cyber readiness, etc. In other words, all the boring, regular and important stuff. In a million years, I wouldn't have thought to apply this news to my personal situation and feel such a sense of critical urgency that I would rush out to buy gas and store it in whatever container I could get my hands on. But that's apparently what hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans did. It was a spectacular showcasing of the "me first" attitude. Who cares if someone who really needs gas can't get it? Let me take care of my needs first against some impending Armageddon and let God sort the rest out.
This situation leaves me asking, "Why?" It was the same "why" that I had found myself asking when I saw people making a scene in public places by refusing to wear masks during the height of the pandemic. You've seen them, too: loud, angry individuals citing everything from the Constitution to the Bible in insisting that mask-wearing was against their inherent rights, behaving in such a selfish, childish way that they almost couldn't help themselves.
It's easy to get angry when you first encounter these scenes, like I did when it took me almost a half hour longer to get to my son's school to pick him up. I swear I thought there was a huge accident; instead, it was the lines snaking around a tiny, local gas station that apparently still had gas, like I also did when this woman made a scene at a local Trader Joe's almost a year ago, by refusing loudly to wear a mask.
After initial anger comes judgment ― mostly, of the moral kind. What a selfish person. What an idiot. What sorry excuse for a member of the community. When they happen to be a person of color, even the POC group that you belong to, then all of the subconscious stereotypes that you hold about that particular community of color add additional layers of viciousness and righteous anger to your moral judgment. When they happen to be white, your judgement is now immersed in a flood of resentment, suspicion of racism and other wrongs that were supposed to have been inflicted on you.
You are now "othering" based on a sense of moral superiority. You are now standing on the scaffolding of your superior human-ness to group others as somehow less than the human that you are yourself. You have just dehumanized others. Oh, how easy it is to slip into this deadly space. A simple "why" has metastasized into a judgment that placed a lower value on another person's life because… that person acted in a way that angered you.
Or because that person looks different than you. Or because that person looks exactly like you, but believes in a narrative that makes him seem more Chinese than Korean. Or because that person believes one invisible and silent being somewhere in the sky is superior to another invisible, silent being. Perhaps "othering" is the ultimate and inevitable destination of all moral judgments that begin with a "why." I wonder why that is.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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In northern Virginia, where I live, everything was normal on Tuesday. Coming back from a quick errand on Tuesday afternoon, my wife stopped by a local gas station to fill up. Nothing was amiss. By Tuesday evening, however, cars were lining up around the block to fill up not only their cars, but all manners of tanks, drums, and other creative storage vessels. Within hours, most of the gas stations near my neighborhood had hastily handwritten notes taped on their pumps, apologetically informing customers that they had run out of gasoline.
Then we saw that it wasn't just us. In fact, it was worse down in the southeastern states, from Georgia to North Carolina. The mainstream news and social media alike were lit up with random videos of people panic-buying gas in huge bulk. Hardware stores must have made a killing selling gas canisters, because those red plastic containers certainly made lots of appearances everywhere. I even saw a guy basically fill up what looked like a hot-tub-sized tank on the bed of his pickup truck. I also watched incredulously as a lady filled up a supermarket plastic bag with gas ― double-bagged, thank God.
All this happened because of the highly publicized ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, which supplies up to half of all refined gasoline to the U.S.' East Coast. The attack shut down the pipeline network and was expected to cause a shortage for a limited time while they dealt with the cyberattack.
When I first heard of the news, I reacted in a way I would expect most people would: by asking who was responsible and how it happened. I interpreted it through the lens of national security, infrastructure protection, cyber readiness, etc. In other words, all the boring, regular and important stuff. In a million years, I wouldn't have thought to apply this news to my personal situation and feel such a sense of critical urgency that I would rush out to buy gas and store it in whatever container I could get my hands on. But that's apparently what hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans did. It was a spectacular showcasing of the "me first" attitude. Who cares if someone who really needs gas can't get it? Let me take care of my needs first against some impending Armageddon and let God sort the rest out.
This situation leaves me asking, "Why?" It was the same "why" that I had found myself asking when I saw people making a scene in public places by refusing to wear masks during the height of the pandemic. You've seen them, too: loud, angry individuals citing everything from the Constitution to the Bible in insisting that mask-wearing was against their inherent rights, behaving in such a selfish, childish way that they almost couldn't help themselves.
It's easy to get angry when you first encounter these scenes, like I did when it took me almost a half hour longer to get to my son's school to pick him up. I swear I thought there was a huge accident; instead, it was the lines snaking around a tiny, local gas station that apparently still had gas, like I also did when this woman made a scene at a local Trader Joe's almost a year ago, by refusing loudly to wear a mask.
After initial anger comes judgment ― mostly, of the moral kind. What a selfish person. What an idiot. What sorry excuse for a member of the community. When they happen to be a person of color, even the POC group that you belong to, then all of the subconscious stereotypes that you hold about that particular community of color add additional layers of viciousness and righteous anger to your moral judgment. When they happen to be white, your judgement is now immersed in a flood of resentment, suspicion of racism and other wrongs that were supposed to have been inflicted on you.
You are now "othering" based on a sense of moral superiority. You are now standing on the scaffolding of your superior human-ness to group others as somehow less than the human that you are yourself. You have just dehumanized others. Oh, how easy it is to slip into this deadly space. A simple "why" has metastasized into a judgment that placed a lower value on another person's life because… that person acted in a way that angered you.
Or because that person looks different than you. Or because that person looks exactly like you, but believes in a narrative that makes him seem more Chinese than Korean. Or because that person believes one invisible and silent being somewhere in the sky is superior to another invisible, silent being. Perhaps "othering" is the ultimate and inevitable destination of all moral judgments that begin with a "why." I wonder why that is.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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