Whose Business Is It Anyway?

Most people struggle to keep their own lives in order. That makes it strange that so many of us feel confident managing someone else's, especially a stranger's. The habit gets plenty of encouragement from the media, where hours of news coverage go to picking apart the lives of people in the public eye: who they really are, why they acted as they did, and what ought to happen to them next. Panels of so-called experts get trotted out one after another, and whether any of them actually understands the situation is anyone's guess.

Notice that the speculation usually begins before the facts have arrived, if they ever fully do. The early information people build their conclusions on tends to be thin, partly mistaken, and now and then flatly false. Leaping to a verdict that way produces responses that go past merely unhelpful and become damaging. Mob violence is one obvious result. There's a real case for holding some stories back until the facts are gathered and for spending the time it takes to assemble a complete, fair account. And even once that's done, I wonder whether ordinary consumers and hired commentators should be pulled in so early to guess at a suspect's motives, to recommend punishment, or to propose which laws need changing.

Think about how odd it is: someone carrying the same unsolved problem in their own life, or knowing next to nothing about the issue at all, feels entitled to tell others how to handle it. I remember the pattern from college. The sophomore halfway through an introductory psychology course always seemed to be the campus authority, dispensing opinions and advice to classmates who hadn't taken the class, along with friends and relatives, on their behavior and their supposed psychological troubles. The message underneath it tends to be, don't look at me, look at them, followed by counsel that was neither asked for nor sound.

Control yourself, not other people. The exception is when you carry official responsibility for them, as a teacher, a police officer, a judge, or a parent would.

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