Not long ago, I read this line: 'each person is and remains an ultimate mystery'. This expression has a deep meaning in it. It shows that we cannot take people's actions and behaviors for granted and categorize them into certain fixed descriptions. In every person there lies complexities and ambiguities that are difficult to explain. I cannot say for certain that 'this guy is generous' or 'that guy is mean'. Being generous and mean are dependent on an endless number of factors that cannot really be quantified. Some people might act generously in one context but act as mean in other contexts. In other words, people's actions and behaviors are bound to context and time. Therefore, we cannot generalize a one person's actions and behaviors to other contexts. For example, if a person who belongs to a certain Asian county acts in a generous way, we cannot say for certain the all of the people who belong to that particular Asian country are generous. The opposite of this is also true - that's, if one person is mean, it does not mean that his or her peer group are mean as well.
The descriptions we arrive at when we describe people are, therefore, tentative and can be mistaken. There are much, much more complexities and ambiguities in each person that are almost impossible to understand fully. Hence, we should always be careful the next time we attempt to describe people in fixed, normative and generalizable terms.
What do you think?
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