Once upon a time, about a week or two ago, my house was vandalized. For some context, my family lives on a green belt, so we have a fence in our backyard with a gate that opens to said green belt. Overnight, someone or some people came to Tamura Elementary, Fulton Middle School, and my house with cans of spray paint. All three had general hate speech that referred to racism, homophobia, and other prevalent slurs. However, my house specifically had my older brother’s name plastered on it along with hate speech against his sexuality. My brother and I had both been out for a while, me a bit longer than him, so this was his very first time experiencing anything like this. At the time I was writing this, the culprits remained anonymous, but I didn’t come here just to write about this travesty. The main idea is that those kids didn’t think, or they just didn’t care about how this would affect my family and my brother’s life. They also didn’t know about how this could affect their own lives. When they get caught, they have a chance of getting convicted, and they will spend the rest of their lives as felons. When they fill out job applications, it will be there, when they go to school, their teachers will be notified, and this will haunt them forever. My point is that people don’t think or care about how their actions and hatred affect the things around them.

Let’s begin with Shakespeare’s Othello. A tragic tale about General Othello, who marries Desdemona and favors Cassio over Iago for a promotion. As the story continues, Iago, the antagonist, manipulates and lies, trying to ruin Othello’s life and exact revenge on him and Cassio for what he sees as a professional betrayal. He begins by manipulating and essentially robbing Roderigo, a wealthy man in love with Othello’s wife. Through Roderigo, he has Cassio fired. Then, Iago plants seeds of doubt in Othello’s mind, convincing him that Desdemona is cheating on Cassio. Next, he gets Roderigo to attack Cassio, trying to take his life. This plan backfired, resulting in Roderigo’s death. Unfortunately, Othello, consumed by jealousy, takes the life of his beloved wife. Now, while just about every character suffered because of Iago, I want to look into Cassio. Although he was redeemed, he had lost everything: his job and, most importantly, his reputation. He pleaded for his old life back and cried about his “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” Iago was selfish and betrayed others, not caring about how it affected them.

Next, I would like to talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect discusses why people sometimes appear unintelligent. The theory essentially posits that they are so unaware of their lack of intelligence that they don’t even realize it. For example, a man named McArthur Wheeler once robbed a bank in broad daylight, on camera, with a gun. However, he was shocked to get caught because earlier that day he had rubbed lemon juice on his face and in his eyes with the belief it would hide him from the cameras. Let’s be honest here, this was a foolish thing to do. However, Wheeler hadn’t thought about how his actions would affect the rest of his life. Now, for the rest of his life, he will be what the police describe as a man who “isn’t the type of person who fades into the woodwork”. If he had just logically thought through this a bit more, his life would be completely different, but he didn’t care at the time. He just wanted to rob a bank for unknown reasons.

People do things that hurt others. They do things that hurt themselves, and they don’t care about any of it. There is nothing I can do to change that, but maybe you will either start or continue to think through your actions. Now, this won’t solve all your problems, but it might help. Or hey, maybe just don’t spray paint slurs on a gay person’s fence, that might help too.