On watching the sheep in the field between this road (A1077) and the clay-bank of the Humber Estuary, on watching the birds at the bird-table (see above), on watching the dozen or so ducks on the ‘Beck’ in Barton and on numerous other occasions in the past I have noticed evidence of varying personalities among the wildlife in question. Although reacting collectively to a stimulus e.g. food given further observation shows variations. Usually the most apparent is the ‘bully’ or bullies, this identifying in turn the timid ones who have to spend considerable time fleeing back and forth (although the bully spends much time chasing rather than feeding!), this maybe evidence of Darwin’s concept of ‘survival of the fittest’, on a micro-scale. Although there is much less observational evidence for this, one imagines that this behaviour by the same animals is long-term rather than just the once.
So populations of species have a diverse range of personalities across individuals. Leaving aside for a moment the issue of factors which determine these diverse personal qualities, it seems that there is ‘good, bad and indifferent’ in all populations, and to bring this into human context, whether family, neighbourhood, village/town, county, nation or race. Daily, it seems, one hears ridiculous conclusions from surveys. Recently a social survey concluded that one particular London borough was the worst place in the country for women (this presumably based on recorded incidents of sexual abuse, sexism etc.). In response a group of female residents were on Radio 4 to challenge this and apparently all the women they know (one lived in a flat rented at £2000/month) were ‘nice’. So who was right? Neither.
So are the women in this London borough to live in fear while those in Hartlepool, for example, need not? Do the group of women in the borough know everyone there?
The maxim of a friend of mine is ‘you do not know what life is going to throw at you, it’s what you do in response to things that matters’.
For some years I lived in Hull, then said to be the third most violent city in the country. I went round the streets every evening with the dog of to meetings etc. and only once encountered a violent episode, and that was drug fuelled and there is not a community in the country where drugs do not exist. By the way, the incident in question, I didn’t deal with it very well!