People can be strange and unpredictable

I am reading a book titled "Heaven's Ditch: God, gold, and murder on the Erie Canal". It is quite an interesting story, about the best of humanity, the worst of humanity, and the weirdness of humanity, all wrapped up in one nice package. The best is the fact that in the early part of the 19th century, the Erie canal was built. It took vision, chutzpah, drive, and incredible people. It was an engineering marvel which fundamentally changed the course of history in the US. The worst is that many of those involed were simply awful people who did awful things to other people.

However, it is the weirdness background which simply blows me away. The canal was built in western New York during a time of great religious revival. It was not just religious revival but all forms of spiritual, mystic, and magical thinking. It was where Joseph Smith's family ended up before the trek west. People became wrapped up in all manner of superstition. Joseph Smith, before he found the gold tablets and launched the Mormon sect, was one of may people who used special stones he placed in his hat to see the future. People, including Smith, were using divining rods to find casks of money buried in the ground.

While among my peer group currently, the acceptable facade to display is one of rationality and linear thought (sort of Mr. Spock like), I think this is not how many (most?) people really operate. Beneath the facade there are a jumble of emotions which can drive some peculiar behavior. Most of the peculiar behavior likely can be characterized as quirky and some of it as annoying. It then can go on to move into the territory of very odd, strange, really strange, and then downright disturbing. With enough concentration of people, likes can link up and amplify the quirkiness and strangeness. The internet has been very conducive to this. The fun end of this spectrum is where things like DragonCon reside. At the less benevolent end you might find congregations of people with more sinister motives.

I don;t think there has been any real fundamental change in the underlying DNA. There have always been people who have been at the fringes, did not play well with others, and/or simply had evil motives. If they were charismatic and could convince others to team up and do nasty acts, they could cause great destruction. However, individual actors were very limited in their reach. With great effort they could harm to a few others. Weirdness did not translate to far reaching effects.

Technology has greatly leveraged human capabilities. However, it has also leveraged the ability of individuals to cause great harm to many people. Anarchists more than 100 years ago began this using bombs to target populations. We were distracted for a while from this by wholesale slaughter by state actors and then the cold war and worry about state mediated thermonuclear annihilation. Now, this same phenomena is back.

It is hard to believe that single person human capability in terms of destruction can be scaled back. States may do their best to control armaments in the hands of their populace (with or without the second amendment), but progress in terms of miniaturization and energy concentration is not likely to stop. Research efforts to place more powerful and easily used tools in the hands of soldiers will invariably mean that the fruits of these endeavors ends up in the hands of ordinary people. It has happened with granola bars and it will happen with weapons.

I think this has happened to some degree in the past.  Throughout history, various parties have held monopolies on violence and those monopolies were disrupted by transitions of power and weapons into other hands. No state power means anarchy and chaos, while nothing but state power means totalitarianism. We do not want the constant war of every person against every other person but we do not want to cede total control to a unilaterally armed state because a few bad actors don't realize they are better off by giving up the right to annihilate those around them.

And what we are back to is the realization that people can be strange and unpredictable and we have to live with that.