Pleasing all the people all the time

You know what people want?

No, do you know what people want? And I should clarify: what people want—as in, what members of the species homo sapiens all desire uniformly?

Neither do I. I haven’t the time nor the inclination to survey every single person on the topic.

Well, I imagine one could speculate, were it possible that such an attempt to solicit such input from all of humanity could render a common answer, that people want their circumstances to improve. That’s sufficiently vague to meet with general acceptance. That’s not suggesting each individual aspires to have the circumstances of every other individual improve (even the most selfless humanitarian must admit that’s completely unrealistic—it would need to come down several notches just to be pie-in-the-sky); each individual aspires for his or her individual circumstances to get better than they presently are. Sure, each individual also wishes the circumstances of those one cares about to improve as well, but that’s about it.

Go on. Delude yourself into believing it’s possible for everyone to experience improvement with no one getting worse. Yin-yang. Competition dictates that in order for someone to win, someone else must lose.

However, that factor of the nature of things isn’t what holds us back. Really, it’s that there are people out there whom any given individual dislikes, and those people are not worth expending any hope for their betterment.

This is coming out entirely too pedantic. I know.