Inspiration in the Weirdest Places

After a rather rough day, *B* and I sat down to watch a movie. It's an old but good one - Men in Black. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I like it a lot. While watching it tonight, I caught a quote that spoke to me:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
- Kay, Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black

I really do believe this to be true. We've all done it at one time or another. We freaked out over nothing at all just because a bunch of other people are upset. Case in point: Y2K. Was the world going to end because computers wouldn't work? No. It was a coding error, and governments were not about to let coding issues cause a nuclear apocalypse. Yes, you can argue that it helped a lot of people become much more self reliant and prepared for disaster. But it also means that people may have spent money and energy on something totally unnecessary.

The only way to negate this mob mentality is to think slowly and carefully. In a lot of cases, people are unable to do this because they are unprepared. For example, the blizzards this past winter. I know many people who went to the store just because they knew the storms were coming up. They didn't need anything, but they bought milk, bread, and toilet paper anyway. I did a little venture out to shake off cabin fever after the snow stopped but before going back to work. The stores were EMPTY. People were freaking out about not having food and necessities. If they had been prepared beforehand, the people who unnecessarily bought out the supplies could have logically analyzed their supply and made rational decisions, and people who really had no supplies could have gotten them.

When do you get caught up in the "people" and forget to be a "person"?