My motto :
"Everybody does it is not a reason for doing it"

For many years, this is my motto. I'll try to explain why.
Already when I was a child aged 10, I often noticed that when people where doing something I considered to be bad and I asked them why, the answer was "Everybody does it".

For what I have seen (passively, only as a witness or actively by asking more and more questions), it was nearly always the same during more than 50 years (with, and that's even more incredible for me, very few exceptions).
Of course, my first question was "Who are the exceptions to this (that is for me an horror - I'll be more explicit later)?". The answer (for what I have seen) : some (absolutely not all) chess players (in their daily life or in the way they play chess) and some (absolutely not all) "high i.q." people.

Before trying to explain my reactions, here are some examples, mainly very common, some historical (after a long search). Some have low consequences, some are horrible :
- Near a school, with a speed limit of 30 km/h, driving at 50. ("Look Albert, I just follow the previous car, everybody does it")
- Cheating when playing soccer ("The others do it also, and it is not cheating, it's only to win" - This was said to children at a soccer course. It makes me vomit...
- Cheating at exams at school (or for an i.q. test): "Now, with Internet and technology, everybody does it".
- Driving when you have drink "only a little of alcohol - 3 glasses of wine and a beer: Look, everybody does is, so it can't be dangerous".
- "We must acclaim every 'big chiefs', like the Pope or a State President: So many people acclaim them". This was of course valid for Hitler.

Very young, I started to be horrified, really horrified by such things. As an example, I remember when I went to Roma with my father: We saw Pie 12th in a "Pope chair"... my father said "I'm not catholic, nevertheless there are things which have to be respected and applauded (everybody does it, - even if it was not explicitly said)"... all the "intellectual confidence" I had in my father disappeared... I had suicide ideas.

During my life it first became worse an worse, than stabilised in a dichotomy (for me) : the sheets, doing and saying what they could copy (this being often just what was said in newspapers, at the TV,.... The big majority (I would say for sure more than 95 %, even if they strongly deny it). Slowly, I developed two different personalities :
- With this majority, no contact (except indispensable practical things), I was not speaking, "alone in my corner"...
- With "the others, the outsiders": I loved to speak, to communicate - about nearly everything - long conversations... several real friendships was the great consequence of this!

Now, I have the big chance to have quite a lot (more than 10) really friends (that's a big word),and, none of them, never, answers a question with "Everybody does it".

I have something to add: I always tried to be "not really severe" with people of low study standard (secretaries for example); at the same time, I was extremely severe with - what I call in this contest "pseudo intellectuals" - like engineers or Ph.D.