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TechnoratiOur shared spaces have become a bear pit. This ever-crumbling civility risks our wellbeing and points to a bleak future
A grey weekday morning at 7.40am in Edmonton bus station in north London, and it's teeming with schoolchildren. As the bus arrives, a crowd surge forward to squeeze their way on. People get knocked over. The children, screaming and pushing, panic. Small ones, horrified by the melee, hold back. The ones with the sharpest elbows make it. The rest have to go through the ordeal again with the next bus and the next - and get bad marks for being late when, battle-scarred, they finally make it into school.
When I recounted this incident to my 12-year-old, hardened by 18 months of secondary school travel, she smiled at my naivety. Being pushed, sworn at and squeezed on to overcrowded trains and buses is already routine to her.
Trivial personal anecdotes, you might say, with some justification. But what I saw at Edmonton bus station left me enraged. How can we complain about children's antisocial behaviour when we show such dereliction in developing in them any understanding of social behaviour? Where are the buses, the stewards or bus conductors they need? Why are transport services in poorer areas so under-resourced? Treat people like animals and, chances are, they will end up behaving like them. Every morning, these kids are getting a crash-course in how aggressive self-assertion is your passport in life.
Edmonton is the latest in a series of nasty experiences in different parts of Britain - this is not just an urban or London phenomenon - that I've witnessed (or of which I've been the object) that have left me shaken. It's the sheer gratuitousness of the aggression over minor driving misdemeanours or the fuck-you indifference of those whose behaviour is affecting others. Every time, children were present, sometimes aping their parents' gesticulations - learning how to abuse.
It's not just a run of my bad luck. One-third of respondents told the British Crime Survey, published last week, that they were worried about antisocial behaviour. Crime may be falling, but something more intangible and just as important is moving centre stage: a pervasive anxiety about a deterioration in the everyday interactions between strangers. Typically, the aggression erupts when someone gets in someone else's way. It's a pathology of individual entitlement. What's crumbling is the civility that is so essential to wellbeing, to trust and to the conviviality of our lives. We have failed to invest the resources, both material and cultural, in the places where we interact with strangers. Antisocial teenagers are simply playing out their own version of the aggression and indifference that has been meted out to them.
Take a big jump and switch from the shared physical spaces of streets to a very different shared public space - the internet - and a related phenomenon is being played out. Aggression, abuse and contempt are now the normal currency of debate among strangers on blogs. Last week two prominent columnists, David Aaronovitch and Linda Grant, added their bewilderment to the growing chorus of those arguing that public debate on the internet is being strangled at birth by the quantity of personal abuse and bullying. The response from bloggers was fascinating. One argued that "the internet is good therapy. People can use it to voice their opinions, anger, fears and worries in anonymity, instead of penting it up [sic] leading to violence or suicides", while another argued that blogging is an "internal monologue ... spilling over into the public domain". Several contributors to the voluminous debate Grant's column spawned on Comment is free online admitted revulsion and shock. One asked: "Is human nature as awful as this?"
The thinker who predicted all of this with remarkable prescience was Richard Sennett in his book The Fall of Public Man, published 34 years ago. He argued that the distinction between the public and private realms was being eroded as we elevated the self-absorption and narcissism of "knowing oneself" into an end rather than a means by which to know the world. The public sphere - where we encounter strangers - becomes a canvas on which we play out our own emotional preoccupations and neuroses. Sennett sharply warned us that "because every self is, in some measure, a cabinet of horrors, civilised relations between selves can only proceed to the extent that nasty little secrets of desire, greed or envy are kept locked up".
What makes Sennett so pertinent is that this concept of privacy, of concealing thoughts, is exactly what is under assault. In some vain search for authenticity and honesty, all those horrors in the cabinet are now hawked around the blogging sites. Debate has become so gladiatorial that it generates its own mechanisms of exclusion; anyone who doesn't want verbal fisticuffs withdraws. Some participants, intoxicated by absurd interpretations of freedom of speech and individual entitlement, suggest people should be able to say whatever happens to pop into their heads, that there should be no space for reflection before speech. Martin Amis gave some intellectual credibility to this notion last autumn in the controversy over his remarks about Muslims, saying that he couldn't edit his thoughts. Yet deciding which thought to give voice to is precisely what all of us do all the time - and so it should be. What relationship, either public or private, could ever be sustained on any other principle?
A century of psychoanalysis and its derivatives and misapplications has legitimised parading our cabinets of horrors. Sennett describes this as having been a "trap rather than a liberation". The self-referential frame by which all is measured is "what does this person, that event mean to me?", he argues.
Amid such cacophony of attention-seeking "me, me, me", two things are in danger of being lost: first, the ability really to listen - rather than just wait with varying degrees of patience for your chance to spout off; and second, that grand old etiquette of liberal debate, the option to agree to differ. Both are vital ingredients of public debate as a process of learning and negotiation, both are much needed if the unprecedented diversity of our public spaces now is to produce civility or even conviviality.
Sennett's concern was that narcissism projected on to the public realm would strip us of our dignity. Reality television illustrates his point perfectly, and it's true of other media that scrutinise the painful private lives of the likes of Amy Winehouse. It's also evident on many blog sites, as some bloggers themselves lament. Dignity is as essential to human wellbeing as food and shelter, but in the public spaces of our lives it is in increasingly short supply.
That prompts frustration and disillusionment and a retreat into our private worlds as we disengage even further from the brutal bear pit that so many aspects of our public life have become. The danger is that we withdraw into bunkers of the like-minded, vacating the territory of solidarity and common purpose. That's a brutally bleak picture, and that is exactly what the children in Edmonton bus station were being taught last week.
m.bunting@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
75 Comments so far
Show AllThe signs of the barbarism depicted in Hollywood's Apocalyptic disaster movies are becoming all too apparent aren't they.
The corruption of civilization is inevitable it's been built on a system of principles that are flawed, and a mindset that is built on a mythology that doesn't work. So you look to the ideology and compare it with the reality and you see this dark chasm of difference between the two and then you try to reconcile the logic using a rational process. But it won't answer to a rational process because the simple fact of the matter is irrationality cannot be rationalized. Until one realizes *this* one is bound to sit on the spot and spin, irrationally, in an effort to rationalize what is impossible to rationalize. To reason what cannot be reasoned is folly and itself only leads to further irrationality, and all of these attempts to reason and rationalize what cannot be reasoned and rationalized waste what is precious and we cannot really afford to waste any more: TIME.
A short story with a poignant ending summarizes why. It's called 'Human Nature' and you can find it here: http://www.freearticulator.com/creativity/literary-arts/fiction/2007/hum...
The liabilities of marginalizing the humanities in favor of production are now coming home to roost. Civilization is out of balance because the irrationality of industrialization marginalized the humanities to the point that technology is now considered to be the only solution to the many problems we face, but it's not. The real problem lies with us, and we either change the way we have thought and do so for real, or we continue to spin trying to rationalize what is irrational. Instead of just confronting the fact that it is Us who are the problem and then acting appropriately and responsibly to correct Us. We need to advance the Humanities beyond our technology and then keep them there, and never, ever again let Technological Advances outstrip the advances of the Humanities. Easily said, I know. Not so easily accomplished because the economic imperatives have gained too much sway and driving all of it, but that's part of the problem too, and it tells us one important thing: The economics is wrong and a flawed system too. So it's got to go because all it does is benefit a small few and put all in peril. That makes it an insane system. So just dump it. There are other systems which are smarter, which have themselves been marginalized and pooh-poohed, just like the environmentalists who were obviously RIGHT and therefore telling the Truth. Pretty much anything that opposed the system we have now that was marginalized must therefore have been correct - it's a good place to start, eh? I mean we now know the Greens were right. So, probably a lot of others were right too. Start looking there!
The first thing to do is realize that we are not the most intelligent species in the world. That domination of all life on the planet is irresponsible and, frankly, insane. It's a "We are the Master Species" idea, and we all know where that got the last guys who felt that way circa 1939-45. This time we've made our own global oven, and dumbasses that we are, have closed the door with us on the inside and then we're just waiting for one of us to strike the match that....
So get humble as a human being. And start from that point too. Realize that the education and ideas we've bought into about who we are are not necessarily all true. Many are false. Start examining those more critically with an eye to the evidence of our impending demise and then we can start to do something more constructive than what we are currently doing.
The thinking of the past is, after all, what got us to this point where we face the folly of the fallacies we bought into.
Therefore those ideas are all - ALL - entirely suspect. Time to re-examine them, which is not at all easy.
But here's another one to start with: consumption.
It's one of the ideas that needs to go because it's not a lifestyle, it's a deathstyle. That one's easy to change. Just stop consuming what is unnecessary to consume. What is killing us.
I know that a century of programming of the American consumer is incredibly hard to undo, but the movies to be found here: http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php?ct=5 will help. Particularly the Century of Self series (1 - 4). Realize just how programmed we all are. Then stop buying into that, literally, and intellectually. So get people to watch them, and start to understand that it's time for the little piggies to leave the trough of consumerism behind. I know this will take a discipline that is hard to find, but you must find that discipline and get to work making it work. The survival of the human race and all life on the planet depends on it.
You know, One thing I've experienced in other parts of the world, that I have yet to see in the United States is how complete strangers invited me into their homes, only after an hour or two of us getting acquainted. I met their spouses, their family, children and got a meal and a bed for the night. Everyone I met wanted to hear stories about 'America'.
In many cases we talked by way of a book, translating our words. There was a peace, tranquility and a level of trust I did not think was around anymore. The conversations would go into the wee hours of the A.M.. This period of time was also when being an American was popular. On some level America still is popular, It's not that we're unpopular, it's the current regime on Capitol Hill that is disliked.
I would hope that some of us can return the favor to a visitor here. It'll show that we are still a country of humane folks. It is good karma, and a basic foundation to civility, even if you and your guest do not speak the same tounge, offering shelter and food is a universal language.
Colinsa,
You said: "All around me there is beauty and brilliance -- ordinary things come to life and I am perpetually awed by the very pure quality in each and every individual thing and person."
Perhaps you don't know how many spiritual seekers pray-for/strive-to reach that state-of-seeing.
But, you also said that you are 'ashamed' that people are so nice to you and you don't know how you possibly can repay them. In certain villages in our world, there are not even words for 'please', 'thank you', and 'you are welcome'. In those villages, social harmony based on selfless love is a given. It is what the Western utopian anarchist have idealized as a possiblity.
So, be confident in your own 'light' (Be your own Love, Peace, Beauty, & Joy) and actively affirm the same light that you so fortunately see around you -- for, you are already blessed.
Atelios,
Another travel experience: back in the 1960's I stayed about ten months in Israel/Palestine as part of my six year trip around the world. During that time I was fortunate enough to be a work-boss in a small kibbutz in the Negev Desert where most of the 'kibbutznicks' were themselves born and raised on one kibbutz or another. Their being raised in real egalitarian communities had a positive influence on many of their characters -- so there was a high level of individual happiness and social harmony in that kibbutz. Being a work boss, I oversaw groups of young volunteers from North and South America, from various parts of Israel, and from other kibbutzim. A number of the young volunteers invited me to visit their own kibbutzim if I had the opportunity. I visited kibbutzim where most of the adults had emmigrated from America, or from Poland, or from Germany, etc. Based on my experiences in the Negev, I had thought that all kibbutzim would be equally harmonious -- but I was in for a surprise. I saw and heard a lot of ego (tones of voices, facial expressions, etc.). I also heard stories. Lesson learned -- the adults had brought their karma with them -- they were in need of self-aware-healing, but, probably did not know so.
Another example, years ago there was a wonderful school in England called Summerhill founded by A.S. Neill. You can google and know how remarkably outsanding it was. When people tried to copy it in America -- not the same results.
And, Tito tried to change things in Yugoslavia, but as Milovan Djilas wrote: the greedy gradually rose to the top.
In otherwords, referring to a previous post, we as individuals and communities need to be honest about the existence of and causes for our own 'clouds'/problems (greed, pride, envy, hatred, no-peace) and work to make them less -- and at the same time, encourage and enable what are called in India "Human Values' (Truth, Love, Peace, Righteousness,and Non-Violence) to shine forth -- in our selves and in our relationships.
To tell the truth Atelios, I don't know how we can do that other than through authentic spirituality (not mere formal religiosity);
One more saying:
"There is one religion -- the religion of Love;
There is one caste/race -- the race of humanity;
There is one language -- the language of the Heart;
There is one God -- and that God is everywhere for everyone."
Bless
Great discussion!
Remember when America was known for movies like 'Wizard of Oz' and Disney cartoons? Now we live, breath and export tales of death and destruction.
Bill BRG January 28th, 2008 2:37 pm
The UNMITIGATED GREED AND POWER LUST of the powerful in our societyies and world are driving this "Don't give damn about others" behavior.
People keep saying this is what is going on. But I don't buy it. Or at least, that is not the ultimate BASIS of what is going on, is it? What is really at the heart of this phenomena? I often think it is the invisible hand of Capitalism, which seems to require destruction and rebirth over and over to survive (is this why Capitalism and Christianity go so well together?).
I really like what Hanuman is saying. Sometimes I think maybe besides our society being in great debt financially, we are in great debt in the areas of shame, respect, guilt and all these other aspects of humanness that other societies perhaps are still connected enough to to recognize. Whereas we have just pushed all this stuff under the surface (in our great zeal to 'succeed', to WIN) and never get around to dealing with them. Is perhaps this what is really going on? I wish I could hear more about this. Is the basis of our going fascist really come down to greed and lust for power? Or is the problem perhaps that the people who are leading us down this road have not balanced their psychic checkbooks?
Am I being the lone voice here when I say that I rarely meet people who aren't kind and good? I must be in some wierd Pollyanna-land, I guess (Milwaukee, WI?) But just about everyone I know and meet tries to be very civil, helpful. I get smiles everywhere and lots of really wonderful conversations - even with strangers - and in all kinds of places. I feel ashamed, often, because people are so nice to me and sometimes I don't know how I can possibly ever repay them. Even in instances when anger or conflict does arise, it is usually short-lived (and if it affects me personally, I know how to calm it - just take myself out of the equation). I know the blogs can get really hateful; I've seen that in many instances. But it is most perplexing to me simply because I hardly ever encounter it in regular daily life. Maybe such expressions are just a part of the function of anonymity, with the numbers looking so high simply because we do have so many millions of people on the internet (and there are bound to be some who carrying around a grudge or are having a bad day). This is not to say that I can't see what the "me generation" has spawned. There is definitely a sense of entitlement out there. I recently had to deal with a friend who went off at her neighbors and started tearing up their yard signs "because I don't like it". (But then, she was off her meds...) Yet, even these people aren't really bad. When you scratch below the surface, you find all kinds of things: inner pain, blunted hopes and dreams - what is not human? All around me there is beauty and brilliance, ordinary things come to life and I am perpetually awed by the very pure quality in each and every individual thing and person. So it makes me very angry when I hear about those who are being oppressed, about children who are being abused or starved, about politicians who are starting horrific wars and causing immense suffering for millions. It is precisely because there is so much good in the world that the evil stands out so starkly - and you want to change it, get rid of it. It doesn't belong here, with all of us! I guess that's why I come to commondreams and why I love reading these blogs. There are just so many intelligent and passionate people here who feel the same way as I do about so many issues of injustice. I want to work to help align the imperfect outer form of things with the true and eternal good, which is the foundation.
That's just my little dream.....
notsonaive:
Thanks for jogging my memory. 'Greening Of America', was a book we had many debates and discussions about on campus back then. I'm an optimist, but wonder sometimes when I occasionally come across articles like this. We have to remain aware of how technology is affecting our behavior and our
relationships, be they casual or intimate.
I think that once we become comfortable with the techology we have created we can then get back to the basics and in touch with our humanity. I believe the first step to the new consciouness is learning how and when to 'unplug'. That is-knowing which machines are beneficial and which ones consume that prescious comodity 'time'.
When we get to that point in human evolution we'll be ready to move forward and apply solutions to the problems that weigh on humanity like a hiker carrying a load of rocks in a backpack. I think then we'll be ready to focus on our next endeavor, which will be space travel(?).
However, before that step we're likely to go through a period of civil break down, maybe even anarchy and a couple of more world wars. This is fortelling from an optimist. I hope I'm wrong.
Wolfhound:
"Greening of America" first printing 1970. Author: Charles A. Reich
"This is a book about Revolution - not in the Marxist sense, but Revolution against many of the values which Technology has thrust upon us. The question is, can we develop a new Consciousness that places the Individual and Humanistic values above the machine? This book is challenging and provocative - a first-rate piece of creative thinking."
Justice William O. Douglas
Wolfhound,
You are right about the benefits of going overseas. I often advise young people who seem to care and are yearning to grow to go to a third world village in a 'service' way (Peace Corps, etc.) -- not so much as to help others, which of course, is cool to do (nutrition, sanitation, energy needs) -- but rather primarily to be around people who speak the "language of the heart". Usually the first step in that process is to trust the love, peace and harmony in the villagers -- and then, to allow it to shine from within ones-Self. Then, I suggest that they bring back that inner-strength to America and work with our human needs (teaching, etc). I remember a recent short article in the Atlantic Monthly where a person who administered one or more day care centers in Southern California said something like: "American mothers could well learn how to be with their young children by watching the Latina and Phillipena women who daily work with their kids". I've often wondered about the psychological trauma that must have existed for young southerners who were told that the black nannies who seemed to love them so easily and well were 'inferior', or worse.
As for the issue of individuality and community, here is another saying from India (paraphrased a little):
"God is like the Ocean. Each person is like the wave. Although the wave can never be the ocean -- they are made up of the exact same water. The words to describe that water are Love, Peace, Joy, Beauty, Harmony, Wisdom/Conscience, Witness. The part of us that is that unchanging, eternal Center/Soul is like the sun-in-the-sky. The parts of us that are not are like the clouds ('ego' in the Eastern sense). The 'clouds' are described by such words as hatred, jealousy, selfishness, fear, no-Peace, 'attachment', ignorance-of-who-we-really-are, etc., etc., etc. Our work-in-life is to see our own clouds and begin to remove them ("God can give your the boat; God can give you the oars; but, you have to row your own boat.") -- and, at the same time, try to find the things that help each of us ("Everyone has their own lock and their own key") to become more 'sunshine'.
To 'spiritual seekers', I always add three other quotes: (1) "One school -- the world; one teacher -- God; one book -- Life (only God knows our book better than us -- and we can know it as well, or as well, as we wish. (2) If we wish to read our book, the example of a watch is used: "If you can just keep your eyes on the second-hand, the minute and hour hands will go-around by themselves." (3)And, "Make yourself into a flute through which God can play His music."
So, individuality and society based on strong egos/small-selves can be a real bad trip -- especially when things get out-of-hand (slave-traders, greedy and unethical corporate leaders, school-yard/internet bullies. Hanging around with those kinds of people at the wrong time is called 'bad company'.
But, being an individual who is really learning to Be and express one's true Self -- that is sooooo cool -- like I experienced in certain third world villages -- and thank God, like I even experience with certain loved ones at certain times in our modern society (often the best place is when together in Nature).
Like quoted in an earlier post, our jobs are to get our own acts together, to extend the fruits of those efforts to those nearby, and, to work with others for real change that is based on the fact that we are all the same Soul -- inside.
Bless
All the newspapers hate blogs and the internet. Its their competition. They know eventually the idea of a newspaper will be obsolete, so they constantly run articles writing about how awful all this new stuff is. They want the old model where a few chosen writers get to pontificate, and the rest of us are just readers. The notion that anyone can write and have an opinion is something they hate.
Yes, there are some people who need better social skills on the web. To me that comes with time if people are willing to learn. I think websites and blogs do need moderators to keep it under control.
I also think there is at least some deliberate effort to disrupt talk on the internet. For instance this site seems to attract professional trolls who seem to try to divert discussion away from prodcuctive topics.
But give it a bit of time to grow, and for people to grow. The good news is that the old newspaper model of a few professional pontificators is going away. Thank gawd for that.
Oh Madeleine, you don't know the half of it. Here in the States our children know how to actually murder each other and our adults know how to pretend that they can't imagine why. meanwhile we brutalize and batter each other in the most inhumane and uncivilized ways and positively devour those who point it out to us. You in Britain are still a far far leap from the cesspool of brutal murderous depravity that is Amerika.
PJD:
There is some truth in what you say about Pittsburgh. I worked in Moon/Coraopolos for some time and had to negotiate my way though the unsignalized 5 point intersection to get on the thruway to get home. Decided that since I was stuck there I might as well do some social experimenting. Started letting out other drivers from the feeder streets. Within a few weeks civility and courtesy was the rule rather than the exception. This was so successful I even wrote a piece for Funny Times about it (they didn't publish it.)
As great a place as Pittsburgh is, it is sadly in other ways like most of the rest of the country. Deep-seated racial hatred and animosity is a dirty truth not many like to point out. Family I worked for was rather well-to-do - had season tickets to the Steelers and the Penguins. I can remember the missus (our secretary) coming in Monday morning during football season and saying "Well, our niggers beat their niggers."
When tolerance, charity, and forgiveness are totally obliterated there will be no more civilization, only warring factions. And I'm as guilty as anyone else; my only (personal) ray of hope is that, like the author of this article, I am aware of what is happening to me.
Trying not to lose hope, or my humanity - VPL
I think from my perspective, the changes in civil behavior in the United States probably started about 45 years ago. Growing up in the sixties, inspite of all the social turbulence, both smoldering and in plain sight, people still tended to show some level of propriety towards one another. Children respected their elders and didn't address them by their first name. Folks in the neighborhoods looked out for one another. We played baseball, with sticks if there were no bats available. Block parties and street dances were the norm, even in the inner city. But, it was not all Disney Land by a long shot. Granted there were still assholes around, but their obnoxious behavior didn't rise to the level of a Jerry Springer episode.
Like Hanuman, O roe, and Twist, I've traveled and have seen the difference between people here and those abroad. If you want to know America leave for a few years and then come back. I think every American, if possible should view the U.S. from another continent, or at least spend time in a country where a cashier's wage makes you middle class.
It should be required for political science majors and politicians to live abroad for a year. Being in a place where there are no televisions or telephones motivates you to get in touch with that part of you that is human; Something seen in the eyes of the locals that is seldom seen here. You might also become less self-absorbed and less 'abrasive' towards co-workers and strangers and other bloggers. One can also appreciate and have a better understanding of what we have here in the 'developed world'. I think living abroad will also make you spend less time in the 'fast lane'
(figuratively), and regain a sense of community.
"The Greening Of America" (can't recall the Author) written in the 1970s is a great read and a preamble to this article. Even more interesting as a re-read now that the Internet has become part of our social fabric.
If there's such a thing as pathological individualism, I propose there's such a thing as healthy individualism. And the same goes for collectivism.
We are all individuals, and we are all part of a community. To deny either is unbalanced and false. You can't have a community without constituent individuals, that's what communities are made of, and each individual is created by a community, of two at the very least.
Deny community and you get individual brutality (rudeness and abuse). Deny individuality and you get collective brutality (political and social oppression). Psychology suggests to me that either denial engenders mental illness and eventual violence.
From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby first confronts its twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to forces of outrageous violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents, and their parents before them.
These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of the baby's potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful.
By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature, more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.
R.D. Laing
I can only control my own actions and intentions, and therefore I maintain total responsibility for my actions. Good leadership, bad leadership, in privilege and/or out of privilege, friendly strangers or mean strangers,too many people on earth, whatever.... it still comes back to folks respecting themselves and their community.
Accountability over the blame game.
Meeting people where they are at and how they look through their perspective VS. bringing people to where you're at and getting them to see things from how you're looking at them.
I will make these choices for myself and hopefully y'all will do the same.
Hanuman, those are some deep and useful things you said.
Here's one from a friend of mine: We have a choice between fear and love. And only one of those choices is real.
Windjammer:
Nice site, some damned good bands on there. I learned to hate war, think for myself, and distrust the government from heavy metal lyrics. A lot better than mindless relationship ditties.
Don't you understand? (as the colonists told Native peoples who had been socially successful for only about 13,000 years)---Progress for all is the mystical (though bloody tragic) fruit of violent, short-term selfishness! Does that make sense? Fuck, no! But Little Lord Baby Jesus will work it all out for us someday, somehow...
Hmmm. Let's see, this article sparks rage in a few because it questions the usefulness of expressing unbridled rage in the public forum? It argues for reasoned and respectful disagreement and engenders abuse and sarcasm? Individualism is defended by a few as the only way to express their personality against the social community rather than within it? Bad manners are argued to sometimes "work" even though "work" is never fully explained as anything more than the way to get home an hour earlier in a snowstorm that plagues everybody? And there's no discussion at all of the life threatening stress that pointless, self indulgent rage delivers to the rageful? Uhhh, I feel like I want to add something but ... O why bother?
What a fucking cheek! Here is someone who is paid for spouting her (mostly ill-considered) opinion, whining that other people express theirs, and get this, sometimes they're not nicey nice.
oy, kids these days! It couldn't have anything to do with what they're all pumping into their brains from their ipods, would it??
www.darklyrics.com
My gratitude goes out to parents who know how to raise kids to be good citizens. When I encounter a young person who genuinely shows respect to an elder, I almost start weeping. But maybe it was a little like that already when I was young, and daddy was reading Ayn Rand, and starting to rant...
Single parent families. Women simply cannot effectively raise boys, because they never were one.
Twist,
I spent years in villages all over the world. Basic things to look for is utter stillness in the eyes -- a smile that is totally in the eyes through an open face (straight from the heart) -- tones of voices -- harmony of movement -- and, in many cultures the amount and ways of touching and being touched.
I had a real 'educational' ("once school -- the world; one teacher -- God; one book -- life") near Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. There was a kind of country club for the expatriot community on the outskirts of that city (swimming pool, tennis courts, club house). All I had to do was leave the enclosed grounds and walk into the nearby rural area to see the stark differences between the African kids and the children of Western Europeans and Americans.
Just recently I saw an interview with the engineering professor who started a service group called "Engineers without Borders". He said that he saw more smiles in certain African villages in one day than he saw on the campus of the University of Colorado in a whole year.
This kind of reality is sad for our country -- but, thank God it is not the whole story for humanity.
Good day Ms. Madeleine Bunting,
I've just finished reading:
"From Buses to Blogs, a Pathological Individualism
Is
Poisoning Public Life"
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/28/6672/
If I wanted to translate this article into French, and
post it on my web site (with due credits, of course),
would that be legal? Does the Guardian have a policy
on this?
Thank you!
Stefan Jetchick
Canada
This article is very much in the spirit of "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life" by Lynne Truss.
I recommend it.
At this moment I don't have time to think through some of the ideas expressed in the article. I don't fully buy in to the suggestion that 20th Century psychology opened a Pandora's Box of free self-expression, and the counter-suggestion that repression is a virtue.
Put another way, I think the writer is conflating intellectual self-awareness and ignorant selfishness. I deplore the general absence of common courtesy and polite manners too, but I don't think that the idiot who leaves his or her empty beverage bottles on the bus seat, or spits out sunflower seed shells all over the subway floor, is a result of the Self-centered theories and therapies of modern psychology and the self-help industry.
That's my rushed thought-in-progress...
The population of the planet increases at three additional people per second.
When people begin to discuss the uncivility of having more kids on this already poisoned and overcrowded planet, then we will get somewhere.
Until then it's all just whining and ignoring the root cause of the issues.
have been a dreams reader for years..felt compelled to comment on this one (first time!) perhaps the article points to why we (U.S.) citizens are percieved to sit back and "let" our government get away with its crimes. a sense of togetherness, rather than isolation,would help us band together and achieve our common dreams!!!
Just because some individuals act like jerks does not mean they, we, all do.
Individualism is, in fact, all there is or ever was. By that I mean that even those who genuinely care for and try to advance a collective good make an individual decision to do so. The notion of a sort of "collective conscience" is just the flip side of "mob rule." Both tend to ignore that every decision is made by a single person. In the case of the former, that is probably okay, because, by my definition, it can lead to good results. As for the latter, I think talking of the "mob" is dangerous, for it tends to forgive the members for their individual acts, forgiveness not usually warranted.
Or, why not just say, "Well, everybody's doing it."
Maybe it is one more way that the rust belt city of Pittsburgh is "backward" - but I've been in some pretty packed buses and trolleys and courtesy rules to a fault. And drivers can be so courteous that it can cause accidents.
I think Erich Fromm explained all of this fifty years ago in his profound book, "To Have or to Be?" Contemporary persons overwhelmingly have chosen to have and except the implicit equation: I am what I have and what I consume. Everyone else becomes a threat to the identity of the narcissist. What little hope there is of avoiding the catastrophe of a Huxleyian world lies in cultivating the desire to be. Children naturally want to be and become. Unfortunately, we all too quickly teach them to possess and to consume as the bases of modern life.
Wow, makes you want to give up on blogs. Could it be the law of averages? When more and more people turn to the internet to get news and socialize disagreement and anger are bound to result. Human nature has it's pitfalls.
In my opinion it's not individulaism it's the loss of any sense of community caused by a one world view of everything.
We should localize not globalize. All politics and civility are local.
Reminds me of the afternoon a few thousand of us attended a speaking engagement by the Dalai Lama at UCLA. At its end we all made for our cars and gridlocked the parking structures and the roads leading from campus. Horns were honked. Voices were raised. A few drivers flipped off their equally unable-to-move brethren. The message of peace and human unity we'd spent the afternoon hearing seemed to be context-specific.
keyinside January 28th, 2008 3:05 pm wrote:
"Bad manners work. Nice people get stepped on. I know, I've gotten a lot of shoe prints on me for trying to be the considerate guy over the years."
I think that good manners also work. Especially if they truly reflect what's inside of you. It depends on what you want to achieve. From the point of view of karma, good manners are really the only thing that works. You can shout and scream if you are irritated with people around you, but it will only drag you down even further.
Don't worry about shoe prints all over you if people abuse your being 'considerate'. Spiritually, you are still the stronger one. The whole point is to not let anti-social people drag you down to their level. Trust me, you won't find happiness there; rather stay where you are now while maintaining a positive image of yourself.
It is really no fun being cynical and individualistic, even if you get a nice seat in the bus.
Hanuman
How did you know what was going on in the villages?
Interesting ideas but hard to know what is reality....
twist
Hi Octotroph,
The really really horrible and depressing thing is that some of us have tried and tried and tried and tried both to teach and to model civility, generosity and kindness to our children, only to see this bloody culture run our efforts over like a semi truck and teach our kids the opposite.
SIOUXROSE - Eeeeeyupp! It's not an accident.
Also, from the train, I see a lot of graffiti - some of it is quite beautiful. I wonder who, at what time of night, how many or are they solitary? Stoned/drink or sober? Ages? If young, don't their parents miss them? How long does it take to design a wall, or begfore the cops come? It's an interesting phenomenon - has anyone seen any literature about it? I know there have been graffiti art shows and festivals, but has anyone done a sociological study of the spontaneous phenomenon? Frankly, I'd prefer to see the graffiti to all the giant ads all over the walls, floors, bus and train cars.
O roe,
I have been in 35 countries and I have found, especially in the Mid East and Far East that no one waits in line. I remember in 1981 when I first went to Saudi Arabia on my way to Jeddah I had to change planes at Dhahran. When the plane came in everyone ran for the bus to be taken to the plane and once there you had to wait on the tarmac until the doors were open and then everyone ran up the stair and down the aisles of the plane to get a seat. In Hong Kong people seem to be a bit more patient and polite than people in China. Same thing, no one would wait for anyone else to do anything. I first went to England in 1974 and I was amazed at how polite everyone was as far as waiting their turn goes. The first time I ever had to stand back from a teller at a bank so the person in front of me could do their business was in England, I thought that was really polite. In the states we would just walk up behind the person and wait. Of course, now its different. If you don't push and shove in the Middle East you won't get anything if there is a crowd. I think this comes from human nature. I hate to say uncivilized, but don't animals do the same thing? Funny thing tho, I have two dogs and they always wait their turn no matter what we are doing: feeding, putting on leashes to go for a walk or just loving so I think that being polite and waiting ones turn is a learned action, we are not born with it and if we perceive the situation calls for it, our natural animal instincts appear for lack of self control. I think self control is what is lacking in our children today, because they have not been taught otherwise. Shame.
Ironically.. it has been the Corporate Capitalistic system that has encouraged this. Each of us is encouraged to live only for ourselves. Why should any of us be inconvienced by sharing, or being a part of a community. From our cars to all our technology. We can alienate others, make others feel jealous, close out people, ignore, drive faster to get away, wear clothes and perfume that offend and live larger than life to show off to others.
Consumerism has created a rabid community, we knock over others to get the best deal on the biggest tv.. So we never have to leave the home to be around others. WE can watch Movies not with the unwashed masses.. but with our unwashed families... instead.
UGH!!!
MEDUSA says, "We are all strangers to each other, just passing through. We are suspicious of our neighbors, fearful of strangers. " The USE of fear to create a sense of separation has been used dramatically by the Bush administration, and let's face it, Tony Blair bought the whole boogy man thing in order to draw the U.K into the Iraqi debacle.
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KENE JEEVES adds, "the most powerful man, and his ilk, in the most powerful country exemplify the Us vs. Them, Me First attitude." There is NO question there is a "trickle down" effect as portrayed by the sociopathic tendencies of our unelected Prez.
HEWMON says, "What you think and feel is a direct product of your environment, and if you live in an environment of constant violence, then you will operate with violent thoughts and feelings foremost in your mind." Again this hits the crux of the breakdown in societal mores on the head.
So when BARELY HUMAN asks what we can do, much comes from the example set by leadership. Much comes from whether we approach each other with an attitude of fear and anxiety, or respect and consideration.
JAREILLY is onto something with his description of the unnatural speed of modern urban life. Your observation in my view also explains why poor inner city kids who lack solid role models and fall between the cracks find a need to leave their mark in graffiti painted on trains and other public property. That may be the only mark they can leave to be SEEN in a society where they are little more than an ant.
All this has made me look at the situation of rage and agressiveness and our communal spaces. I think it is a direct relation to the attitude at the top. A trickle-down result. Hell yeah, people collectively (writers for example these days or pick any other workers group on any other day) are treated like nuisances to the bottom line. A cost benefit analysis is done on most prospective employees. That is: will their personal life weigh down the bottom line.
Honestly, most of this cement world and lack of friendly and free park space - or un- pesticide sprayed parks- Silent Spring is another topic. has become overwhelming to me and I almost never drive on the freeway because of the speed and agressiveness of drivers. Yeah, great solution most people cant afford. I managed to get a job on the same street that I live near. A disclaimer here; it isnt that I cant be as aggressive as the rest of 'em, it is just I cant stand "being" aggressive. Ultimately, and living in America, everyone in their own cars except for poor people and disabled people- being all alone in my car- and then having anger while at the wheel-can be kind of existential. Me, all alone , in my car, with my anger. So clinical, clean. A different experience elbow to elbow on the London trains. C'mon England, if you arent polite , who is??
The only solution I can come up with, short of an institutional change from the top. ie leaders who believe in the common good, the common wealth.. is a personal one of taking the time to be friendly and polite. I always thank gentlemen/ and women that open the door for me, or a smile or small courtesies go a long way in this kind of environment. Having a five yr old son has helped me alot to try that much harder to model the right behavior. Maybe we all need to manifest our inner parents and be real role models for those scared little children on that aggressive morning commute. There is hope, but I do sympathize with the workers who are under extreme pressures.
Right on LUCKY LEFTY!
bakunin, have you tried public transportation? I imagine Boston has a reliable system. I'm glad you made it home safely, and I'm glad that your "unusual maneuvers" didn't result in injuries to yourself or others.
Thank you very much, Miss Manners. If you blame the lack of civility in our culture on the blogs rather than the psychopathic, murderous pieces of human filth who run the society, crawl back into your hole and stay there. How's that for another contemptable lack of etiquette?
What surprised me when I first visited Europe, I have never been to England so I cannot speak to their situation, is that no one at all waits on line for anything they press in wherever they choose. I don't know if it is cultural or what the heck it is but it sure is an annoyance.
I always know when I am in a public buying area in the US and a person goes to the front or pushes in most times than not they are not from this country.
If someone could speak on this I certainly would appreciate it.
The argument that there are too many people is a right winger's take. There would be plenty of food to go around, for example, if people ate less meat. 90% or so of the food eaten by a cow is wasted. Try eating veggies instead of a cow that eats veggies. One acre supports a vegetarian; seventeen acres are needed to support a meat eater. This right wing rant of too many people is just another fraud perpetrated by people who don't know how to think clearly or who are morally blind. Which is it?
Got caught in a wicked afternoon snow storm a month and a half ago in Boston. All the workplaces public and private let their employees out early and at the same time. The streets were an absolute madhouse as the snow came down fast. In order to make any progress and not get stuck in unmoving traffic with the snow getting ever deeper, I had to do some pretty outrageous and rather uncivil if not illegal things or it would have taken me seven or eight hours to get home instead of five and a half. Several times I "broke the law" by doing some "unusual maneuvers" and was uncivil in that I refused to just sit in my car not moving. Civility is good but not when it becomes sheepishness. And sometimes being outrageous might even save your life.
This is what the sociopathic corporate entities (SCEs) want us to become. They want us to believe that the desire for domination over community is human nature. They want us to believe that consumerism is more rewarding than citizenship. They want us to go on hating our miserable jobs and to play the lottery.
How do we resist? How about dumping the two corporate-owned parties and building up the Green Party? If you haven't already, check out the GP's ten key values at gp.org. They hold everything that terrifies the SCEs.
Welcome to the "I-Me-Mine" Age of Me-first greed enhancement.
As Thorstein Veblen observed (to paraphrase), the lower classes usually emulate the behavior, attempt to buy the status symbols and incorporate the ideas of the upper-classes.
Thus, Thatcher could note that there is no such thing as society. There are only individuals.
The institutions of commerce and elite rule treat us like sheep and for the most part we comply, out of fear, exhaustion, laziness, or short-term self-interest or for many because we actually "love Big Brother!". When they don't treat us like sheep they treat us like raging toddlers in the sandbox. We comply with that too.
With so much of life a mad rush to consume and conform, there isn't much space left for "freedom" or real "individuality". So out there in the world, on the highway, on the bus, in the train station, on the Internet, safe in our anonymity, we exploit the tiny openings we have for expressing ourselves. Only instead of thoughtful expression guided by reflection leading to civil discourse and maybe positive action, we content ourselves with putting the other guy "in his place" - somewhere behind us. We thus confuse pointless transgression against strangers with the substance of freedom. Then for a split second we feel better, as we do when we watch some hapless designated loser get humiliated on a "reality" show. But then after awhile we feel terrible again because we know somewhere in whatever is left of our consciences that the other guy's meaningless humiliation is not our victory; it is our shame.
Or we did know that once. Now, shame is going the way of irony (and civility). Barely Human wants a solution: Lay your store of human decency among your kids, your neighbors, their kids and the old lady down the street. And hope something survives.
ubrew12: "I know one public square that became a shopping mall: Union Square in San Francisco..."
I hear that, from one San Franciscan to another.
Stilba said: "ubrew12: Nice observation on the fountains. Kind of like how the closest things we have to public squares are shopping malls."
I know one public square that became a shopping mall: Union Square in San Francisco. Once a normal grassy square where people could park their butts for awhile, or lie down on a park bench, they PAVED IT OVER and put in benches you couldn't lie down on. I listened to a public concert there a few months ago, and everyone in the audience was jostling for a place behind the central monument: the only shade left in the square. Tarrying for more than 15 minutes was out of the question, your feet got sore on the concrete.
The purpose of Union Square in San Francisco is the same new purpose of all our public parks: its a walkway between malls. No lingering, no smelling of roses, just get thee to a Macy's and buy some cr*p you don't need, or even want. Anything to get into a air-conditioned environment.
I like being an individual. I don't mind communicating with others and at times I even have relationships with some. But in general I prefer going through my own motions. My life is my personal trip. People used to find me strange, though less and less since modern devices increasingly have encouraged this kind of behaviour, but they never accused me of being rude or impolite. To me politeness has always been a fair and fairly cheap price to pay for my freedom. It is difficult for me to understand how individuality could be the root of unsocial behaviour. Being alone never has been unsatisfactory to me, it has never made me want to hate or harm other people. I think growing individuality is a perfect natural development. Just as the stars in the universe keep spreading since day one, so are we diverging in our own separate ways. This is our destiny. We were always meant to become spirits. As for the madness at the bus stop: thirty years ago nobody would get fired for being late at work. It is the unfortunate people who lack personal freedom that are pressed by economic reality to behave like morons.
One word: Community.
Without community in the real world, which most people don't have any true sense of, this is exactly what you get. And the internet is just an extension of this. Humans are communal animals, so what happens when we are all shuttered off from each other and never have any connection beyond virtual communication? I think humanity has to re-think this whole thing (ie, modern society) before we destroy what makes us human in the first place.
"...Treat people like animals and, chances are, they will end up behaving like them..."
That is exactly why they do it
Turn-taking is the bedrock of civility in any culture (and also of democracy itself). Once that concept is gone it's every man for himself.
Stilba - you're right, the mall has become our public square. If you've ever worked in one (as I have) you know that people meet their friends there, have meals there, kids date there, go to movies there, just sit on a bench to have a private chat with a friend. The poor hang out there in winter because it's warm and in the summer because it's cool. And the lonely just like to be around other people for a while.
I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that except that we shouldn't have so many poor and lonely people. "All the lonely people - where do they all come from?"
So... What's the solution? Increased social pressure to conform? Censorship of the arts? Drug people who express unhappiness? Teach children in school to not be introspective? Ban psychology?
analogies are where you find them, and relevent to some but not all. The Japanese subway system is an efficient people mover, very necesary to a crowded society. On each station there are those whose job it is to "pack" people into cars. They actually push and shove until not a single bit of space remains and then signal for the doors to close. Noone gives a darn either, just a cultural anomaly, perhaps? Noone in Japan thinks this rude at all.
Bloggers who demonstrate the behavior cited in the article can simply be ignored. Lacking a reaction they will simply disappear, sooner or later. I find this article to be more of an excuse than a positive , perhaps its just me.
ubrew12: Nice observation on the fountains. Kind of like how the closest things we have to public squares are shopping malls.
I can't say as I blame people for being rude and pushy. Why? It gets results. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
We are such a me first/customer service oriented society, that we are taught now from a young age to howl bloody murder if we don't get our way, or if our order is filled incorrectly at a hamburger stand.
Nowhere to be seen are the disaproving looks, or the collective "shhhh" to someone who is being rude, or even the Seinfeldian "no soup for you" shouted at customer who is holding up everyone else.
Bad manners work. Nice people get stepped on. I know, I've gotten a lot of shoe prints on me for trying to be the considerate guy over the years.
ALT 0162 = ¢
You can use the Alt codes to type special characters Turn on the Num Lock, hold down the ALT key and type in the number using the numerical keypad of your computer.
KaneJeeves- You're right. There is a trickle down, of morality.
There is no or little accountability of ghigh government officials or institutions, yetat least in the US, the parroting of individual responsibility.
It's hypocracy to the highest.
Fortunately or unfortunately, young people know at least that the powers that be don't give a rat's ass about thier lives, now or in the future. So things like being decent to each other go out like the baby an\wth the bath water.
The UNMITIGATED GREED AND POWER LUST of the powerful in our societyies and world are driving this "Don't give damn about others" behavior.
It's ironic and hypocritical when First Furerfrau Laura Bush has a tag line at the end of an ad for youth mentoring, " Be a friend, be a mentor." Use youth as cannon fodder, cut meaningful education with psuedo-educational programs like "No Child Left Behind", cut fuel assistance but dont tax excess oil company profits...I could go on all day.
It's clear that the scum have risen to the top. Woth the Rupert Murdoch's and corporate driven media of GE & Disney want to keep us ignorant and misinformed. Their media attack dogs (apologies to canines everywhere) aren't there for discourse. They are pyromanics as fire-enhancers.
And you wonder why society is a mess. Why people are uncivil. If you look at humanist psychologists Erikson and Asimov about building grounded people up and did the opposite, that's what is going on.
Stilba said: "there are FAR too many human beings"
The psychological carrying capacity of a land is much lower than its physical carrying capacity. Money can help alleviate the constant 'ego-slap' of people jostled around in a city. Money can purchase order, but, perhaps more importantly, money can purchase beauty (lasting beauty, NOT the beauty of this years lip gloss). The resultant boost to the ego can keep it from falling off the deep end, even in an otherwise ego-sapping urban environment.
But money isn't especially well shared in America and, probably, Britian these days. The beauty it purchases is gated and not for the publics eyes. The urban public responds by becoming 'immune' to beauty, ie street-savvy, or just coarse.
I have, for some time, noted the drying up of public fountains in America. What, after all, does a fountain bring to the public besides beauty? And shouldn't modern beauty be found exclusively in the local shopping mall? There are still fountains, of course. You'll see them outside fancy businesses near their logos. They are clever, space-efficient, high-tech devices sprouting from and into concrete. I've noticed that these latter fountains have no place to SIT around them, no place for children to play. They are 'see but no touch' devices only. There's nothing quite as depressing as watching a child respond to one of these devices: they skirt it like a dog skirts its favorite tree, their hands anxious to interrupt the waters flow, but its all off-limits.
Come on folks. This lady's living in what we used to call the illusion of insulated white privilege. We got this country from genocide and we built it with forced human labor. The Celts of the British Isles first took an island, annihilated the indigenous people and built a global empire by sabering every man woman and child who refused to be a Slave in their Empire. Get REAL.
To get an "A" you should be the last "male" standing in class, or else have some very good motel photographs of the teacher.
To get the promotion you should assassinate the boss and his entire family, take his chair and kill anyone who wants to challenge your decision. Competition is for children until they learn how to kill. Are they in your way? Are they slow or weak? EAT THEM. RUN THEM OVER. STOMP THEM INTO BLOODY GOO. Because you can.
That's how we run our Societies. That's how we run our Corporations. That is the Power Game. Ask Maggie Thatcher.
No Prisoners. No mercy. No self-restraint. You can have anything you can take and hold. If you're not one of the diners, you are on the menu. Humans are food.
Whether that's a seat on a bus, or a shot at Prime Minister.
Teach'em young. Baby seals get eaten by sharks all the time. Fast food. IT'S THE NATURAL ORDER.
Now, I don't agree with any of this and it describes a perfect nightmare – BUT IT IS THE WORLD WE HAVE ALLOWED OUR MASTERS TO CREATE FOR US.
Do something about it or JUST SHUT UP – as our most popular pundits are wont to say.
Pieces of 8.
I suspect that the major cause of this angst, aside from overpopulation, is to be found in consumerism. We are assaulted daily with the need for more stuff, that we are blinded to simple social skills and necessities.
Our enormously productive economy....demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate. - US retailing analyst Victor Lebeau, 1955
Civility is a product of civilization and social justice. It isn't something you can enforce. It doesn't come as a result of repressing your emotions, your thoughts, your speech. What you think and feel is a direct product of your environment, and if you live in an environment of constant violence, then you will operate with violent thoughts and feelings foremost in your mind. People who survive obey the real rules of the world around them.
Our society, particularly in the UK and in North America, rewards selfish consumptive behavior. It is the essence of our ever more deregulated capitalist society, where greed is a virtue. You only have to watch a smattering of commercials to see how vaunted selfish behavior is. But the core problem isn't even the messages we are bombarded with, it's how we are forced to live our lives. When our only collective responsibility is to consume, while individually we have to compete venomously with everyone for a wage; when public service becomes just another source of private profit, when each ticking moment is a commodity: well you're creating a particularly good environment for vicious competitive behavior. So really, is the problem at the Edmonton bus station a lack of manners or merely inadequate public transport combined with intense pressure on students to get to school on time?
If we want people to be more civil, admonishments and shame won't help at all. As best that will simply lead to more explosive anger. We need to collectively encourage the behavior we want to see in society by providing the civil foundations for it. We are, after all, doing that right at this moment with unfettered capitalism and consumption. We are bombarded by messages demanding we buy, and that the route to happiness is through material gain. We are transforming all public goods into privatized profit centers that squeeze out as much as possible from us, while providing a little as they can. Little wonder that when we spend so much time and energy on encouraging such a society that we see it reflected in the way people interact with each other.
The way to climb out of this morass isn't to repress. The way is to revisit reestablishing and repairing the civil foundations of our societies. One tiny step can be as simple as ensuring adequate public transit for children.
This article seems to point to (but never specifically mentions ...why???) an important fact: there are FAR too many human beings. Who can blame us? We're stressed in a thousand ways, and we are only animals. The shock could be that things aren't much worse. Solution, solution ...who has the solution?
Best article today, otherwise. How many e-fistfights will we see in the comments on this one?
Maybe this is a stretch, but look at the example that's being set: the most powerful man, and his ilk, in the most powerful country exemplify the Us vs. Them, Me First attitude. Their M.O. is to lie, cheat, and steal so often that we can't catch our breath. And when they're called to account? They totally ignore their accusers and keep on going. Congressional hearing, subpeona? Just don't show up. Whether it's in London, or my own little hometown politics, what I'm seeing is just a trickle-down effect from the example that's being set.
Sounds like the US is not the only "industrialized" nation that is spiraling down into the third world.
There are too many of us crammed into cities and suburbs, with access to inedaquate infrastructure. Every day seems to be a competition for what little remains. We are overstretched and overburdened, leaving little energy for simple civility. Wrapped in our own problems, feeling a pressure of time, we plow through the crowd for that tiny advantage that might help us progress. The system treats us with contempt, and we internalize that and pass it on.
We are all strangers to each other, just passing through. We are suspicious of our neighbors, fearful of strangers. If we can afford it, we barricade ourselves in gated communities or with security systems.
It's much worse than mere rudeness or selfishness. Our businesses are mere trickery; our politicians are liars and our religious are charlatans. If that is the nature of our leadership, then, barring a major upheaval of consciousness or revolution, our citizenry cannot be more.
This is a topic I have given personal thought to. The writer being British, reminds me( I have never been to Britain) that the Brits are renowned for their politeness. It sounds like maybe they are not employing the same people and services that were once perhaps abundant, like doormen and conductors and others in the public space there, unarmed, just to help preserve civility. In America, we have done without someone to open our doors and pump our gas since the 1970's. And gee, talk about a sense of entitlement.. Americans have that one covered. We have a phenomenon here called "road rage".. now flash forward to our present tech age of chat rooms, comment sections and blogs.. Now I can only speak for myself and I really work hard at rising to a higher denominator. I too have evolved from sometime reactionary to trying to be "zen"like and listen and ultimately, they say our democracy depends on everyone having a say. So, I want to be myself and say what I think needs to be said, while always moving in a direction of How I can be more respectful.. Ultimately in our global, small-world, we each Represent. Being an adult is accepting that challenge to be evolved. There is my two cents.(no cents sign on my computer) Thanks to the author for bringing up an important subject.
Wow, this is a really great and very telling article. I'm sure many people have stories very similar. This past weekend I was part of a traffic jam on a local Interstate highway - they closed the interstate because of a horrible accident. What amazed me is that people were turning around, going the WRONG DIRECTION on the Interstate as they just couldn't be bothered with obeying the law and waiting it out like the rest of us. I was furious, and actually called the police to report it. I never saw whether they got tickets, but they were definitely making the entire problem worse by their actions, which were completely selfish and wrong.
Our sense of individual entitlement has gone out of control. It's no wonder we've got governmental officials who run all over our constitutions - they are shining examples of the "give me what I want, and screw you if you don't like it" attitude. It's also an attitude of "you don't get to tell ME what to do, I tell YOU what to do"! Nobody wants to accept authority, and nobody wants to believe that there is a common good and common ground, it's either "with us or against us".
I'm beginning to wonder if a worldwide global wipe-out of the human race from a natural catastrophe or something isn't a bad idea. We are wrecking the planet, wrecking each other, and our children are not going to be any better. Our planet doesn't deserve this.