If anything...

“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people.”

James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University.

What is it with people today? James Katz was talking about the rampant increase in what many would consider inappropriate use of cellphones on buses and trains, but I’m seeing something much wider.

It seems to me that a large number of people have forgotten that anyone else exists, much less has rights, and needs. Opinions too. Opinions that might well be different from yours, but are not necessarily wrong, evil, or demented.

Our societies are approaching the point where non-physical communication is the norm. Where people never meet, but nonetheless build relationships. With this capability comes great power and freedom. As usual, there is also huge capacity for abuse.

I’ve been commuting via bus for years, intermittently, but in the last few months I have also been wearing an iPod. I don’t carry this thing to block out the world. I carry it to give me more opportunity to listen to music. Nonetheless, it functions as a barrier. People generally sit down next to me now without a nod, a smile, a hello. Yes, this happened before, but not to anything like this degree. I’m no longer in the bus with the other commuters. I’m just taking up space.

I saw two people fighting over a car park the other day. One person turned into the angle park when she saw the chance, depriving a man who was turning from the other side of the road the same opportunity. He swore. She gesticulated. He parked his car in the middle of the road, got out, and harangued the woman. She insisted that he was both wrong and of doubtful parentage. He suggested she should undertake a physically impossible feat. If it wasn’t for the other irate motorists making such a noise, he might have slugged her one rather than returning to his large vehicle and screeching off in anger, his hand out the window in an unmistakable digital gesture to the rest of the world.

Was this a normal large city scene? No. It wasn’t even in a large country. Was it in the central business district, where parks are hard to come by even in a smaller city? No. It was in a beach community, well out of the city. There were other parks within a block of the location in which the discussion took place. Neither of the combatants had any obvious issues with mobility.

I swim in the mornings. Slowly. I’m frequently passed, even in the slow lane, by younger, fitter, or more determined swimmers. Generally, it’s just like a road. You wait until an opportunity presents itself, and there is sufficient room for the manoeuvre, then you make your move. Depending on the difference between your speed and mine (hopefully not too much) you might need a fair amount of free space in order to not cut off someone swimming back the other way. If there isn’t sufficient room, or your speed difference is not great enough, you wait, swimming more slowly, until you have a suitable opportunity. Right?

Wrong. You barge past as best you can, cutting off the slow swimmer (me), and the opposing swimmer as well. If you’re really good, you wait a few laps, and do it all over again.

What, I repeat, is it with people today?