A couple of months ago I had a rather violent series of episodes in close succession. None of these crossed the threshhold to actual physical confrontations, but each of them walked right up to the line and stood there, daring someone to tempt it over the edge.
It began at a screening of Transformers. We found ourselves sitting in front of a guy and his date who were talking in an extremely irritating manner. I turned around in my seat and confronted him. "Are we going to have to listen to you idiots through the entire movie?". His response was surprisingly intense. He became irate, expressing to me a sentiment akin to "How DARE you challenge my behavior!" As I negotiated my way through his temper I became aware of my tactical disadvantage, in that should I disengage the back of my head would be turned to him, and I had been given the impression that he could not be trusted. His date began to get whiny, begging me to stop, begging him to stop, in a manner that suggested abuse. I simply held position and stared, unbeknownst to him for my own defense, and as he got continually more agitated I only replied to his accusations and threats in as non-escalating of a manner as I could manage. Finally, instead of taking a swing at me, he stormed out of the theatre.
A few weeks later I walked into a gun store to purchase a rifle. At the counter, filling out papers for what I would later learn was a shotgun, was a man about 45 years old loudly complaining about the questions being asked on the DROS Form. As I attracted the dealer's attention to begin filling out the form myself, I heard a series of comments issuing from him that not only bothered me, but were causing visible discomfort in some of the other customers:
" 'Have you ever renounced your American citizenship' Hell I renounce it every goddamn day! This damn country is going straight to hell"
"Dammit if I was a Mexican I wouldn't have to go through all of this"
"Fucking government just hands guns over to spics and niggers while I gotta go through a waiting period"
And so forth. As the clerk went over his form, he informed this bigot that there were a couple of errors that needed correction, to which he replied "Why can't they figure that out themselves? Goddam liberal faggot state." I had been quietly biting my tongue to that point, but at this last comment he had finally managed to express every form of bigotry available. I turned from my paperwork and simply stated
"You need to shut up."
And returned to my paperwork. The clerk looked relieved. The man muttered something about as intelligent as "I say what I want" but didn't say any more. The clerk eventually found grounds to refuse the sale, and everybody won. Except for the asshole, which is fairly important to the point I will be making later.
The last incident was only a week later. I was at the Pickathon Music Festival in Oregon with my girlfriend. On the second night of the festival, we were kept from sleep until 4 in the morning by various assorted drunks singing songs, shouting, playing music, and other drunken revelries. Most of these people quieted down when we approached them with certain vital information - namely, that it was extremely late, they were in a public space, and many people had small children - save, of course, for one special person named Ronnie.
After figuring that the desires of the sleepy were being respected, my girlfriend and I had nearly drifted off into unconsciousness when we were jarred by the clumsy crashing through the woods of a boistrous drunk who loudly informed his travelling partner at one point that he had lost his sandal. My girlfriend sat up in the tent and shouted out to the forest "It's four in the god-damned morning!", tired of handling the issue diplomatically. The drunk in the forest yelled back "Fuck you, bitch!" and I had to get involved. Hoping a threat would suffice, I yelled "Do I have to come out there and kick your ass?", I recieved the reply "You'd have to find me first!"
At this point I was in no mood to let anything slide. I pulled on some pants, tossed a knife in my pocket, grabbed a high-powered flashlight and set out on the trail, following the giggling and crunching noises of our disrespectful neighbor. It was less than a minute before I spotted him, and upon that event, I spotlighted his face and ran up to his position with such alacrity that he fell over. I spent the next five minutes berating him and returned to my tent. We didn't get any more trouble.
These encounters all have a few things in common:
1. I was the aggressor
2. I was provoked by some remarkable examples of poor social judgement and a marked lack of concern for those in the vicinity - in a word, rudeness
3. None of them degraded to physical violence, even though the threat of it was omnipresent
4. There was an immediate improvement in the demeanor of the subject or the tension in the situation.
I am not one of those alarmists who will say that the death of our culture is imminent, that the Day of Judgement is at hand because "kids these days have no respect", but I will put rudeness forward as a social problem of no small concern. My ideas as to its source, or the cause of its apparent increase, or even whether or not it is increasing, are fodder for other posts. The point of this post is to advocate an active approach to, ah, hm, shall we call it attitude correction?
What seems to me the most telling of the constants is the immediate improvement. Obviously, it wasn't all handshakes and "Good day to you, Sirs", but in all cases the subjects did not fail to immediately cease their offensive activity. It may have been accompanied by brooding, mumbled threats, and glowering, but there was no escalation or later revenge. The body language, coupled with this immediate reaction, expresses to me a knowledge that these people knew, on some level, that what they were doing was not appropriate. This further means that there was, at some level, an intention to be offensive.
To skip several premises and get to the conclusion, these people were out to see what they could get away with.
This leads us directly to the root of the problem. It is not necessarily that there are people who willfully and belligerently approach the bounds of what is socially acceptable. In some ways, some contexts, to some degrees, this serves many valuable functions. It forces the rest of us to keep a little perspective on the world around us - a polite way of saying it stops us from being too damn thin-skinned - and it is the essence of social expansion, exploration, and experimentation. But there are times when the object is clearly not growth oriented, but malicious and destructive.
It is in these cases that so often the rest of us find ourselves looking uncomfortably around at eachother, grimacing and shrugging that "Someone" should take care of that. The root problem to which I alluded is that increasingly few people are willing to take up the cause of enforcing good manners. It is obvious why: What could be more rude than calling out a complete stranger on their behavior, in public? This violates several taboos. It is invasive, it causes them to lose face, it creates a scene, and it risks violence. Breaking taboos often increases the discomfort for those around you before it alleviates it.
For these reasons, people are afraid to pursue their own comfort. And for these reasons, people without empathy, restraint, or class are welcome to take control of everyone's quality of life. I'd bet good money that these are generally the same people who draw penises in bathroom stalls, like the Raiders, don't let people change lanes in front of them on the freeway, and think unlicensed Calvin window stickers are clever. But for now that's just a theory.
If I will be bound to stating outright what my point is, it is this: Sometimes you gotta bitch-slap a motherfucker. It does absolutely no good to passively accept discomfort, only to complain about it later in hushed tones. There are three solutions to all problems, and in those instances where they cannot be ignored or avoided, ask yourself, "Should someone do something about this?" and remember that someone includes you. It's everyone's public - that means that it's not just you in it, as well. If we all contribute to maintaining the standards of a polite society, it's concievable that we might actually have one.
Until then, I leave you with (and we abondon eachother to) this:
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