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It is all to easy to be under the impression, or jump to the conclusion, that our society has become worse in so many aspects. This is not so much in terms of measurable factors such as socio-economic status or health metrics, but less tangible ones – notably civility, or lack thereof (rudeness).
This blog post was in large part inspired by (there’s the acronym “ILPIB”, from my book) the excellent book “FACTFULNESS” (2018) by the late great Hans Rosling, who was a renowned Swedish professor of international health and an advisor to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Dr. Rosling aptly points out what he calls “the negativity instinct”, in which we are all subjected to all sorts of negative news from around the globe, and when many of us combine that with certain images of African famines or civil wars from the memories of our younger years, it just triggers our reactionary thought process that things are getting worse and worse. (Dr. Rosling also mentions the related “straight line instinct”, where we falsely believe trends will continue on a defined trajectory.)
As a parallel to this, I found the same visceral sentiment and thought arises from our perceptions of rudeness (and aggression) in society. Now, granted, incivility isn’t something as easily quantifiable as the metrics Dr. Rosling cites – usually there’s no overt crime involved or dollar amount. But it is still an ugly thing to witness.
It comes down to the infamous “availability bias” which affects our judgement, that we’re exposed to more videos out there, so we get the impression of more rudeness now than before (say, the 20th century). The same thing with road rage, pretty much.
True, maybe some manifestations of aggression are showing up more through the cyber-channels, like cyber-bullying (both in school and towards pseudo-celebrities being this-or-that-shamed). But the inclination to do so – if such a thing is measurable – has arguably not changed at all. It just has more channels to release or unleash itself.
At its essence, this whole “society is ruder than ever before” theme is little more than a staple of small talk, among the weather, the news, and sports teams. Think about it: would you ever begin a small talk topic with “gee, ya know, the world’s become so much politer than it was two decades ago” – NO, of course you wouldn’t, you ninny!!
Going back to the parallel initiated from Dr. Rosling’s work, the media almost never highlights what’s good about society, let alone repeatedly force-feeds us such instances of virtuous events. Ain’t gonna happen, I’m afraid. To cite Dr. Rosling: “Journalists who reported flights that didn’t crash or crops that didn’t fail would quickly lose their jobs.” True that!!
So, availability of info shapes our perceptions, not vice-versa.
And let’s face it, folks – nobody is gonna watch some video clip of two people in a fender-bender who have a conciliatory exchange afterwards. Nor are they gonna watch a video of a flight passenger having an agreeable exchange with the counter agent.
We can blame a lot of the instinct for rudeness and lacking in diplomatic decorum on a little something called hyperbolic discounting. (I talk about this in my book, Diamond Min(e)d.) It means that we act a certain way in a given moment when we expect it’ll be a long time (perhaps never) when we experience the fallout of that behaviour. Example: maybe one day there’ll be a Gen Z political candidate (afflicted by narcissism) whose surreptitious video is going to be dredged up from social media archives, in which they berated a service-sector employee over some trivial matter. Or maybe someone will use GenAI to fabricate such a video (with a de-aging technique used on the personage in question) as a smear campaign. But I digress.
What I find is quite the paradox is that for the last 10-15 years or so, in many countries, there are signs up in various businesses or clinics etc. that stipulate there is zero tolerance for any acts of aggression or abuse towards staff. And yet, with that time frame coinciding with “the Smartphone camera revolution”, you would think that there would be far less proclivity for folks to engage in such repugnant behaviour. It’s as if the ubiquity of such recording devices would pose enough of a deterrence. But clearly not. And I applaud the institutions for putting that “zero tolerance” signage up, as an extra layer of assurance. (I call it a “paradox” in a rather facetious manner.)
But then ask yourself: what prompted the establishment management to put those signs up on in the first place?? Was it actual incidents of aggression and incivility, or the perception thereof? Given that today it appears to be more the rule than the exception, the product of a collective hive-mind of humanity, my money’s on the latter.
So, next time you feel the perverse need to watch some you-twerp video about a generic K-person having a fit of histrionics in some establishment, just for a cheap dopamine hit, remember everything I’ve said here.
And so:, to end on a profound quote from the great Forrest Gump (honouring the 30-year anniversary), “And that’s all I gotta say about that.”