Rage is the new black

Are drivers becoming more aggressive?

This really happened. Let me lay out the scenario for you.

I was on the eastern part of Yacht Club Drive heading west toward Eglin Parkway. I approached the intersection of Yacht Club and Eglin and entered the right-turn lane. Immediately to my right is a convenience store. To my left is a Bank of America.

Eglin Parkway is a six-lane thoroughfare. In Florida you’re allowed to turn right on a red light, but I sometimes don’t do that if the middle of the three oncoming lanes is occupied. Some drivers don’t have sense enough to realize it’s a bad idea to change lanes in an intersection. This intersection is notorious for drivers doing that – on impulse they decide they need something from the convenience store and swoop into the right lane just as I’m tempted to pull out.

On this day I waited for both the right and middle lanes to clear. Suddenly, I heard somebody behind me lay on his horn.

I looked and it was a fellow in, to borrow an expresson from Dave Barry, a big honkin’ el jeffe penismobile Dodge Ram pickup. He gesticulated angrily and threw up his hands. Clearly he was not happy with my decision to wait.

He yanked the penismobile into reverse, backed up, screamed into the convenience store parking lot and took their exit to Eglin Parkway just as I made my turn. In 10 seconds he probably burned more gas than I would use during my entire drive to work that morning.

It irritated me that he would have me jeopardize my life and tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of property, and risk a lawsuit, all so that he might be on his way a few seconds earlier. But what troubled me was his rage – because I see it every day.

In awful comments left on websites. Rude people standing in lines at checkout counter. Airline passengers who balk at turning off their phones during takeoff. And nasty politicians who hit so far below the belt you wonder how they were let in the ring to begin with.

It seems rage has become the new black.

Why are people so angry?

I have a number of theories about that. For instance, maybe because I’m older, and a tad more frugal with my mortality, I see the world differently than I did when I was 25. Maybe what I see today as “rage” was a perfectly acceptable form of social interaction when I was 25.

Maybe it’s crowding. The world is more crowded today than it was when I ws 25 – by about 2 billion. I seem to remember a study from one of my education classes. It involved rats in a cage. As more were added, the rats became aggressive and attacked each other.

It could be that parents don’t teach their children manners anymore. Or spend enough time with them. Or spend enough time together as a family.

Also, people may be emulating behaviors they see in the media, from angry shouting matches between talk show antagonists to shoot ’em up movies and videogames, and violence-inspired music.

Possibly all these factors, if they are valid, have something to do with the rage quotient in our culture. But I would add another, which doesn’t get talked about very much:

Technology.

In 2004 Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf Coast between Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla. Here in Fort Walton Beach I was without electricity about four days. I live in a townhouse complex and I can say with dread certainty that a townhouse without electricity in the middle of September in Florida is a no-win proposition. A townhouse, depending on its construction, can become an oven.

It was during this time I noticed something strange taking place in my little townhouse community, something I hadn’t noticed since the mid-1960s. Forced out of their townhouses by the heat, people began meeting their neighbors, learning their names and sharing information about each other. Soon they began holding cookouts, helping each other with repairs, and generally interacting like the communities of old.

Once electricity was restored they retreated to their now air-conditioned townhouses and resumed being strangers.

I think that’s what technology is doing to us: It’s making strangers of us all.

For all its benefits – and I won’t dispute them because they’re undeniable – technology (and by that I mean the web, computers, tablets and smart phones) exerts a dehumanizing influence on people. It destroys communities, be they towns, neighborhoods or even families, and replaces them with ersatz online communities that do nothing to socialize their constituents but do plenty to amplify some of their worst traits.

For instance, you would never tell the woman behind the cash register at the convenience store where you buy gasoline that she’s an ugly pig. You might think it but you wouldn’t tell her. Online it’s a different matter.People are not only telling the woman she’s an ugly pig but virtually stoning her to death. They do it because they can – without risk to life or limb. Try that at the convenience store and she might just climb over the counter and knock you cold. Online, however, you’re likely anonymous. She will never know who you are. You can indulge your animal instincts.

That’s how social interaction works in the real world. It delivers consequences for actions. Consequences exert a moderating influence on people’s behavior.

The end result is something we call “civilization.”

But technology dehumanizes people another way.

Need a plane ticket? Visit Travelocity, punch a few buttons and it’ll be waiting for you at the airport. Want to know if it’ll rain in the next 10 minutes? Punch up the MyRadar app on your phone. Want to fill those empty minutes driving to work by telling Aunt Sue about the cute thing your cat did this morning? Send her a text. You might kill a 12-year-old crossing the road but oh well, that’s the price of progress. Besides, it’s not your fault. Apple shouldn’t have built such an attractive nuisance into your phone – at least that’s what your lawyers will argue. Oh, and if you don’t like the bias MSNBC serves up on its web news you can call up Fox. They’ll spin the news just the way you like it.

You don’t have to wait for anything. You don’t have to work for anything. You don’t have to sacrifice. You don’t even have to think. Technology creates the expectation that everything is easy and fast and tailored to your personal tastes. To borrow a John Varley title, just “press enter.”

Technology is creating a generation of people who are selfish, rude, stupid … and angry.

A chilling example: I was once contacted by a young lady who haughtily ordered me to remove online comments that were critical of her brother. Bro had just been accused of driving drunk and running over and killing a young married couple, and commenters had a few choice words about him. “He’s not a bad person,” she snarled, “he just made a mistake.”

A mistake? I was flabbergasted, both by her lack of compassion for the couple and her apparent real concern: the online image of her brother.

You probably believe I’m a raving Luddite who would unplug the world’s computers and go back to writing notes on paper to Aunt Sue. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I love being able to purchase airline tickets online. I have the MyRadar app on my phone and I upped my text-message allowance to 500 per month because I use that feature for all kinds of communication. I regularly peruse the news sites, from Fox to CNN and SpaceNews.

But there’s something to be said for perspective.

I consider myself lucky to have grown up in a world that did not have the internet. That world endowed me with qualities that serve me well today: patience, the ability to solve problems, an appreciation for consequences, a degree of creativity, and most important, a willingness to turn the other cheek.

I look upon those qualities as virtues, not liabilities. Sure, they’re slow and old-fashioned. But in my opinion they represent the very best of what civilization has to offer.

I confess to being suspicious of a generation that does not read or write. I am suspicious of people who do not care about their community – their physical community – and who value their own comfort over everybody else’s.

And I guess I’m suspicious of people who would blow their horn at you because you won’t pull out into traffic, and who would risk the lives of everybody around them to satisfy some primal urge to get ahead.Ironically, it’s technology that allows me to post this message and communicate it to the entire world. I am a true believer in better life through technology.But I don’t let technology control me. Moderation in all things.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .