Supposedly people are more angry, abusive, lawless, corrupt, neurotic, selfish and lazy than they used to be - and what's more it's getting worse.
But is this really true? Is people's behaviour actually slipping or is this a false impression? How on earth do you measure such things when there's no way of directly comparing behaviour now with behaviour, say, twenty years ago?
Today's bad behaviour is much more visible when it's constantly flagged up by the media and made out to be more common than it is. And yesterday's bad behaviour is not so noticeable because we've forgotten a lot of it. So of course it seems like people's behaviour has got worse.
The fact is that there's a large number of people who are badly behaved and always have been. There are plenty of people who get drunk on planes, insult shop assistants, jump queues, feign sickies and so on. Such wrongdoers didn't simply jump out of the woodwork last week.
And I admit to making these false comparisons myself. Just recently I was saying that people seem to be angrier than they used to be, but of course if you ask me for evidence or statistics, I don't have any. It's simply my personal hunch, based on nothing whatever.
I need to take the media's sensationalism with a large pinch of salt.
We were talking about that just this morning and Leo remembered being stabbed in the hand when at school in the late fifties, the constant full on fights in the cloakroom and the bullying gangs who caused havoc whether in or out of school...and this was a Catholic grammar school!
ReplyDeleteHelen: So plenty of bad behaviour going on at that time! Of course boarding schools have always seen plenty of bullying and unruly behaviour, like the one I went to.
DeleteI wonder why things always seem to be getting worse, not better in our minds. However, all well-read folks know that stories or quotes from hundreds and even thousands of years ago show that history just repeats itself and our lives are no different than those in the past.
ReplyDeleteBijoux: Indeed, if you look again at media reports from a few decades back, you'll find lots of crime and anti-social behaviour. As you say, history repeats itself.
DeleteI think we can measure it by our everyday experiences. 20 years ago I didn't see or hear from friends and family about people being rude, mean, and just plain crazy out in public. I don't even go out all that often and the last two times I was in the store there was someone screaming and having a complete melt down because of one thing or another. I don't remember seeing that happen very often 20 years ago. My daughter is a manager at a store and she comes home every single night and tells me about someone having a meltdown in her store every single day. She's had to call police so many times on people. So yes I do think people behave badly in public a lot more now than 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteMary: You may be right. Like you, I don't remember the sort of meltdowns and rages that go on today when I was young. Then again, even now I don't see that many meltdowns.
DeleteWhat you think is what you see. My mother worked with a woman who would say things like, "Today you will see people wearing red." Then you noticed everyone who wore red that day. I suspect no more people wore red, you just noticed the ones who did whereas before you would have ignored them.
ReplyDeleteLinda
Linda: Yes, good point, it could be that if you expect to see bad behaviour, you'll see it everywhere you look.
DeleteNick, yes people can be mean and rude and really strange. I was the victim of a person on Liam Ryan's blog in making a comment to a lady's post about Israel who accused me being a troll and stalking her for years. I have no.words. She refers to my name. I was shocked . I start to believe that normal contacts are no möre possible. I would never speak or judge a person I do not know. So suddenly bad behaviour came into my life yesterday.
ReplyDeleteHannah
Hannah: Having known you for a while, I couldn't imagine you stalking someone or being a troll. Like you, I try to avoid judging a person I don't know - or even a person I do know. Bad behaviour indeed.
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