Our In-Your-Face Epoch

Two 10-year-olds in a pickup hockey game in the Boston area get physical with each other. The father of one of them is beaten--fatally--and the father of the other is now facing a manslaughter charge that carries a sentence of up to 20 years.

Sports officials and psychologists offer explanations for this and other episodes of adult violence at children’s sporting events, theorizing about parents who live vicariously through the athletic achievements of their offspring, about parents who encourage aggressiveness in their kids because they dream of them winning athletic scholarships and making millions as professional athletes.

Well, yes. There is certainly that. But then how to explain the increasing prevalence of uncontrolled anger and apparently spontaneous violence in venues that have nothing to do with sports? What accounts for the rise in road rage and in out-of-control behavior on airliners that threatens the safety of passengers and crew? Petty squabbles used to end with people resolving not to talk to each other again; now they may end with a gunshot. And what about the countless thousands of daily examples of sub-violent but still menacing behavior, the me-first acts of rudeness, the disregard of the feelings, comfort or safety of others? Do you feel the urge to talk to your companion in the middle of a movie or concert or make a cell phone call in a crowded restaurant? Then speak up, by all means. It’s your right.

Our deep need to believe that we live in a rational world demands rational explanations for asocial behavior. Academics can no doubt produce many. What common sense tells us is that slackened social restraints encourage creeping disrespect and incivility, and incivility all too easily gives way to violence. We aren’t talking here about habitual criminals. Our concern is with ordinary people, who have either forgotten what the rules are or, more likely, simply decided they don’t apply to them.