This is a case of one group of self-absorbed people intersecting with another group of self-absorbed people. As the article points out, the ragers make up their own perceived rules, and so do the slow people. "I have the right to be here..." "People should be courteous, as I define it..." There is plenty of narcissism to go around with this kind of thing.
If everyone were perfectly courteous, everyone would be standing perfectly still so as to not accidentally infringe on someone else's perceived personal space.
In the real world, there really are people who block traffic in entirely unreasonable ways that effect large numbers of other people. Really the only way to properly handle that situation is to shove past, so that you don't add to the situation. There is no neutral position, you can only hope to be less rude.
"If everyone were perfectly courteous" = "If everyone lived by the same rules I live by" = "If everyone had the same notion of respect as I"
It is difficult for people to agree, not only across cultures but within the same culture, with what is considered socially correct. Don't get me wrong: I am a large believer in courtesy. I share your vision that there is a lack of efficiency, that a few people can affect a large number of people. I see it all the time in traffic jams. On the sidewalk, I try to let people pass; I feel it is not only nice but also more efficient.
However, getting angry over someone else not doing the same as I would do... That is just ego speaking. My way is not the only way or necessarily truly the best way, whatever my rationalization to suit my sense of self-righteousness.
Getting angry is just an emotion, so long as you handle yourself properly it doesn't really matter at all what you feel.
The point I and others are trying to get across here is that the author of the story is voicing an unrealistic expectation; one that involved everyone playing by the same rules. My point is that outward 'aggression' is a normal part of dealing with a crowd, you can't villain-ize it without villain-izing the behaviour that makes it necessary.
"If everyone were perfectly courteous, everyone would be standing perfectly still so as to not accidentally infringe on someone else's perceived personal space."
By this I mean a world where everybody acts to minimize discomfort of others on the streets is a fantasy.
It seems like you are just trying to set up a situation where you can do what you want, and any effect it has on others is their fault for being self absorbed.
Have you considered that the anger is not "they do it different" but "their actions are causing measurable negative consequence to me"? If the inefficiency caused by a door stopper causes me to miss a train connection, is it really all about my ego, or is it about that person screwing up my entire travel?
Have you considered that the anger is not "their actions are causing measurable negative consequence to me" but "their actions are outside my control"?
They did something that was not a part of our perfect little plan, and it simply irks us. We are so wrapped up in our own vision of how the world is, how the world will be for us, that we get angry when something happens counter to our vision. Yes, it is narcissism.
And that is okay. It is okay to recognize a problem and adapt to it or to regain control. When it is not okay is when our angry reaction is also negative.
To take your hypothetical situation: "If the inefficiency caused by a door stopper causes me to miss a train connection, is it really all about my ego, or is it about that person screwing up my entire travel?" I am sure all of us know somebody who is habitually late, and they have all kinds of excuses for it. So do people who are only sometimes late. This is just bad time management. The expectation that the world should operate perfectly in accordance with your plan is where I can claim it is about your ego. You are going to blame that one person for screwing up your travel? I like the pseudointellectual rationalization here, the excuse that it was the "inefficiency" of that other person that caused your problem. Maybe you should have gotten out of bed earlier. Maybe your affairs should have been in order before Go time. We like to place the blame on others rather than accept personal responsibility. That is just how important and infallible we are. Narcissism. Granted, that person's stopping behavior did have an impact, as did the speed of your walking, the amount of luggage you were carrying vs how much you worked out weeks before in order to more easily carry it, the stop lights on the way to the station, the time it took to get your ticket checked, and the line of other people boarding.
Again, please do not feel insulted if you fall in the narcissism category; we all do to varying degrees. Very common. My intent was to point it out as a huge contributing factor in order to balance things out a bit. The OP was trying to put the "ragers" in the clear, but as the saying goes, "It takes two to start a fight."
Wait it is my fault the route planners made the routes such that the path from one train to the next, goes through a choke-point, but did not consider the travel between trains could be delayed? Seriously, lots of places where you buy tickets have time limits on the transfer where you must make a specific train (or bus or whatever) or you forfeit your fare. You are going to tell me that if someone blocks the route and causes the transfer to be missed it is my fault for time mis-management? What instead should I have done? My travel is screwed up whether I arrive at the destination late or on-time. I may have lost money because of the situation. But it is all my fault? I may have had a part in it, you know going that route or whatever, but you are seriously playing blame the victim here.
Inside my control or outside my control doesn't matter. I don't care when people do things that don't have negative consequence to me. I do care when I am responsible for doing something that has negative consequence to me. The common denominator here is not my control, just that i don't like the negative consequences.
I understand now... please let me hear how you would use this to troll the rape victim that it is really just her self absorption that makes it a problem, she shouldn't have been so narcissistic about her genitalia. Or the family of someone murdered, and how they really just should have spent more time with him, instead of missing him now. It is unreasonable in both cases to thing that life would have gone perfectly and they may have lived their life without rape and murder.
Your style of trolling is actually pretty good dark humor, now that I get it.
Whoa, you jumped to some extremes, and I would be hard-pressed to agree they are analogous. You reshaped your situation to suggest that you did indeed have no way to plan better, that somebody's action was directly responsible; logically, my opinions cannot possibly apply, and I think the conclusion you drew by misapplying my opinions was a stretch. In my response, I brought up traffic lights and other such things; in yours, you are now on some narrow path with a choke point.
Allow me to depart from the time management answer (it was a convenient way to reveal that both parties were at fault in one way or another), since it does not apply at all in the new scenario, and let's meet up with my core point in this whole thread.
As I understand your hypothetical situation, a single person stopped at a choke point, and because of them keeping you from moving forward, you missed an important rendezvous. Missing this means you take financial loss. You are going to experience a flash of anger for your loss. You have a target for your anger, the person who blocked you.
My core point is this: You are angry because the situation is out of your control, did not match your plan. The world did not operate according to your desires; someone else barged in and interrupted it, stopping you from moving forward. I propose that the amount of anger you experience is proportionate to how wrapped up with yourself that you are.
Here is the litmus test. What if you find out soon after that it was because that person had a stroke right there at the choke point? If you are like most normal people in this situation, you will suddenly experience a mix of emotions: lightened anger (it is still there, since things did not go your way), a sense of shame (oh, they had a really good reason, and you were really targeting them), a touch of concern, and a bit of relief that something in the world makes some sense.
In the absence of this information, having nothing but your own viewpoint to go on, you would have remained angry, even angrier as time passed. With somebody else's viewpoint, suddenly it seems unjustified to an extent. Amazing how seeing through another's eyes changes the emotion.
I didn't reshape, I just mis-assumed everywhere had the same stupid transfer rules as here. I was corrected by the internet. Second, the assumption that anyone would be late or more than inconvenineced and lose a fare was your jumping to conclusions, not mine. I never said I was late, only that I missed a train transfer.
Stop telling me why I would be angry in the situation. I am not angry because of the crowds that I hate but can't control. I'm not angry because of the people that play music on the train when I would prefer quiet. I am angry because the door-stander caused an actual negative consequence in my life, beyond "i don't like it and can't control it".
Now, unlike you, and most people according to you, I can separate my emotions and look at them. If the case was that the door stopper was not just gawking, but in fact had a stroke (speaking of jumping to extremes... this is a different case alread, seriously, gawking is a choice to stop the door whereas I presume stroke is not but I will set aside this completely irrational comparison for now), I would in fact still be angry that I missed the train and the fare. I would also feel sad for the sufferer and his family, that can seriously affect the life. I would also understand if they were angry, the whole situation has some pretty negative consequences for them (you on the other hand would apparently tell them its their own fault and they shouldn't be angry). If I was actively hindering or getting in the way of EMTs and other people who could help the sufferer and make the whole thing run smoothly, yes I would feel a bit of shame, as hindering that process, intentionally or not has negative consequences for that person. When I found out it was not that person's choice to block the door, I would no longer be angry towards them. Note however: the anger at missing the train and related consequences didn't go away.
Now back to the difference between as stroke and a choice to stand and gawk. They are fundamentally different as one is the choice made by a person and the other is something happening to a person (if they somehow were trying to commit suicide by stroke, it collapses back to the door blocker by choice scenario). If a person makes a choice to do something that has negative consequences to me, I will be angry because those consequences are not just falling out of the universe, they are the result of intent.
I still think you are just trying to set up your world so that you can act as you choose and tell other people that you are strictly in the right at all times. Basically you don't seem to think there is any difference between the results of your actions and the results of the weather. This is silly. Every person who participates and thus reaps benefit from society also has a certain amount of responsibility to act in the interest of that society, aka not gawking in doorways affecting many instances of missed train.
Finally: what harm comes to the world if I am angry towards a person doing harm to me? Seriously, you seem so against anger, but who cares if anger happens? It certainly does nothing to harm anyone, no matter how much anger I direct at them. Should I act on that anger, perhaps there could be harm but not just from being angry.
So, um, those signs on the freeway saying "slower traffic keep right"... those are the products of self-absorbed narcissists who have done what? Infiltrated the Department of Transportation?
Speed limits on roads are almost always political decisions, not engineering ones. How else do you explain the straight as an arrow, flat as a pane of glass, brand-spanking-new, 60mph limit roads crisscrossing the american midwest?
Limiting speeds on roads that cut through farmland is probably a good idea. Imagine the damage that would be caused if a car hurtling down the rocketway at 90 intersected with a loose cow, tractor, or someone checking a mailbox that's perilously close to the road.
I'm talking interstates, not regular old roads. Last time I crossed the country by car (about a year ago) the average speed-limit was very low, absolutely not set at the safe driving speed. I forget what it was exactly, might have been more of an average at 65, but it was dramatically low.
Interestingly, iirc the exception to this was North Dakota. As I recall there were plenty of 70-80mph segments there (still low, but with the 5mph tolerance it was reasonable).
I will be using "you" to mean people that rage in general, not specifically you because I do not know how you react. :)
First, you bring up a different subject: Are we talking about freeway signs or sidewalks? I was going with the sidewalk examples. Why should the same rules apply? Why would you be angry if a walker on a sidewalk was not following the same rules as a car driver on a freeway? It is insensible anyway: humans are not equipped with turn signals, although sometimes I wish they were. ;)
Let's talk about road rage now. In the presence of signs that clearly state "slower traffic keep right", why would you be angry if someone drives slower on the left? Sure, they are disobeying traffic signs, breaking the law, etc, but why is that your concern? What gives you the authority to "punish" (honking horns, riding a lawbreaker's tail, giving the finger on your way by, swerving angrily around to indicate your opinion, etc)?
No, the signs are not products of self-absorbed narcissists, not for these situations; those individuals may very well fit that profile in spite of the signs, but we do not have direct evidence of that in any scenario described so far. The anger reaction from the perceived slight in these circumstances is.
Ironically, when we talk about narcissism, we probably need to self-analyze, too. All of us have a certain amount of it, or we would not be gracing the rest of the Internet public with the bounties of our posts, believing that people might actually care about our opinions. :)
"Let's talk about road rage now. In the presence of signs that clearly state "slower traffic keep right", why would you be angry if someone drives slower on the left? Sure, they are disobeying traffic signs, breaking the law, etc, but why is that your concern? What gives you the authority to "punish" (honking horns, riding a lawbreaker's tail, giving the finger on your way by, swerving angrily around to indicate your opinion, etc)?"
Are you joking? If somebody is driving slowly in the left lane, they are creating an unsafe traffic condition. It isn't wrong simply because there are signs saying not to do it, it's wrong specifically because it negatively effects other drivers on the road.
Furthermore, honking your horn is not "punishment", it's a form of communication.
> it's wrong specifically because it negatively effects other drivers on the road.
It is surely wrong if the person is traveling below the lower speed limit (be it specified explicitly or legally in the absence of the lower speed limit markers). Otherwise, it is just other people being impatient, and their reactions -- such as abruptly swerving around the driver or making a lot of distracting noise -- also cause the unsafe traffic condition.
Note carefully my point, as it ties to my first post: Both actors involved are at fault. Both actors involved are assured they are right. Both actors exhibit negative, antisocial, and unsafe behavior. Neither is an angel; neither is "better".
Traveling slowly^ in the left lane both causes congestion and creates a situation where passing on the right is likely to occur. Both of these dramatically increase the likelyhood of an accident. The slow left-lane driver is at fault for not following the otherwise accepted conventions of the road.
Laws and legal speed limits have nothing to do with it. (however: in many areas the person traveling at slow 'regular' speed in the left lane would be breaking the law. In many areas the left lane is explicitly for people traveling faster than the speed limit (read: passing)).
^where slowly is defined as relative to the rest of traffic.
Not so at all. The person traveling slowly enough to break the otherwise smooth flow of traffic is creating a danger exponentially greater than the one created by a honking horn. If they're drunk or severely fatigued (as opposed to merely distracted) then the problem is even worse, and the need for corrective cues from surrounding drivers is even greater.
Contrary to what you say, the signal provided by the honking horn - while certainly negative - is actually pro-social and pro-safety, in that it's prompting an anti-social and dangerous actor to change his behavior.
Obviously, if this corrective behavior extends to aggressive tail-gating, screaming and yelling, brandishing firearms, or any other objectively dangerous act that makes the honker a part of the problem, then yes, they're both in the wrong. Once the honker's response escalates to actual rage, then he is - almost by definition - more dangerous than the trigger.
However, if the necessary negative feedback is provided with a reasonable measure of restraint (i.e. one that's likely to reduce, and not exacerbate the larger problem) then it's a good thing for everyone. Indeed, the willingness to assert yourself for the sake of safety in situations where others are distracted to the point of becoming general impediments is something that distinguished good drivers from bad.
And yes, promoting good flow is synonymous with promoting safety. There is an inverse relationship between the quality of flow and the likelihood of a collision.
I agree with you. However, our opinions on efficient traffic flow are irrelevant for two reasons.
First, the only rule of the road generally recognized, followed or not, is the letter of the law. What some random Internet guy thinks should also be a rule of the road, even if he is 100% right, does not matter. As someone else mentioned, that is politics.
Second, the key point I have been trying to make in this scenario is that honking your horn (or whatever reaction) is a reflection of your narcissism, your self-absorption. You feel entitled to attempt to control somebody else in order to get your way (even if you rationalize your way to be "for the good of others around me"). Sometimes that control is okay.
The entire thread regards angry reactions. We are angry when something happens that is out of our control, out of our perfect little plan for the world. We are angry because it should go our way.
Now I have a choice. I can get bent out of shape over your highly disrespectful statement (you could have expressed that in a much more civilized manner), I can try to elaborate, or I can ignore you and move on with my day.
Firstly, the statement "the only rule of the road generally recognized, followed or not, is the letter of the law." genuinely does concern me.
Secondly, I feel that anyone who seriously suggests that signaling your alarm to other drivers in unsafe situations is a display of narcissism is not actually interested in an intelligent conversation, and is probably a troll.
