Fight the slide!

One societal transgression at a time

Not long ago I went through a red light on my bicycle. To those of you crying out “you swine!” do not fear, someone else at the time already let me know.

Whizzing through said intersection, a cyclist waiting dutifully on the other side said something along the lines of “too good to wait, are we?”

My initial reaction was one suitable for an arrogant, bike-riding twerp: that of an eye roll and a smattering of disdain.

It was, however, not long before his words began to slowly have a corrosive effect upon me. I soon found myself waiting diligently in front of that same red light, judging the other cyclists who continue to fly through. The simple act of calling me out brought me quite rapidly back into line - and quite rightly too.

It has lately been observed that the standards of public behaviour and general adherence to those unspoken rules of society has markedly declined. Their transgression is becoming as common as their observance.

This can be put down to various factors. Most clearly we have levels of immigration that would make a Mongol horde wince. People arriving to these shores are variously uninterested in our norms – after all, multiculturalism dictates that their cultural mores are just as valid as ours – and not taught about them due to a supine cultural spinelessness.

Then, of course, there is the problem of falling societal trust. There is the growing sense that, by following the rules, you are a mug. As communities around us fragment or coalesce into disparate ghettos, what benefit does ‘playing cricket’ have? Research has long shown that decreased levels of homogeneity in a society reduce people’s willingness to pay into a welfare state.

With ever more people living off the state and deciding to become a burden to others - be it because of ‘mental health’ or ‘long Covid’ - many are beginning to think that the social compact is broken. The widely understood agreement that taxes were there to enable a functioning superstructure becomes ever less tolerable amid the unending litany of failures we are presented with daily. To ‘play by the rules’ in such a situation makes you a gullible fool.

Latterly, there is also the rise of so-called Main Character Syndrome. This is where people lead increasingly solipsistic lives, believing themselves to be at the centre of the universe. Much is to blame for this: liberalism’s logical endpoint is that of worship of the self, even in its most perverse manifestations, resulting in the various identity insanities of modern time.

Another aspect is that of the algorithm. Anybody using any social media is constantly fed a curated stream of content designed specifically for them. Every whim and interest they have is forever catered to, resulting in extended journeys down one's own rabbit holes, as it were. For some it is cat videos, for other it is spicy right wing memes. Either way: the world seems increasingly constructed just for us. Little wonder that the existence of others is increasingly regarded as an inconvenience. Why wait in a queue when I can just as easily push ahead of all these nobody NPCs?

Why should I queue for you?

Reluctance to call out this bad behaviour is understandable. We are more scared of violence than we were. We are afraid of having our lives destroyed after baseless accusations of racism. It is easier simply to let it slide, to stick our heads in the proverbial sand.

Yet in recent months I find myself unable to ignore the small acts of anti-social behaviour I see. Once meek and fearful, I now cannot conceal my burning irritation at seeing society’s norms rudely trodden on.

A recent example illustrates this. On an Underground train a man, having devoured his Ginster’s pasty, threw the wrapper on the floor. I told him to pick it up, leading to his reply that it wasn’t his “effing problem that there wasn’t any bins on the Tube”, followed by my retort that it was his problem as it was his rubbish. Naturally, he ignored me and waltzed off the train.

Once I might have regarded this intervention as the height of pettiness. Now I see it as a necessary corrective to the gradual but undeniable degradation I see around me on a daily basis. I will confess a vigilante’s thrill in confronting people who have just ignored a zebra crossing or left dog muck on the pavement.

On the whole, people react exceedingly negatively. No one likes to admit error. There is too much face to lose. There is also, of course, the fear of aggression being dished out in return. At six-foot-something and in my 30s, I still am wary of things taking a turn for the worse. But if I won’t say something, why would those of less physically imposing statures?

Some things we cannot control directly. Heaven knows the extent of our nation’s woes. If it were possible to dance to the gods of economic growth – perhaps sacrificing a small rodent at the same time – I would do so.

But for those things we can bring influence to bear on, those things immediately within our surroundings, I think it behoves us all to intervene when we see bad behaviour. Each little transgression represents a small step in the direction of society’s unwinding. We have grown too used to thinking that our responsibility for how we want our life to look is limited to going to the ballot box once every few years.

Yet, politics is not really real life. Most of it is performative nonsense. Real life is the daily habits we see around us and that make our lives more or less liveable, like the person spitting in the street or barging through a door.

Or, worst of all, the cyclist going through the red light. What selfish gits they are.