I had just turned off onto the ramp taking me from one freeway to another on my way to work this morning when another car came zipping across two lanes of traffic and the paved zone between the diverging lanes to crowd into the space between me and the car ahead. I’m sure the driver congratulated himself on his ninja driving skillz. I was much less complimentary. It’d be much easier on everyone if he’d just remember his turn-off in time and not rely on everyone else to not do something unexpected in response to his doing something stupidly unexpected.
We rely significantly–even stake our lives–on the protection of the social contract, the notion that we will all cooperate and obey the same code of laws, written or otherwise, in how we behave each day. Yes, there is law enforcement, but let’s face it: there’s never a cop around when the other guy deserves to get caught. We depend largely on the idea that if I obey the law everyone else will, too. I won’t stick my nose in the way of your fist if you promise not to wave your fist in unexpected places.
Increasingly, though, I see people who break that contract, assuming that everyone else will still keep their end of the bargain. The learn to do whatever they want, relying on everyone else to act predictably.
But what if I’d been as reckless with that social contract? What if I’d see the idiot coming and floored it to cut him off? It wouldn’t have been difficult. He was trying to insert himself into a space only 1.5 car lengths long. I could have run him into a barrier had I been just as callous about his breaking the law as he was in breaking it. Or he might still have bashed into the side of my car, sending me into the next lane over and into someone else.
Yeah, it would have been his fault, but I’m not willing to risk the potential injury to myself and others. It’s not worth it to me to risk my neck, or anyone else’s, just to punish him. And so I continue to drive predictably, enabling this jerk to continue to break the social contract and pat himself on the back for his successful manipulation of the system.
But I wonder how long this can last.
There is an old joke that illustrates this point. A tourist arrives in Italy and hires a taxi to take him to his hotel across the city from the airport. The driver agrees, and off they go. Pretty soon they come to a red light, but the driver just speeds up and zips through the intersection, narrowly avoiding a collision.
“Hey!” the tourist yells, “what what you’re doing.”
The driver just waves dismissively. “Don’t-a worry, Senore! My brother Giuseppi, he does this all the time.”
Soon they come up to another red light, and again the driver just guns it and zips on through. The tourist complains again, but again he receives the reply, “No, is okay. My brother Giuseppi, he does this all the time.”
After a while longer they approach a light that just turned green. The driver slams on the brakes, laying a trail of smoking rubber all the way up to the intersection and plastering the tourist against the back of the seat. Completely livid now, the tourist yells, “What the (bleep) are you doing?! That light was green! Are you trying to kill me?!”
The driver just shrugs, “No, Senore, quite the contrary. My brother Giuseppi, he also driving taxi today, and you know how he is with red lights.”
It’s not just traffic laws. We rely on one another to act in a socially acceptable manner in all aspects of our lives. Often there are laws to punish those who transgress that social contract, but I think it’s safe to assume we’d all prefer the infraction not occur at all rather than hope the punishment can satisfactorily restore the status quo after the fact. In most cases the law does not restore the status quo. It merely acts as a deterrent by promising an unpleasant outcome for the perpetrator. Both parties usually end up losing.
But increasingly it seems the threat of negative outcomes is not sufficient to deter some people from taking advantage of the social contract. They’ll wave their figurative fist around recklessly, assuming everyone else will do their best to keep their nose out of the way. The rest of us bend over backward to accommodate them because having them go to jail for breaking my nose won’t fix my broken nose.
If they get away with it long enough, these social contract opportunists may even come to think they deserve to act this way. Even if they do eventually break a nose with their erratic fist they’ll simply convince themselves they’re being treated unfairly because “the idiot didn’t keep their nose out of the way.” Because the effects of not moving your nose is unpleasant, the rest of us continue to watch out for fists, alleviating the need for any responsibility by the fist-swinger, all while muttering to ourselves about the unfairness of it all and how someone ought to teach them a lesson.
When someone finally snaps and decides they are the ones to teach them a lesson it, more often than not, doesn’t end well for the one who snaps, while the initial violator usually gets off free as a bird.
I don’t know the answer, other than to make sure we are not the ones taking advantage of others. I just hope this trend does not grow. When the social contract breaks down entirely, heaven help us all.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a classic example of an author with road rage.
…channeled safely through ones blog.
As I said, it’s not just driving. No one thinks twice about throwing their garbage around, assuming someone else will pick it up. Anything that can be downloaded, ripped, or copied for free, will be. Let the paying suckers support the development of that product. Take what you can get, when you can get it, and who cares what happens to anyone else, so long as you don’t get caught.
Yes. It relies on the rest of us being “suckers” and obeying the rules while Raskolnikoff and the rest of his superman allies go on to make use of Cain’s great secret.