Degree of Separation

A few weeks ago, I was driving in a sleepy neighborhood in New England when I noticed a car tailing me so closely I could not see its front grill in my rear view mirror. When the driver rashly kept up with me in a roundabout, I pulled over to let the car pass because road rage is not my thing.

The driver pulled up next to me and rolled down his passenger side window. A good Samaritan, telling me something is wrong with my car? Far from it. The guy berated me for running a stop sign and endangering the lives of children in the neighborhood!

I have plenty of faults but running through stop signs and making life unsafe for kids are nowhere near the list. Maybe I didn’t come to a complete stop? Regardless of the actual or perceived transgression, he had no right to chase me so recklessly. I wanted to yell at him, but I kept quiet and let the moment pass.

You know why?

Hear the reason in slow motion: 340M people have 399M guns in this country. Angry people packing heat is a legitimate concern. This raging bull clearly felt empowered to make his point and who knows how far he would have gone to deliver justice. There was also a nagging risk because of the new-found notoriety we have as brown immigrants.

Stories you don’t think possible are abundant these days, so I bit my tongue.

On a recent trip to the same area, we retraced our path and realized that the chase began at an intersection with no stop signs at all. Even at this uncontrolled intersection, I did exactly what I was supposed to do: I slowed, looked and drove on, but the Self-Appointed-Angry-Vigilante-Dude was triggered that I had not stopped at a sign apparently only he can see!

The quality of our national discourse and this experience offer compelling reasons to think there is far more incivility, more in your face behavior now than ever before. I hear shocking stories from healthcare providers - intoxicated patient slapping doctor, patient telling doctor “I don’t want someone like you to treat me!” or “You are lucky I don’t have my gun today!” One doctor prefers treating inmates of a federal penitentiary (think violent offenders) than some patients because “...at least the inmates are respectful of doctors.”

What on earth is going on?!

Incivility is challenging to measure because the perception of what is civil varies from person to person. Even with that caveat, a Harvard researcher found that the percentage of people reporting they have experienced uncivil behavior has gone up from 50% in 2005 to 76% in 2022.

As a technologist, I see how digital communication and social media exacerbate the situation by giving us a degree of separation from the consequences of spewing ill-informed and malicious opinions. Texts, emails posts and comments are delivered as if the sender has an innate right to say what they want with technology that is completely devoid of body language. There are no facial expressions, hand gestures, tone and demeanor to contextualize the content. With replies being optional, relationships fray from deathly silence.

Digital posts hanging in ether, ready to be interpreted at-will, eliciting equally bizarre responses - that’s how I define the contours of our life fueled by Big Tech. Worse yet, bots confuse us into thinking humans are talking. We now officially exist at the intersection of opinion, anger and technology with few moderating influences which are questionable at best.

It is no longer possible to tell fact from fiction, truth from lies, experts from talking heads and news from opinions. I cannot rely on a single source of news anymore. Nobody is incentivized to provide all sides of an argument, forcing us into bubbles that reinforce our thoughts painted by our life experiences. Add guns to the mix and now I have all the motivation I need to think about engaging versus walking away.

In the past, I engaged because I wanted to and I could. Today’s majority agenda is viciously woke, shelters in the shade of populist strength and the second amendment, causing existential crisis to lurk at every corner. This has materially impacted the way I react.

In a few years we hope to swing to the center but few things in life are guaranteed. It is clear that in this moment in history, self-preservation is the dominant priority. Am I an ostrich ducking her head in the sand? Maybe. To each her own as we do whatever it takes to survive in these extraordinary times.

The takeaways from this episode is to be aware of uncontrolled intersections, not to engage with strangers unless it matters for our health and safety and engage only when there is hope of changing minds, not merely to make a point.

Life need not be this hard, but it is. May we choose our interactions wisely.