Tantrums, The New Social Disease Sep 22, 2009 04:30 AM
Vinay Menon
I miss the days when people bottled up their emotions, kept it all inside and developed ulcers to protect the feelings of others.
The other day, as I was exiting a store in Mississauga, I overheard a man berating someone on his cellphone. He was dropping F-bombs. He was stomping his feet. He was creating a spectacle.
Inadvertently, I must have stared. When he noticed me noticing, his eyes narrowed and he barked, "What are you looking at?"
Now, if I possessed a black belt in martial arts, I might have considered answering his rhetorical question with a crouching tiger pose or a roundhouse kick into the air.
But since I routinely struggle to remove the lids from jars of strawberry jam, I opted for muted panic.
He returned to his cellular assault. And I got the hell out of there.
As my minivan screeched away, I started thinking about the recent antics of rapper Kanye West, tennis star Serena Williams and U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson.
Are the pundits right? Has civility vanished into a cultural abyss? Do we now live in an age of random outbursts?
If true, I blame the pop psychology gurus and the rococo talk show hosts and the oleaginous merchants of self-help who have disfigured the rules of social engagement.
Dr. Phil is a very rich man. That is all you need to know.
We're constantly encouraged to communicate, express displeasure, share grievances, speak our minds, take the world by the throat and tell it exactly how we feel.
So should anyone be surprised that West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards this month, snatching the mike from 19-year-old Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech?
After all, this is a guy with an impressive track record when it comes to being a jackass.
He railed against MTV in 2007 after Britney Spears was picked to open the awards show. A year earlier, he climbed atop the stage at the MTV Europe Music Awards to protest losing an award.
Then there was the 2005 fundraising special after Hurricane Katrina, in which West suddenly deviated from the NBC TelePrompTer to tell the world, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
The question becomes: Is West an egocentric anomaly we can safely ignore?
Or is he a high-def reflection of a me-first society in which fewer people seem to be operating with the invisible brain structure that once filtered thoughts from words and words from actions?
Similarly, when Williams erupted in a disgraceful tirade and threatened to force-feed her tennis ball to a line judge during a recent tournament, was she lost in a moment of acute frustration or reacting in a way that is not dissimilar to what we could easily find on our streets, in our malls, in on our schools and in our neighbourhoods?
And when Wilson shouted, "You lie!" at Barack Obama as the American president addressed a joint session of Congress, was he exhibiting zero impulse control or mirroring the partisan rage and distrust that is swallowing political discourse on both sides of the border?
Maybe the pundits are right. Maybe polite society is devolving into a shoutfest, a cycle of boorish behaviour and cheap apologies.
Maybe we all just need to be quiet for a while.
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