What Does Road Rage Have to Do with World Peace?

Recently, someone sent me an invitation to a Facebook event called "A Day of Peace." The idea was that for one day everyone who joined this event would agree not to speak ill of their fellow man, but instead try to be forgiving and understanding.  Right off the bat, I want to say that I think this is a swell idea.  I'm well aware that I spent too much time getting aggravated and griping about people around me.  I've thought many times that I need to learn to just let things go.  First of all, all this anger is counter-productive.  Griping about someone who has pissed me off has never, ever once in the history of ever, ever made me feel better about the situation.  I usually end up with my stomach in knots and just generally feeling like a huge tool.  It's definitely better for my own stress level and peace of mind when I can just shrug things off and go on, smiling.  Plus, it never solves anything.  If the moment has passed to say something or confront the person who's irritated me, then nothing is really served by bending someone else's ear over my troubles.  Second of all, anger just ends up breeding more anger.  I think that the core of the message that Jesus was trying to bring to world was that if everyone could realize that the endless cycle of anger, violence, and retribution could end with them at any time, then we could truly have Heaven on Earth.  It's just a shame that many of the people who profess to be his followers fail to grasp this concept.  But it was, and is a beautiful idea, elegant in its simplicity, extraordinarily difficult in it's execution.

So anyhow, I'm on board with the idea.  However, all that being said, my efforts to live up to the laudable goals of such a day would be greatly enhanced if we had, say...another day, which could somehow coincide with that one so that they would fall on the same date.  We could call this day, "Please, Please, for the Love of All That's Sacred and Holy, Please Try Not to Be Such a Thoughtless Idiot and Instead Try to Use Your Brain for One Day, Just One Single Solitary Day in Your Entire Pathetic Life"...um, Day.  Okay, maybe that's a little long.  Maybe it should just be called, "Don't Be an Idiot" Day.  It would be one day where everyone would just calm down, take a step back, and you know...think before they open their mouth and say or do something stupid.

You might say that people can't help being stupid.  This is true to a certain point, but genuine stupidity isn't often the problem.  I see people all the time operating below their own intelligence level.  The problem is more a mental slackness or laziness.  I'm saying, reign it it in, tighten things up, try to be more rational.  Nowadays, reason is held in low regard, considered as the recourse of the small minded.  The "enlightened" folks are above all that.  They're guided by their feelings and the elusive whispers of the "universe".  Whatever.  Then we turn on the news and wonder how some people's lives got to be such a mess.  There's no telling what the "universe" might tell someone to do.  At least reason is reliable.  But in subtle ways people are permeated by the culture on all sides with the subtle message, "Let go of your fussy old reason.  Do what feels right."  Is it any surprise that some people shoot heroine into their veins?  That first hit sure feels right at the time.

Now folks, whatever you might think of me, I'm honestly not all that smart.  It's true that I'm fascinated by all kinds of philosophical, psychological, and scientific ideas, but that's just my own personal past-time.  I spend a lot of time thinking about these things, probably too much time.  I'm curious about how things work and I like to write about the theories that I come up with.  All of this is just like a hobby, though.  My father was obsessed with sports.  He was like a walking encyclopedia of baseball.  Name a player and he could tell you their batting average for their best year.  I could never hope to equal that level of knowledge and understanding of the subject, because I don't really care about sports.  On the other hand, not everyone cares like I do about the influence of Freud's cocaine addiction on his theories or the fact that Nietzsche was hugging a horse when he had his mental break-down.  Different strokes for different folks.

My point is, that when it comes to dealing with everyday life, I have no advantages when it comes to intelligence.  If anything, I'm at a disadvantage.  I can't even fix a car beyond changing a battery or topping up the washer fluid.  But I try...I really try to be a rational person.  I try to judge situations and people fairly.  I try to look at myself honestly without  my ego getting in the way.  I try to conduct my personal affairs sensibly and responsibly.  I try to keep my mind active and alert, and look for new approaches to the inevitable problems  that arise.  In short, I try every single day to be a reasonable person.  Fellow blogger Deanne recently mentioned a great quote from Gandhi, "Be the change you want to see in the world."  This is the change I want to see in the world, and so often I don't.  All the little petty sins and grievances and irresponsibilities, most of them lead back to this one fundamental cause.  People don't use their heads.  Anger is a problem.  There's no denying that.  But from where I stand, stupidity seems to be a bigger one. 

That brings us to the road rage.  The term began its life as a yet another media buzzword, like "stay-cation"....ugggghh.  Nevertheless, it denoted a specific problem: people that drive angry.  If someone got behind a school bus and then flipped out after its fifteenth stop and then said, the hell with it, and started plowing through kids like they were orange traffic cones, that was road rage.  Nowadays, the term has expanded in popular usage to include anyone who gets mad or even slightly peeved behind the wheel.  The defining feature of road rage, the violent and reckless driving itself, the anger demonstrated in action, has become disassociated from the term.  Now, all a person needs to do is raise their voice a few decibels, and their passenger is instantly accusing them of "road rage".  In the old days, you didn't need to be a passenger to see road rage.  You could see from across the street.  Heck, you could see it from across town.  Road rage was an act, not a mood.  Sure the mood can lead to the act, and you might say its a fine line, but there was a line.

The blurring of this line had led to a shift in focus and blame.  It suggests that the problem isn't all the idiots out there on the road that don't know how to drive, that tail gate instead of maintaining the recommended distance, that take wild chances that put themselves and others at risk, that yak on their phones without paying attention to the road, and that squeal their tires when they make a turn so everyone for miles around will know how "cool" they are.  Nope, there's something wrong with you for getting annoyed by all this.  Sure, that drunk guy in the semi almost killed that family in the SUV, but you need to calm down. 

Let me tell you, I live near a fairly busy intersection.  There have been a couple of dozen accidents in the eight years I've been here.  I've had a chance to observe the details up close.  Nearly every single one was cause by blatant, avoidable stupidity, not anger.  Is it useful to get angry behind the wheel?  Does it help the problem?  No, of course not.  But I think if you extrapolate these results to the wider world, you see a trend where people are encouraged to suppress their outrage and placidly allow the stupidity of others to go on unchecked.  The anger is usually unproductive, and often the result of stupidity itself, and people certainly do need to relax, but I think its a mistake to focus on outrage of any sort as if that's the fundamental problem.  Outrage can even be a good thing on rare occasions.  Without anger some of the world's greatest injustices might have gone unaddressed.

You might say that my "Don't Be an Idiot" Day misses the point of Gandhi's "Be the change" or as Micheal Jackson put it, "I'm starting with the man in the mirror", before we realized that he was talking about years and years of plastic surgery.  Allow me to make a counter-argument.  One could also say that the "Day of Peace" also misses the point, since it implies that it's other people's short-comings and stupidity that one needs to be patient with.  Make no mistake about it; "Don't Be an Idiot" Day is for everyone.  It's for me, and for you as well.  No matter who you are, it takes a deliberate effort to not be an idiot, and we all slip up from time to time.  We need to forgive the stupidity of others, but we also need to try to stop being so stupid ourselves.  If we embrace the one, maybe we can make some headway on the other.