Amy Alkon On How To Stop All The Rudeness: Tonight (Sun, May 5), On Coast To Coast AM With George Noory, 10-11 pm PT, 1-2 pm ET
In honor of my appearance to discuss my book I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, why people are rude and how to empower ourselves against the rude, I'm reposting a 2011 entry, "More Rudeness: Is It The Economy Or Are People Just Jerks?" (It's just below.)

You can listen to the show here. George Noory has done some previous shows on rudeness, and gets it -- as well as getting what needs to be done -- so this should be a very interesting show. (We'll be taking calls from 10:30 to 11 pm Pacific, if all goes as planned.)

That blog item:

More Rudeness: Is It The Economy Or Are People Just Jerks?
I came to the conclusion in I See Rude People (based on British anthropologist Robin Dunbar's work) that we're rude because we live in societies too big for our brains.

Dr. Helen wonders on Pajamas Media whether the uptick in rudeness, observed by people polled by Rasmussen Reports, is connected to the Obama economy? (76 percent of the Americans polled feel people are becoming ruder.) She blogs:

I wonder how much of the free-floating hostility is a reaction to the horrific economy, even for those who voted for the current administration. Maybe, the policies that are driving this country into the ground are also causing bad and hostile driving. Or maybe it's something else.

Anyone else notice an increase in hostile driving or other hostility in the air recently? What do you attribute the anger to?

Rasmussen Reports speculate that it's technology and cell phones making people ruder. I dispense with that rather facile conclusion in my book, in the section "Meet Homo Barbarus":

I call it "the 'Verizon made 'em do it!' defense" -- blaming the recent surge in rudeness on recent advances in technology like cell phones, the Internet, and mobile sound systems that shake the foundation of your house whenever some jackass in a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator turns his radio on in your zip code.

Technology isn't to blame. It just allows rudeness to be spread further, faster, and to a wider audience. The unfortunate truth is, rudeness is the human condition. We modern humans are a bunch of grabby, self-involved jerks, same as generations and generations of humans before us. It's just that there are suddenly fewer constraints on our grabby, self-involved jerkhood than ever before.

Half of my solution -- punishing the rude, in another excerpt from my book:

What good is knowing that we're living in societies way too big for our brains if there's really no reasonable way to change that? I mean, what are we going to do, ship 99.999 percent of New York City back to Poland or Cleveland or Potsdam or wherever they or their ancestors came from, then prohibit the people still left from interacting with more than 150 people -- ever?

Although we can't physically recreate a society more in tune with our psychological limitations, the good news is, we can artificially recreate it. What we have to do is mimic the psychological effect the small town/small tribe environment has on people behaving badly -- how the possibility of being caught, shamed, and losing status or getting booted from the fold dissuades people from getting their rude on. And again, while social exile today isn't the death sentence it would have been back in the Stone Age, our genes are still playing and replaying the same old tune in our heads: "It's hard out there alone in the savannah, dude!"

Ironically, the road back to the civility of the 150-person village goes straight through the global village. It takes only the Internet and one pissed-off person with a cell phone camera to strip some willful jerk of the protections of obscurity. The pissed-off person posts the photo on their site or one of the many jerk-exposing sites cropping up, and with a little linkie-love from a few bloggers and maybe a news story or two, the perp gets his (or hers).

My other solution? Being mindful that we live in societies too big for our brains and going out of our way to treat strangers like neighbors (doing small kindnesses for people you don't know -- as well as people you know). I wrote about this in my LA Times op-ed, titled by them "Rude Awakening":

It's also important to expand your concept of "neighbor" to anyone in your vicinity that you can act neighborly to. Not long ago, I saw a car stopped on my street in a place cars don't normally stop. "Everything OK?" I called to the 70ish man at the wheel.

In an Irish accent, he said, "Actually, we're lost." He and his wife were looking for the freeway, which was several miles and several turns behind them. I was running late for an appointment, but I gave them quick directions. The man thanked me, but he looked confused.

"One sec!" I said. I ran to my car, pulled out a pen and paper and wrote the directions down. It was no big deal, but then again, it was.

A minute or two of generosity of spirit is probably all it takes to leave people with a lasting good impression of Los Angeles, and more important, it just might compel them to pass on a little goodwill to the people they encounter -- to spread the nice instead of the mean.

I hope you'll consider buying a copy of my book, I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle To Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society. It's only $11.32, brand new, with Amazon's discount at the link above. (New copies or Kindle books go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating!)

My next book, to be published by St. Martin's next Spring, is "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."

loved what you did in response to the loud-talking woman in the restaurant, but disagree that people talking in at low volume on their mobile are annoying. why are they more annoying that anyone else, on phones or off?

zugzwang at May 5, 2013 10:50 PM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/05/amy-on-coast-to.html#comment-3698736">comment from zugzwang

Hi, thanks so much, zugzwang!

I write about this in I See Rude People, actually -- that a one-side conversation is more interruptive to the brain than a two-sided one through something called "Theory of Mind." This is an automatic feature of our psychology -- it's what allows you to estimate what's going on in others' minds, like that a person who's shaking his fist is angry. Because we can't shut it off, it becomes problematic in certain situations, like in the case of a one-sided cell phone conversation. It seems our brain tries to fill in the other side, whether we like it or not. I call what it does to us "giving us a case of neural itching."

There's a very interesting study where they had people talk in gibberish (in one-sided conversations). It turns out that when you cannot make out the words, you are not disturbed -- your brain can filter the conversation out in a way it can't when a person is using words you understand.

Thanks so much for listening and for commenting on this. I was trying not to be boring but probably could have put out a bit more information, as I did here!

Amy Alkon at May 5, 2013 11:18 PM

I lived for two miserable years in San Jose, CA, and left when I figured out that I wasn't nearly as crazy as a lot of people around me. It seemed as if the very air was poisoned with anger and fear. People's lives were sh!tty and degrading, their self esteem was nowhere, but they couldn't lash out at the actual culprits-- those people are too-well insulated. So, they lashed out at everyone around them.
I've returned from road trips out of California and noticed as soon as I crossed the state line, a feeling of tension, as if a heavy bowl were suddenly pressing down on me.

jefe at May 5, 2013 11:18 PM

i think the level of interest in "the other half" of the conversation is determined by the personality of the person exposed to the audible half. i never find myself interested.

zugzwang at May 5, 2013 11:46 PM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/05/amy-on-coast-to.html#comment-3698755">comment from zugzwang

Actually, zugswang, it is an automatic thing, not determined by interest. There's good research on this -- three studies now. Some of it is detailed in this recent New York Times article that quotes me, blogged here.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/03/14/cellphones_as_m.html

I've read these studies and communicated with the researchers. I write about this in greater detail in I See Rude People.

Amy Alkon at May 5, 2013 11:48 PM

I have found that even if I'm not interested in "the other half of the conversation" that I'm being exposed to, and I'm doing my best to tune it out, it's damned annoying anyway, and I just want to smack that person upside the head and say "hey! I don't want to hear about your [insert whatever topic here]. Pipe down, please!"

I've done it a couple of times, and gotten so-so results. One latina told me to mind my f*cking business, and I told her I would but her loud mouth was distracting me, and she looked as if she was going to punch me, but I stood my ground and she walked away. Another guy, I had overheard him talking about his therapy on the train, and when we were getting at GCT, I asked him how it was going, and he looked at me as if I had 3 heads and was all "WTF?" and I said, well if you didn't want me to know about it, why were you shouting about it on your cell? He started swearing so I just walked away. I really didn't care how his therapy was going, obviously he needed to work on it a little more.

Most times it seems that unless you are also on your cell phone, and talking as loudly as the other people on theirs, it's going to be a distraction. I try to ignore it but it seems as often as not, it's an exercise in futility.

Flynne at May 6, 2013 5:21 AM

Here in Florida, people are incredibly nice, polite, warm and chatty with strangers. The front desk clerk told me it's because most people on the Gulf Coast are from the mid-West and are drunk on sunshine and warm weather, and work in tourism related jobs. In CA, people are working toward their big break, when they won't need the little people any more. There's no "we're all in this together" camraderie in LA, as there is in NYC.

kateC at May 6, 2013 7:49 AM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/05/amy-on-coast-to.html#comment-3699167">comment from kateC

The most powerful people -- those who feel truly powerful -- are nice to everyone, especially the "little people."

Amy Alkon at May 6, 2013 8:28 AM

Fangirl moment!
I can't wait for the book to come out, Amy. I loved the first one. I almost peed myself laughing.

Sabrina at May 6, 2013 8:33 AM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/05/amy-on-coast-to.html#comment-3699209">comment from Sabrina

Thank you so much, Sabrina! I think this next one is the best thing I've ever written. I'm using every moment I have to make it all I can.

Amy Alkon at May 6, 2013 9:26 AM

sort of related to the "societies too big for our brains."

I do a lot of hiking and one thing that I have noticed over the years is that on the trails near the trailhead where there are a lot of day hikers, often folks just there for an hour or 2, people can be cold or even downright rude to other hikers that they encounter (little things like hiking 2 or 3 abreast, not moving out of the way for oncoming hikers; expecting others to move out of your way even if they are the ones with the heavy backpack; blasting a boombox; throwing trash on the trail; etc.)

But, get further up the trail, away from the crowds and folks are much, much, nicer and show concern for one another. Again, it is little things like stepping aside when heading downhill to let the uphill hiker pass (uphill is much more difficult to stop and restart then going downhill), or one time several of us stopped to help a hiker who cut his shin on a branch (not life-threatening or anything, just a bloody scratch). I never saw so many total strangers offer band-aids, antibiotic ointments, etc. to someone that they didn't know.

Folks further in back country will stop to say hello and ask how the hike is going to total strangers (and folks we most likely will NOT see again). I've often wondered if it is because there are so few of us in backcountry and people are by our very nature social creatures? Or is it because backcountry hikers are more friendly folks to begin with? Maybe it does have something to do with backcountry being a socially smaller world - something that our brains can handle.

Charles at May 6, 2013 7:13 PM

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