December 25, 2002

ONE OF THE connections you make over time is that large social phenomena are simply accumulations of countless smaller phenomena. Rudeness, for example. There is something abstract about it when Rob Morse devotes a column to it (and lately he's dedicated quite a few columns to it – a sign?) or when Miss Manners gently chides San Franciscans for their – steeply – declining standards of civility.

There is something slightly less abstract about it when readers write in, as they frequently do, to complain about being dissed or snubbed at this or that restaurant, though I often read these missives with the distinct sense that the offended parties have not done all they might, and maybe nothing at all, to defuse volatile situations. But of course anger in a city like San Francisco – where people actually celebrate their anger and their self-righteousness – is bound sooner or later to become a kind of social pathogen, transmitted from person to person, even to the unwilling and the peacable, as surely as a cold virus borne upon the wings of a thousand sneezes and sniffles. The natural, if not quite inevitable, response to anger is more anger ("Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return" – Auden) until each of us is self-righteously furious at all the self-righteously furious people around us. It's the human equivalent of a nuclear reaction.

One warm day a few weeks ago, mounted on my bicycle, I zoomed downhill toward a T intersection, keeping a wary eye on a gray Audi stopped at the stop sign, whose driver was twittering into a cell phone. I had the right of way (at least in theory, which is as much as you can hope for on a bike), but I knew the driver couldn't see me, because she, engrossed in conversation, was not looking. Naturally the car lunged into the intersection just as I was passing; but I had anticipated this move and was able, barely, to swerve out of the way. I did not shout, but I did point my finger and shake my head, and in return I was laughed at. Message? Sorry I missed you! Cell phone conversation continued. A few hours later (in a car now) I was nearly broadsided South of Market by a flagrant red-light runner who honked at me for, I suppose, slightly inconveniencing his race to ... what? A lunch rendezvous at a restaurant? With a woman in a gray Audi?

The phrase "enlightened self-interest" reminds us that social life isn't a zero-sum game in which you can win only if somebody else loses. The best human transactions are the ones that benefit everybody. Anger, meantime, benefits nobody.