Road-rage and the �Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be’ Rule

Despite these lapses, most foreign visitors acknowledge that the English are, generally speaking, remarkably courteous drivers. In fact, many visitors are surprised, and often rather amused, to read the now regular diatribes in British newspapers about how we are suffering from an �epidemic’ of �road rage’. �Have these people never been abroad?’ asked one incredulous, well-travelled tourist. �Don’t they realize how polite and well-behaved English drivers are, compared to just about anywhere else in the world?’ �You call this “road rage”? said another. �You want to see road rage, go to America, go to France, go to Greece – hell, go anywhere but England! What you people call “road rage” is just normal driving.’

�This is so typically English,’ an anglophile but perceptive immigrant friend told me. �You have a few incidents where a couple of drivers lose their temper and start hitting each other, and immediately it is a big national issue, it is a new dangerous disease sweeping the country, it is not safe to go out, the roads are full of violent maniacs... It makes me laugh. The English are the most fair and courteous drivers in the world, but you are always so determined to believe that the country is going to rack and ruin.’

He has a point. The English do suffer from a sort of �nostalgia isn’t what it used to be’ syndrome. The belief that the country is going to the dogs, that things are not what they were, that some cherished bastion or emblem of Englishness (such as the pub, queuing, sportsmanship, the monarchy, courtesy) is dead or dying, seems to be endemic.

The truth about �road rage’ is that humans are aggressively territorial animals, and the car, as a �home on wheels’, is a special kind of territory, so our defensive reactions are aroused when we perceive that this territory is being threatened. So-called �road rage’ is therefore, not surprisingly, a universal phenomenon, and for all the sensationalist headlines, English manifestations of this universal human trait tend to be rather less common, and rather less violent, than in most other countries.

I am always somewhat wary of making such positive statements about the English, and tend to overload them with endless hesitant qualifiers, as I know from experience that praising the English – whether in published work or in ordinary conversation – invariably provokes much more argument and controversy than criticising them. When I make critical or even damning remarks about some aspect of English culture or behaviour, everyone nods gloomily in agreement, sometimes even providing supporting examples from their own experience. But praise, however mild and anxiously qualified, is always challenged: I am accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles, and bombarded with counterexamples – everyone has some anecdote or statistic that contradicts my observations and proves that the English are really quite an awful and unpleasant lot.⁴⁰

This is partly because social scientists are supposed to study problems (deviance, dysfunction, disorder, delinquency and other bad things beginning with �d’), and I am breaking the unwritten rules of my own profession by insisting on studying nice things instead. But that does not explain why it is only the determinedly unpatriotic English who object to my more positive findings about them. When I am interviewed by foreign journalists, or just chatting to tourists, visitors and immigrants, they are always quite happy to acknowledge that the English have some pleasant and even admirable qualities. The English themselves just cannot seem to accept this – at the merest hint of a compliment, they become sceptical, stroppy and argumentative. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I cannot alter my findings just to appease all these Eeyorish grouches and doom-mongers, so they will just have to swallow the odd bit of well-deserved praise.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-06