Sweet Reason in a Land of Insanity

Shed of the commie menace, done with the nuclear nightmare, unburdened even of an unspeakable murder rate, what’s left to bother us? I’ll tell you what: Why does everyone act like a jerk? By day’s end, what has gutted my spirit isn’t a cosmic fret over the gnawed-away ozone layer or corrupt campaign financing. It is the demoralizing drop-by-drop assault of the everyday boor, the rude, the inconsiderate, the cavalier, the selfish and swinish.

Over the years, I’ve contrived some swell comebacks.

--Fifteen items in the 10-or-fewer checkout line? Wow, you must have studied that new math.

--I don’t recognize you, but can I have your autograph? You’re obviously far too important to drop your empty soda can into that trash bin.

--I didn’t know they even made that model of car without turn signals.

--Unless your name is John Cusack, I didn’t pay eight bucks to hear you talk in this movie.

Naturally, I don’t say any of it. What am I, suicidal? People have guns. People have fists. People have lawyers.

*

I noticed it first when clerks’ and waiters’ “Thank you” was replaced by the idiotic “Have a nice day.” Someone must have decided “Thank you” sounded subservient. Grammatically, “Have a nice day” is vehemently un-nice, the imperative form, a command.

When I went to London to write about Diana’s death, the royal family was being scolded for not showing public grief while ordinary people sobbed in the streets.

Suddenly the two ends plugged together; a circuit was complete. This was the Sally-Jenny-Jerry harvest. A culture eager to tell or show anything about itself, even of the most intimate nature, will hardly be reluctant to act in public as it would in its own bathroom. So maybe the mood is caught up with the ozone hole and poison politics after all. The messier the world gets, the more people may feel their only power is their indifference to it.

You’re not my boss. You’re not my mother. You’re not God.

*

There are 11 “dispute resolution” centers in Los Angeles County and five in Orange County. When Lauren Burton signed on in 1979, there were but three in the whole nation, an experiment in supervised civility that has grown not quite as fast as the need for it. Now she is executive director of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s dispute-resolution services, sending trained mediators out like balm and sweet reason, to boss and worker, neighbor and neighbor, landlord and tenant, the homeless and the propertied.

The bumper sticker on her office wall declares: “Mediators do it until everyone’s satisfied.” That, of course, is some doing. “In L.A.,” she says, “we have lost our tolerance for process.” Even after the riots--which she calls the civil unrest--at training sessions for mediators, “people were getting really uptight” about the time it took to translate every remark into Spanish, into Korean. “We’re going through this whole me thing. People do what feels good. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing; it’s what gets me ahead.”

And who sees adults resolving difficulties reasonably? If parents and kids can’t agree on what to watch on TV, just buy more TV sets--which is nothing more than widening the path of least resistance. Conflict is what sells. TV stations don’t pair Gloria Allred with Susan Carpenter McMillan to watch them join hands in amity. They want a cat fight.

Fold gender and class and age friction into that diversity and you might as well light a fuse and wait for the KABLAM.

Ah, but Burton has “a lot of hope.” Schoolkids are learning to mediate over swiped soccer balls and stolen pencils and hurt feelings. Even her own kids catch their parents wrangling and delight in fondly scolding them to work it out as they’ve taught their kids to.

So, Ms. Burton, come shopping with me; come to the movies. What would you do?

“We have to begin by assuming people are not doing these things with the worst intentions,” she says. Find out their needs. Ultimately, getting what you need requires the other’s cooperation.

To the woman in the grocery line, Burton might say: “Just for next time, I’m sure you weren’t aware that you had 15 items in a 10-item line.” At the movies: “I might turn and use an eye message, or say, ‘I’m having trouble listening to the movie because of the talking. What I’d like to know is, can you help me and save the talk till later?’ ”

“The wrong thing to say is, ‘What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any manners?’ ”

Damn. The thing I wanted most to say.

*

I let people ahead of me in the grocery line. I scoop up after my dogs. I keep the stereo at a reasonable pitch. I carry my movie trash out to the lobby. And I’ll even hold the elevator--if they’ll put “open” and “close” back on the buttons instead of those indecipherable arrow icons.

But I’ll be damned if I’ll allow any car that cost more than my first house to cut in front of me. You have to draw the line somewhere.