Is our culture getting meaner?

I’m not talking about sadism and cruelty. There has always been cruelty. Humans are a vicious, ruthless species of cunning predators, and it is likely that we will never rid ourselves of the savagery which allowed us to claw, spear, and shoot our way to the top of the food chain. What I’m talking about here is the small, petty, pointless cruelties which seem to be multiplying around me.

What got me thinking about this was a notice which just went up in the lobby of my apartment building. It has been customary in our building to leave useful objects or small pieces of electronics or furniture in the lobby for others to take, usually with a little note attached mentioning any defects the items may have. This new notice states that sharing items in the lobby is forbidden, that staff have been instructed to throw it in the trash if they see it, and that if they can determine who left the items, they will be charged with the cost of disposal. This seems like such a small, petty, mean thing. The trouble of occasionally clearing away items which have sat there for a couple of days untaken is miniscule. There is no rational reason for this except to be cruel in a small and unimportant way.

Mike Harris was once the premier of Ontario, and he was the poster boy for neo-conservatism – and pointless cruelty. He took genuine delight in causing pain for pain’s sake. He did a lot of truly horrible things which resulted in some devastating harm, but he seemed to take a special pleasure in tiny cruelties. For example, after cutting welfare rates by 22%, eliminating rent control, and slashing funding to food banks, he instituted a $2 “co-pay” on drugs for people on welfare or disability. The province’s drug payment plan would pay for the cost of drugs necessary for survival, but they’d charge the person $2 per prescription “to teach them responsibility.” A $2 co-pay not only didn’t save the government any money, it cost them a lot more money to administrate than it would ever save. And after all the cuts he made, people with multiple prescriptions found they were forced to cut their already meagre food budget to pay for the drugs they needed to survive. It seems like such a petty, cruel thing to do.

Lately on the bus, I find that people have been exhibiting nearly sociopathic behaviour to each other. I’m 6’5” and the size of a small couch, so it’s difficult for me to let people by. As a courtesy, I usually stand near the back doors, to give people more space to squeeze by. Nearly every time I get on the bus, these days, someone plunks themselves beside me at the exit, so that it’s completely blocked, and simply tunes out and refuses to move. This means I’m forced to make gymnastic contortions to let people off – who usually respond by glaring at me and using their knees and elbows to try and cram me into nonexistent space rather than waiting for me to wriggle my way aside. This didn’t used to happen. And no one even seems to notice this stuff happening. Many times, I’ve tried to get off the bus only to be confronted with a solid wall of people trying to get on, none of whom is prepared to let passengers off, even though they know that no one can get on until the passengers have disembarked. Saying something out loud about the situation usually results in glassy-eyed stares like I’ve sprouted multiple heads or farted loudly in public. Again, it seems to me that it didn’t used to be like this.

Everything I do, every interaction I have, from taking the bus to taking out the garbage, from walking down the street to doing my grocery shopping, from chatting on the Internet to attending public meetings, I feel like I’m being abraded as if by fine sandpaper from a million tiny cruelties which seem to occur for no better reason than pointless petty sadism.

Is this just a sign that I’m getting old and longing for a golden age which never existed, or is the world really getting meaner and more spiteful?