Re: Road Rage

The automobile is only one of many weapons that may be used to dominate, intimidate, frighten, depreciate, defeat, punish, hurt, or even kill another person. (Indeed, some SUV's are beginning to look like military attack vehicles.) Whether the arena is the highway, sports arena, video game, corporate board room, or the stock market, the potential for acting out "high damage" win-lose encounters is seductive to aggressive individuals who may be very angry, or merely indifferent. A hidden (or feared) deep inferiority feeling, combined with high level of activity and a very low feeling of community, is a volatile mix, waiting for an opportunity or an excuse to erupt into a barage of verbal depreciation, or a violent physical attack. Rage can generate an intoxicating illusion of power, offering a temporary feeling of relief from a feeling of painful inadequacy. It doesn't take much to provoke someone whose self esteem is very fragile--many gang encounters are based on incidents of perceived "lack of respect."

Road rage is only one of many social symptoms that reveals a pervasive belief in violence as an acceptable expression of a competitive, win-lose, "get all you can" culture. Whether the violence is physical, mechanical, economic, political, military, or packaged as entertainment, depends on opportunity and appetite. When other people are perceived as enemies, doing them harm is easy to justify. In essence, road rage is not just an emotional or behavioral problem, but a philosophical one.

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