It is often said that politics ends at the waterâs edge. Community may end at the curb. Even the most casual observationâconfirmed by traffic studiesâindicates that throughout America road courtesy is on the decline. Many drivers no longer signal when they turn, and increasing numbers of them run red lights. We have all seen not one, but two or three drivers in a row race through an intersection after the light has turned red.
We run lights to get ahead. To do so we break the law, risk a serious accident, and invite the police to sound their sirens and pull us over. Between 1992 and 1998, fatal accidents at traffic signals increased 18 percent, more than three times the rate of increase for all other fatal crashes during the same period.1 From 1998 to 2007, an average of 751 people died each year in red-light running crashes. From 2007 to 2011, the total red-light running crash fatalities decreased 22 percent because the number of communities that introduced red-light safety cameras increased 135 percent.2
The potential benefits of running red lights are not great. We most likely have to stop for another light just down the road, erasing any gain. At best, we may arrive a minute or two earlier at our destination. Since we typically run red lights whether we are in a hurry or not, these few minutes are rarely critical, and hardly worth the associated risks. Yet, we consistently put marginal short-term gains above our long-term interests in health, pocket book, and legal standing. Running red lights, as common as it is, is a quintessential example of irrational behavior.
Who runs red lights? It would be reassuring to think it was mostly older drivers with bad reflexes, or teenagers, who have not yet learned the benefits of traffic safety. The former will sooner or later lose their licenses, as will the latter unless they wise up. Traffic court statistics and interviews with judges and police officers paint a different picture. There is no identifiable class of offenders. People of every age and every walk of life appear before the bench to plead guilty or offer some unpersuasive excuse that may only incite the wrath of the judge.
If running red lights is a nearly universal temptation, it is also symptomatic of a general decline in civility on Americaâs roadways. Police confirm my observation that a high proportion of drivers fail to signal for turns, and that cutting off other cars, especially when changing lanes on the highway, is becoming more frequent. In parking lots, drivers are also more likely to scoot into spaces ahead of others who have been waiting patiently for the vehicle in the desired space to back out. Our rudeness provokes road rage. Every so often it leads to an exchange of obscene gestures or one of those dangerous races down the highway that we have all witnessed.
Dangerous driving would not warrant so much attention if it were an isolated phenomenon. I contend it is only the most readily observable manifestation of a far-reaching process of change that has been under way in our country for some time. Americans have increasingly come to view themselves as autonomous, self-interested actors, whose first, and perhaps only, loyalty is to themselves or their families. This egoistic conception of self has two far-reaching implications for behavior. It makes it difficult for us to formulate our interests rationally. By this I mean the choice of realistic goals and efficient means of achieving them. At the very least, the running of red lights violates the latter condition. It is not instrumentally rational because it assumes considerable risk without much prospect of gain.
The egoistic conception of self encourages us to treat other people as means to our ends, not as ends in their own right. This distinction, introduced by Immanuel Kant, gives formal expression to an idea that lies at the ethical core of many of the worldâs great philosophical and religious traditions.3 In the ancient Greek formulation, the world initially appears divided into âmeâ and âeveryone else,â or âusâ and âthem.â The âusâ are family and friends, and perhaps, a larger kinship group. Our affection for individuals in the âusâ category can promote empathy, which is the ability to see ourselves through the eyes of others. By providing an outside perspective on ourselves, empathy encourages us to recognize that we are all fundamentally equal, that none of us has an inherent claim of superiority or priority, and that we should accordingly treat othersâincluding people with whom we have no personal connectionâwith the same honesty and respect we would like them to show us.4 If our understandings of ourselves and of our interests narrow, we lose our ability to empathize, and, with it, to treat others honestly and respectfully. In extreme cases, other people are regarded as animals or things that can be used or manipulated as we wish to serve our selfish ends.
Running red lights or cutting others off on the highway is a sign that we have little or no respect for the other drivers we threaten and offend. Putting oneself at the center of the universe removes us from meaningful membership and participation in a community, and by doing so, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us to formulate our interests intelligently. I attempt to substantiate this claim in the course of exploring the many connections among affection, empathy, community, reason, self-restraint, enlightened self-interest, and happiness.
My diving example offers a vivid and convincing illustration of narrow self-interest and its counterproductive consequences. This kind of behavior extends well beyond the road into a number of important social domains. It is increasingly prevalent in the corporate world, Congress, and American foreign policy. Behavior in any one domain generally influences that in another. As highway courtesy decreases, so too does the way people relate to one another at the workplace. This behavior is a manifestation of a deeper change in how people think about self-interest. Thought affects behavior, which in turn influences what people think about themselves. This recursive interaction is also influenced by discourses. I will show how they have changed to accommodate and further encourage changes in the framing of self-interest.
Driving and sports offer good examples of this process. Most Americans over the age of 16 spend at least part of their day behind the wheel of a vehicle, and younger people, if they are anything like the author at this age, are busy observing all drivers and their vehicles long before they are old enough to obtain a permit or license. How people drive and respond to one another on the road says something important about their values, and may also socialize them into patterns of behavior that are likely to carry over into other walks of life. Driving comes with a distinctive American mythology, famously expressed by Jack Kerouac: âWhere goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?â5 The freedom of the open road, the safety and security of speed limits, the fairness of stop lights, the opportunity of the fast lane, and everyone sharing the same road to get to their own destinationsâthese all reflect the best of what we think it means to live in America. Yet as we have seen, the realities of the road do not instantiate the expectations of the 1950s.
As much as driving encapsulates the mythology of American life, sports have always served as the countryâs preeminent metaphor. Vigorous competition, teamwork, meritocratic achievement, the chance of the underdog upset, the âlove of the game,â âstepping up to the plateâ capture much of how Americans see themselves. A popular saying has it: âWhoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game.â6 Yet in sports, as with driving, mythology and the reality do not correspond. In recent decades, the realities of sports have undeniably drifted farther away from their ideals. Players make it evident that they care more about money than victory; teams are bought instead of built; sportsmanship has declined as fistfights on the field have become more common. Steroid scandals have rocked baseball and other sports, culminating in Americaâs heroic home-run champions shamefully testifying before Congress. While the mythology of sports remains robust, and there are always players who are exemplary and admirable, it is undeniable that there has been a change for the worse.
Business is another key component of quotidian life. The vast majority of adults devote 40-plus hours of the week to making money. The average employed American works 46 hours a week and 36 percent work more than 50 hours.7 Most of the workforce is salaried and severely restricted in the kinds of initiatives it can exercise. People at the top of business, academic and governmental organizations have more leeway and the upper echelons of the business world has always had its share of buccaneers. The great enterprises of early capitalism like the Dutch and British East India Companies were the creations of ruthless entrepreneurs who used violence on a large scale. The great corporations of early industrialism, like Standard Oil, US Steel, and the New York Central, were the creations of ârobber baronsâ who resorted to bribery and other unsavory practices to build their enterprises and destroy competition. In the course of the twentieth century, American corporations were gradually brought under the rule of law, first in their domestic operations and then overseas. Most of their boards and senior management came to recognize the economic benefits of accurate accounting and quarterly reports, peaceful, and when possible, harmonious relationships with their workers, and, more recently, non-discriminatory hiring and promotion practices. They even came around to accepting the value of government regulation. As late as 1970, a survey of Fortune 500 CEOs found that 57 percent of them believed that the federal government should actually âstep up regulatory activities.â8
In recent decades, great progress has been made in hiring and promoting minorities and women. In other areas, standards appear to have seriously eroded. We say appear because it is very difficult to devise objective measures for these kinds of phenomena. Surveys of corporate executives, government officials and academics who study corporate behavior, and the more limited interviews I have conducted indicate a widespread belief in the spread of corrupt practices. It is even more disturbing that many of the examples insiders and experts point to are in relatively new companies or companies in the fastest growing sectors of the economy. Enron is, of course, the poster child of corporate greed. In January 2001, it was the worldâs largest energy trader and the fifth largest company in America measured in terms of revenue. In December of that year Enron filed for bankruptcy protection after exposure of its improper accountin...