Are we too eager to sue one another in America today?

by Robert Burk

Created on: July 09, 2009   Last Updated: July 19, 2009

We are too eager, period. The time between thought and action has shortened. We have eliminated reflection. We have produced a nation aware of rights and forgetful about duties; a nation aware of rules but not of forgiveness. We are a people and a nation that seeks tolerance for rash and thoughtless behavior.

Our nation has increased its awareness of injustice. But there is no mercy. Between an accident and our response, there is no time to question intent and no time to wonder about personal responsibility. There exists only the need to get even. The score needs settling. We cannot become a victim.

However, we are all victims. We lack compassion. Compassion creates reflection but the pause between seeing and knowing has vanished. Assume the worst, prepare for it six fold. Leave no time to wonder about motives. No need to doubt. He or she is guilty.

Our lives exist in the period between an action and our response to it. It is that time between our seeing or feeling something and our doing something about it, in which we define who we are. That time is vanishing. Our lives increasingly are snap judgments, sound bites and three second visual windows. We have already made up our minds before the event occurred.

Anger is the reason many unreasonable acts take place. Anger is an excuse for unreasonable behavior. If a person is angry, he or she cannot think or act with reservation. He or she cannot respond with a thoughtful pause - he or she is angry. He or she is going to blow up and in all probability do something unfortunate and violent.

We are able to measure anger by viewing the delay between trigger and response. The shorter the delay the deeper the anger. Anger removes the need to think. It justifies the immediate response. If the precipitating event is self-evidently wrong, why not act immediately with the full force of unreasoning belligerence?

There was a time a person needed to think. Thought was a part of all social discourse and social pressure helped ensure thought guided social interaction. This is what we call having manners and with the decay of reflective thought manners also are vanishing.

Duels, for example, did not take place while tempers were hot. There was formality to a duel because there was calm and a considered chain of events that led up to it.

The easy availability of guns has added to the immediacy of violence. Carried by hair triggered young men, they are a necessity of survival in some places. To think is to show weakness.

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