Rant

The other day, walking home from Epsom Station, I was passed, on two occasions, by adult, white males on bicycles, one perhaps 25 years old, the other perhaps 50, pedalling up West Hill in flagrant disregard of the notice asking cyclists to dismount at the tunnel. Also in flagrant disregard of the notice a bit further on saying that this portion of the cycle path had ended and was continued on the other side of the road. Crossing lights were provided.

I did not get a chance to drag them down and remonstrate, but it did make me very cross. If people like this show so little regard for rules and regulations, why would or should young people from sink estates behave any better?

Then this afternoon I have been pressing on with reference 1, where I am reminded of the Giuliani broken window theory of urban decay which says that if you attend to the small things like litter and graffiti, the good example so set will work wonders. Apparently this worked in New York. It is certainly widely believed to have worked. The same Giuliani who is now mixed up with paying off Trump's strippers.

This in the context of the Bargh theory which says that humans are built to copy each other, something that they do from birth, usually without being aware of it at all. Think of how often you mimic the body language of someone you are sitting with or of how often you notice married couples who look very like each other (their efforts to mimic each other having resulted in convergence of their facial musculatures, a big driver of facial appearance). Think of how small children copy their elders. With part of the mechanism in the Giuliani example being that if the good behaviour code in your brain is primed by seeing good behaviour, you are much more likely to behave well. Or badly, as the case may be. As has been proved by many experiments in university psychology departments.

So I have excellent authority for wanting to come down heavy on cyclists who do not play the game according to the rules.

PS: according to Prebble of reference 2, the rant is what Highlanders used to do to get themselves worked up before they charged down the hill waving their broadswords. By extension, the music played by their pipers at such times. OED, however, despite running to three columns on rant and its various derivatives, provides no support. A word probably imported from the Netherlands at the start of the seventeenth century.

Reference 1: Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do - John Bargh – 2017.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/table-top-sale.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani.