Is ‘Mé Féinism’ ruining society as we know it?

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Shane Coleman (0:28)

That's fieldmaps.ie The Hard Shoulder with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman On Newstalk with Ciara Now, read the interesting piece by Justine McCarthy in the Irish Times a couple of days ago. She argued, The more we tolerate mayfainism, the less likely we are to treat each other as human beings. Be it cyclists on footpaths or shouty phone calls on buses and trains to tread your nerves. Is mayfainism getting worse? To discuss this, we are joined by Joe O'Shea, editor of CorkBeo.ie and Dylan Hand from Newstalk here. Dylan, I'm just going to start with you first. Do you think mayfainism has increased in recent years?

Dylan Hand (1:12)

Yeah, I do think so, Shane. I think Ireland is definitely becoming a country of mayfainism. You know, the examples of which can be seen all around. You know, it doesn't take much. You get a bus in in the morning and you're constantly listening to phone calls and speakers and Tik Toks being played out loud, for example. And as you said, cycling and footpaths. I know it's a particular one that gets on your nerves as well as a cyclist. But you know, you're walking in the street now and it doesn't take much. People walking for a breast, for forcing, you know, buggies onto the road to come back up onto the path. I think what it ultimately comes down to is we're kind of increasingly unwilling to inconvenience ourselves in different times, you know, and we don't want to put ourselves out.

And there's kind of a lack of kindness to each other that maybe we had in the past.

Shane Coleman (2:03)

My own particular pet peeve, feet on the seats in the Lewis. I make a point of heading towards to where the person is that has their foot up to sit down there. Even if there's loads of other free seats, I'll sit there just to make them put their feet down. It drives me mental.

Dylan Hand (2:19)

Yeah, it drives a lot of people mental. I think there's kind of an on-going battle a lot of people have where they're like, do I call someone out for doing something that's annoying me? Am I overstepping the mark by commenting on these things? But it is important in a way to put a bit of a roadblock in a continued cycle. Because this is what it leads to. It's the small conversations where someone doesn't leave a door open for you, and then you're like, God, what am I going to do now? Later on that day, maybe you're less likely to hold the door for somebody else, and that canons and it snowballs into something. And then suddenly we have a society that really are not looking out for one another.

Shane Coleman (2:54)

Joe O'Shea, is it a snowball effect, do you think?

Joe O'Shea (2:57)

Yeah, it's actually measurable.

Rude-ness and what researchers call social aggression is actually contagious, in that if you experience rude behaviour, if you experience anti-social behaviour, if somebody really annoys you on the Lewis or on the train, then you're more likely to commit the same kind of offences later on. It actually, this is measurable and there's been a lot of study and research done about this. And actually what people are talking about at the moment is a crisis of rudeness. And this has been measured, especially in the US and the UK, where they kind of take this thing very seriously. And what they've found is that since the pandemic especially, around 60% to 70% of people think that aggression has gone up, or social aggression or rudeness has increased.

Shane Coleman (3:50)

And do you think so? I mean, when you and I were young fellas, Dylan's only a young lad here, but when you and I were knocking around Dublin 20, 30 years ago, do you think there was more politeness? Do you think people were more, I suppose, considerate of other people's feelings?

Joe O'Shea (4:08)

Well, here's the funny thing about that. Pew, the very big research group in the US., did a longitudinal or generational study and they looked all the way back to the 1920s and they found that every single generation thinks that the generation coming up after them are ruder. So it's kind of natural to think that people are ruder. But of course, I've seen it and it's in the social spaces where it breaks on. Actually, one of the things that keeps coming up, the feats on the seat is one of the things. One of the things that really gets some people's nerves is people eating in inappropriate areas, especially smelly foods. Egg salad seems to drive people crazy. So that kept coming up.