My observations and prescription for a 12-year old jerk-itus sufferer on a plane flight from the States to Australia may be too trite a solution for terrorism.  Doesn’t mean I can’t try. 

I am at 10,000 feet flying from Seattle to my LA connection to Brisbane via Sydney.  The two seats next to me are empty, and I am relaxed.  I am blessed to have many options available to occupy my time.  Should I consider profundities for my next blog post?  Do I start on my next research assignment?  How about continuing my goal setting efforts for the year? Or perhaps I just catch a quick nap and try to get past chapter 2 of the fiction in my bag? 

Unfortunately, none of these options are viable due to the boy in front of me suffering from jerk-itus.  The young man of around 12 years of age is delighting himself by pushing the seat in front of him, occupied by a girl I assume to be his sister.  Other symptoms of his conditions include reaching through the seat and pulling hair, stealing stuffed teddy bears, and acting as the crash test dummy to speed test his seat’s reclining feature into the lid of my laptop. 

Aware of social constraints around strange grown men speaking to little boys, I move over to one of the vacant seats and patiently wait for his fit to pass.  Unfortunately, jerk-itus is a condition that contaminates those around the infected one, destroying patience like a flesh eating virus chewing through the face of the host.  Somewhere over south Oregon, I give in.

Drawing on Kohlberg’s model of decision-making process and forms of communicative power, the possibilities play out before me like a role playing video game.  I could hope for some semblance of social convention and scold the youngster using my most serious adult voice.  This course of action seems somewhat hypocritical, given that I join most grown men who mature to the age of twelve or so.  I consider tapping the legitimate authority of the air stewardess , thus making the boy’s condition a matter of national security.  I shy away from this decision based on my perception of her low care factor and desire to be done with the whole lot of us sooner rather than later. 

I finally decide on an ethical appeal that is self-serving for the recipient.  As the young man’s jerk-itus prepares to propel his hand once again into the tangled mess of his sister’s hair, I lean over and in my most wise and non-creepy-man voice say “Hi, what’s your name?”

“David”, my jerk-itus sufferer states.  I breath an inward sigh of relief in not being dismissed with sarcasm I surely would have levelled at myself in such a situation.

“David,” I start my roughly prepared speech, “you may or may not remember this conversation in ten years.  I really hope you do.  In life, you can choose to be a jerk, or you can choose to be nice.  I am telling you right now, you will get further in life being nice to others than being a jerk.  David, for your sake, please be nice.”

I am under no delusion that my comments made a lasting impact.  My primary concern was the distance of David’s life from Eugene to Los Angeles, California, to which I succeeded.  The respite gives me the opportunity to wonder why, as a society, we do not stand up and politely and graciously ask ourselves to simple “be nice”.

What if someone had looked over at Mr. Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas 2010  and politely asked him to “be nice” and not attempt to blow up the plane heading into Detroit?    Like David, Abdul was clearly suffering from jerk-itus at 10,000 feet with consequences much more serious than annoying his little sister.  The similarities in the cases extends to a root cause of a cry for attention when the individual feels other means are not possible given their frame of reference.   

 After spending 29 hours travelling into Brisbane, I admit to my own brief sufferings of jerk-itus as my patience wore thin following a six-movie flight.  The correlations are weak between my grumblings about baggage weight, a 12-year old brat and a terrorist.  Still, I recognise a root cause of a selfish human condition and my seeming inability to rationally achieve my objectives through means that have a more positive impact on those around me.

Social convention and a lack of legitimate authority limit our ability to tell each other to “be nice”.  My appeal instead is centred on our own self-serving needs.  David may someday experience self-respect or regret specific to the value of retained or lost family relationships.  Abdul I am sure would rather not be seriously burned at this moment. 

Given the negative outcomes of jerk-itus, I would ask two questions.  The first is this: With a strong desire to see the other person succeed and lacking condemnation, are we prepared to ask each other to be nice?  And the second is that question specifically: For what it is we wish to accomplish in this life, is there a way to achieve these goals and just “be nice”?

Like my experience with David, my impact on your life may not extend beyond your flight path from reading this blog and checking your local online news.  But perhaps if we impact enough people for a short distance, we can make this world that much better for all of us.