Falling Down Movie Message

Finally, okay not finally because it’s been available since the 1990s, but anyways a movie that validates how potentially dangerous it can be to be rude to strangers.

You never know what other people are going through just by looking at them. Or driving behind them. Or interacting through the supposed safety of a screen so that there is little chance of meeting this person on the street. People have become more and more comfortable being rude to strangers because they don’t feel that there is going to be any consequences.

But some people are just barely hanging on to their ability to control their anger. Some people are polite with others as a rule and expect the same in return. When things aren’t going well, sometimes it can be the unnecessary cruelty of a stranger that tips the scales for an individual and unleashes the fury that is bubbling just beneath the surface.

So many of us do not take out our problems on strangers. We don’t tailgate, we thank people for things, we say “please”, we don’t try to skip ahead in line, we follow the rules. We know that there are those who don’t and it’s annoying. But it can be the difference for those of us who are just barely hanging on to our civility when we’ve had enough of being trod upon and are about to break.

Who doesn’t wish they could have a metaphorical gun in his hand when being rudely pushed aside in line or outright insulted by a stranger? The gun is a metaphor for the danger that any one of us could just snap at any moment and show how dangerous it can be to treat someone cruelly without thinking there may be consequences of it.