To My Homepage | To Dr. Jamesí
Homepage | To The
Class Homepage | To My
Annotated Bibliography
A Review of
By: Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nalh
Publisher: Prometheus Books ñ www.prometheusbooks.com
The Year Two Thousand
Book reviewer: Silas Leger
We have come to a point in time when mankind is evolving at a rapid rate in many different ways. The ever-growing heap of information from scientific inquiry into the tangible and physical matters of life has brought us much knowledge of what we can see. And indeed of what we cannot only see but what we can see with machines, like computers, and electronic sensors. A perfect example of this is the study of high-energy physics, which is very much concerned with understanding what is at the root of matter. The progress in this field is focusing on the concept of the existence of antimatter and how it differs from matter. I bring this up because antimatter and such things studied at the micro-level are not visible to us, they are only known through detection by sensors attached to computer that visualize these things for us.
The fact that we can harness the energy of electricity and use it to substitute for our own mental thought processes, by creating a computer, is very advanced and signifies that things are indeed speeding up. My point: We are at an advanced stage of human evolution and things are changing, forming, dissolving, going through transmutation, and all together dying. The need for spiritual investigation is becoming more and more as evolution pushes us to the limit of our potential. But as we progress forward in awesome advantage, it is, as many people feel, a shame that the ideals of capitalism are what we hold as routines of daily life, but it has served us for sometime now and we who complain about it are not willing to resist it, upholding it everyday we donít fight against it.
From what history shows us, today we live in the most populated reality that has every existed. The population of China and India are over one billion and this is only the beginning. For instance, Indiaís population is growing at an annual of 12 million per year. World Wars are things of the past being replace by other type of competition, namely economic as visible by the First, Second, and Third World country classification system. This competition is not only international it is also intra-national, creating a major power struggle between the class structures that exist in individual countries themselves. No one wants to be the recipient of downward mobility and we are only interested in upward ascension. The economic superstructure that holds our world of international trade and interdependence together is only a macro picture of the inner workings of the anatomy of an industrialized country.
This capitalist system is not perfect, far from it, and actually it relies on imperfection, or inequalities to function. As the years go by history seems to repeat itself, on the extended platform of global territories and collective consciousness. The gap between the rich and the poor grows bigger and bigger and the poor and the slaves of the world are becoming restless mirroring certain conditions that preceded the fall of the great Roman Empire. Conflict between the classes becomes more and more absolute. People are becoming irritated with each other and are not willing to accept that they need to control themselves, because frankly, what has been happening in the world calls for people to be outraged, frustrated, confused, irritated, maddened, and angry. Are we to be happy and delightful about the fact that America and our European brother countries have forced-feed with war and colonization our ìwesternî culture to everyone of the earth, in our quest for world domination?
It really seems to me that we are racist dominators who donít care about others, and want what we want at all costs ñ World Domination. To this point we push forward with our goal and allow for no other countries to match our military might, as recently and currently witnessed through our dealings with Iraq, that are setting-up world precedence that the USA is the global keeper of peace and equally power and wealth. Manifest Destiny is what we can make it and make it we try.
What is the mechanism of our unconscious agreement and acceptance with this strategy of world take-over, via an international web of governmental top-down control over all peoples? First of all the mechanism is psychological for it is mental and implanted in our thinking by images and concepts that speak to our subconscious mind without needing our conscious evaluation to give it power and authority. The conscious mind learns and functions in the world of language, while the less conscious regions of our mind, or the subconscious mind learns and function in the world of images and maps, this is key to understanding how we are acted upon without our awareness. These images and concepts seep into our subconscious without our knowing and begin to affect our lives daily and in this way we have been put in alignment with our governmentís willing and doing, which consists of much aggression on the world playing field. Because we have been taken control of from the level of our subconscious we have a sense that something is not right but we donít know consciously what is going on, we only feel like something is off.
So we are being used and we feel used, but cannot put a finger on our distress. So we proceed with our daily lives, as spelled out for us by what we have been feed about what a personís daily life looks like from television programming. All of us, who are not planning world domination, are somewhat victims to this unconscious control mechanism, which is heavily carried out by the media, namely the image focused media, i.e. the television and the printed media of newspapers and magazines. Be advised that the motion picture is extremely pervasive in its instruct to our subconscious, because a picture is worth a thousand word, but a moving picture (recorded continuous reality) consists of 30 pictures in one second, which amounts to 30,000 word of information in one second that are being inputted in our subconscious mind.
If you follow this out to a hour of television viewing, (30,000 X 3,600) 108 million words have been directly, without filter from our conscious mind, flashed to our subconscious for it to learn from, help us lives our life from, and to draw conclusions from about our own lives. Again beware of televisionís untold ability to talk to our subconscious mind without our knowing and also know that when you show your subconscious mind a television show it totally understands that you are doing so, in order that you may give it instruct.
The subconscious mind accepts what you give it without question, for it trusts that you evaluate and judge for it. How does any of this relate to a textbook on road rage? First of all my opinion about the subject of driving psychology it that is relatively new, being borne out of the need of it from the creation of dysfunction within the populationís maladaptive driving behavior. Road rage stands as visible truth of this matter and so it has been chosen as the cornerstone of Dr. James and Dr. Nahlís book to address the issue of creating a safer and saner driving space for our new millennium and beyond.
My rhetoric above about our changing world and the role of our subconscious mind in daily life, serves as a launching pad for my exploration in the textbook, Road Rage and aggressive driving: steering clear of highway warfare, because it sets the stage for the current day condition of absolute craziness we live in. By this I mean that there are people who really donít care if they kill and/or repress millions of people in pursuit of world domination and even worst and crazier, these people are put in control of powerful countries, such as our own. We need to accept that psychological manipulation is widespread in our society to start to comprehend and understand where to start any analysis of any psychological textbook. How do we teach psychology to innocent college students who want to help others with psychological knowledge, without explicitly showing them that psychological control of the population is afoot?
Mainly, what I can conclude on this subject is that college courses in psychology leave out the subconscious and gloss over it, justifying this by saying that ìnot much is known about the subconscious and that it is hard to studyî. The topic is avoided. I wish it were not, because it is the most powerful part of our mind, what a shame! And what about spiritual psychology, this is not addressed at all within psychological study, yet many wise people hold that the mind is actually a spiritual entity not a physical thing. It seems to me that all the real valuable knowledge about psychology is on reserve because if it were leaked out to college students there might be a rebel with intelligence who takes this psychological knowledge and starts anti-hegemonic practices that start to show the population that it is being controlled and subdued. But this is my own review of psychology offered at the university undergraduate level. I must return to the subject at hand, the review of Road Rage and aggressive driving: steering clear of highway warfare.
As I stated above our world is conflict driven, rich against poor and dominator over oppressed. This is alive and well in our economy with the institution of foreign dirt cheap labor practices, and alive and well with the ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor, now in terms of one country over others, in the formation of first world countries and the lesser second and third world countries. The idea of a culture of conflict represents a major topic within the text and serves as a starting point of the entire text. This concept of conflict is introduced to establish why road rage is now a problem in our society. Because we are either winners or losers according to this mode of conflict based thinking we are driven into competition and warlike engages when there is a misunderstanding or confrontation between two people (Ch. 1 ñ Pg. 29). When these types of competition or war like engagements take place while we are driving they are classified as road rage. There are many other type of rages that are identified and they included: parking lot rage; sidewalk rage; surf rage; air rage; shopping mall rage; workplace rage; and desk rage (Ch. 1 ñ Pg. 32). This goes to show that not only is road rage a problem, but rage itself is a problem, and one particular manifestation of it happens to be in our driving world.
Naturally, within the first couple chapters of this book, the issue of the why road rage has exploded in frequency since the early 1990 is addressed. One plausible explanation the text points to is a media centered answer to this question (Ch. 2 ñ Pg. 48-49). I conceive this to be a major topic within the book, because of my concept that film and television have the special ability to give powerful subconscious mental instruct that shows us how to run our thinking process and daily living actions. The book cites a psychiatrist who holds ëthe Road Warrior type moviesí borne in the 1980s as a direct cause of the road rage problem of the 1990s. He also suggests that the TV shows of today, with often feature vigilante behavior, many times violent, as a suitable and honorable thing to produce in our culture, literally do show us that these type of behavior are to be reproduced. Basically, what we see on the silver screen and on the boob tube is not to be taken as reality or repeatable realism. This is not what the youngsters who watch the TV everyday adhere to though; they are subconsciously being indoctrinated into embedding these activities in their mindís repository of behaviors to perform when the matching situations occur. As I have said they are receiving mental instruct as to how to act in similar situations, and this is happening subconsciously, without their knowing. Close in relationship to why we are now faced with frequencies of road rage much higher than ever before is the question of what specifically about driving leans itself to our becoming personally angry while doing it.
We need to understand the constituents of what gets our blood running at a raised temperature only from being in a car on a road with other drivers, to make logical progress on uncovering what is going on with road rage at the interaction level of driver to driver. In other words, we need to look at what about driving a car makes or causes people to become easily engaged in road rage. This is next major topic I see in the book. What pops into my mind concerning this subject in the book is the diathesis-stress model of describing the process of how a person contracts a mental illness like depression. The diathesis-stress model, proposes that becoming ill (depressed) is a two-part function of 1) a diathesis ñ a personís predetermined susceptibility to that particular disease - and of 2) a stressor event in that personís life ñ something or some event that takes advantage of the predisposition to illness, thus resulting in the existence of the illness in the host/person. To finish my example of depression for demonstration purposes, the diathesis-stress model for depression follows a pattern similar to the pattern giving below:
A man and a woman have been married for
sometime. Their marriage has enjoyed stability and both partners are faithful
to each other. A historical study of the manís family reveals a history of
depression for many generations on his fatherís side. At this current point in
our subjectís life he is not depressed but we do see that he has a genetic
predisposition to becoming depressed. This would qualify as a diathesis to
depression. But he is not depressed yet. His marriage is fruitful and his job,
as international lawyer is plush and pays well, he has even been able to
purchase a house on the north shore. His wife is faithful and this is very
important to him, as him being faithful to her is important to her. Then one
day, he comes home from a day at work to find that his wife wants to divorce
him, to live with another man. Soon after the man becomes depressed, he canít
believe what has happened to his life. Here, his wifeís desire to divorce him
is the stress event that pushes our subject in to depression. This is how the
diathesis-stress model works. Maybe if he had not predisposition to depression
he would have expressed himself in another way.
I see that the diathesis-stress model can be related to what happens to provoke road rage driving behaviors. There are predisposing factors that get us half the way to road rage, but are not enough to throw us into it. Then on top of these predisposing elements there are specific incidents that cause us to actually engage in road rage against other drivers. Chapter 3 focuses on causes of road rage and highway hostility, this is where I will focus my attention to present the diatheses that lead to road rage (Cp. 3 ñ Pg. 69). In chapter 4 there is many types of specific aggressive driving acts that I can clearly identify as stressor that lead to actual road rage.
First of all, what are the predisposing factors to road rage? There is the ever-growing roadway congestion that is facing us in all major metropolitan sites in our country. We all hate traffic jams and try to avoid them when we can. So when we are in the middle of congestion we have internally frustrated thoughts and concepts, this serves as a diathesis. Another diathesis is the predominate training of drivers to drive defensively. To drive defensively is to trust that others are not going to not respect you at sometime, and because of this you have to watch out for yourself at all times, because you cannot predicted when this will happen. This keeps people on edge and on guard, and untrusting of others. This is certainly a diathesis, because it keeps us thoughtful of, and focused on disaster.
In chapter 4 titled the THE ROAD RAGE SPECTRUM we find many fine examples of stressors that qualify as stressors for my explanation of the diathesis-stress model of road rage. Chapter 4 focuses on specific type of things people do that push people around them into road rage. Here, it is important to distinguish that aggressive driving is not road rage, but rather much of the time is a preceding element in a road rage incident. Most people can appreciate the idea of the rushing maniac as one such stressor (Ch. 4 ñ Pg. 100). This tyrant is the driver who wants to reach his/her destination as fast as possible so that the time they spend on the road is minimized. As well as bringing their own aggression and road rage to the driving sense, because they get mad at those who block them from going fast, they also serve as stressor for the rest of us, because they drive way too fast and this threatens us.
We might categorize this type of driver as the one who uses their horn the most, becoming impatient with othersí slow response to light changes or lane changes. Another stressor is the left lane bandit, who gains enjoyment out of making people go the speed limit in the fast lane. This driverís motive to is to force others to obey the law by stopping them from going over the post speed limit his method: go only the speed or slower in the designated fast lane. How many of us get angry when we are cruising to our destination in the fast lane enjoying the ride when we meet one of these left lane bandits and we have to go around him/her to maintain our pleasant speed and trajectory?
From this we can see that if you were to encounter normal aversive driving conditions seemingly unavoidable by all, you would be in a state of predisposition, or in other words a heightened state of annoyance, that makes you more susceptible to engage in road rage as a reaction to a specific aggressive driving action from someone who is driving rather rudely. The main point I want to make is that there are two things happening here, one is that driving today barring road rage from the equation is full of ordeals to negotiate, which makes us less tolerant of others mistakes and rudeness. The second thing builds on top of the first, it is the causation of road rage, namely encountering an aggressive driver who you find unacceptable and insulted by and due to your eroded tolerance of averse road conditions you canít take it and resort to display your anger and by doing so you engage in road rage.
The focus on the psychology of driving sits at the center of the text and this portion of the book concentrates on getting in true touch with our emotional selves while driving, offers easy to follow steps for driver self betterment, and an explanation of how road rage is passed from one generation to the next. Since road rage is created from our emotions of aggression and anger towards other drivers, it is a fitting place to start the discussion of the psychology of it.
Emotional intelligence, the idea that we can be smart/rational with and have control over our emotions, is introduced as an initial place for drivers to understand their aggressive tendencies towards other drivers. A map of emotional driving levels is offered in chapter 5 and represents the three levels of emotional intelligence from which we drive (Ch. 5 ñ Pg. 117). Level one is the level of feeling opposed to other drivers, this level focuses around actions that are based in selfishness, and impulsiveness. Level two is the level of feeling defensive while driving, within level two our actions are motivated by suspicion, feelings of needing to be wary of others, and competition and safety of self.
The highest level, level three is the level of supportive driving practice. While driving in level three we are coming from a supportive emotional state, and we are willing to accept othersí driving faults as mistakes extending them the benefit of the doubt, when we feel they have tripped up. At this level of emotional intelligence our thought process is geared towards prosocial interaction, this is in contrast to the other levels of emotional intelligence listed above. In level two our thoughts are geared to be logical and astute. And at level one our thoughts are not rational or logical or prosocial, rather irrational. The creation of a division of levels that shows us how emotional intelligence is at work in our driving behavior is a major topic in this book, because it allows all of us to be categorically placed in to levels of emotional driving, thus giving us tangible classification of our individual driving styles and a map of how to become more emotionally intelligent about our driving.
To use psychology to create a revolution in the way we drive seems novel and noble, and this is the exactly what this book proposes to its readers. To begin to change our level of emotionality when driving the three-phase method of ìdriver self-improvementî is provided (Ch. 5 - Pg. 133-134). This method is most certainly psychologically based because each phase of it deals with the way in which we think about ourselves in relationship our behavior. It is similar to cognitive therapy because it behavior modification is based on changing our thinking. The first phase is to acknowledge where we are in the levels of emotional intelligent driving. This means that if we are in level one, even if we would rather not admit that we are there, we do and acknowledged it internally. Next we need to witness our behavior that places us in our respective level of emotional intelligent driving. We need to witness ourselves doing the things we know are not fair to others, or that are oppositional to others. Finally, we get to the place of empowerment, phase three ñ Modifying our driving behavior. We do this by elevating our emotional intelligence level while driving, hopefully to level three, from where we drive with supportive cognitions and reasoning.
Road rage is not only a culturally produced problem resulting from the increase in tensions between the general public. It is also a problem that is inbred within the family nucleus by the modeling of aggressive driving behaviors by adults to their own offspring. The inheritance of aggressive driving behaviors via the parent-child relationship is a major promoting factor of road rage and aggressive driving patterns in our world. Children learn from example and when they see their parent being aggressive behind the wheel they think that is how to operate as a basic driver (Ch. 7 ñ Pg. 152). This forms within the children a baseline from where to start as a driver once they are allowed. In addition to this familial propagation of road rage the book points out the existence of CARR or Children Against Road Rage, which is a web based interactive initiative that established a training ground for children to start to take a look at their own behavior when in the car or on the road at in a vehicle. The main purpose of CARR is to have children participate in psychological witnessing of their feelings and thoughts to make them aware of road rage type thinking (Ch. 7 ñ Pg. 157).
The issue of supportive driving, as framed by the third level of emotionally intelligent driving, is promoted within this text as a solution to road rage and aggressive driving. Supportive drivingís biggest hurdle to becoming a reality as the taught education for drivers is the secure position of defensive driving curriculum and practice as the main driver education. Because supportive driving is pushed as a viable solution to road rage and aggressive driving, it constitutes a major topic of the text and is most certainly touched upon numerous times. But what is supportive driving? This we will explore now.
Supportive driving is a formation from the minds of the authors of this book - Dr. James and Dr. Nahl. Since both of the authors have their Doctorate degrees it is easier for us to accept their claims of changing for the better. We might be less willing to follow their ideas if they were Mr. James and Mrs. Nahl. Supportive driving is defined as: an accommodating style that emphasizes adjusting to the great diversity of highway users and steering clear of the emotional entrapment of road rage thinking (Ch. 8 ñ Pg. 167). Also useful to quote is this sentence from the text to provide clearer author assessment of the situation: Since intolerance and stereotypic thinking produce the road rage culture with its law of retaliation, tolerance is the antidote (Ch. 8 ñ Pg. 167).
Supportive driving is a logical idea, but is not logically arrived at by the public in everyday driving. This is somewhat due to the publicís training under the regime of defensive driving promoted because we want to defend ourselves from the harm the road can produce. Defensive driving is not dubbed as bad in the text, but is recognized as a source adding to the aggressive stance of people on the roadways today, which invariably leads to road rage and unwanted conflict between drivers at some point.
Supportive driving sounds great on paper, but the trick is getting it instilled in the public mind, thus the psychological nature of this book. If we could teach it as the only driver education this might make it the predominate style of driving in the next 50 years, as we see the death of all the remaining generations that have been trained under the defensive driving protocol. It is clear that supportive driving hinges on the principles of tolerance, acceptance, and emotional control and intelligence and these are not only the principles that are need for supportive driving, but indeed for supportive living on the world scale as cultures and societies integrate to form a massive oneness.
Love of thy neighbor is being called upon, and now is the testing ground. Will we stay stuck in the competition and defensive modes of selfishness, or will we release what we believe and start to see differently? This is the grand question; for what we need is a radical change in perception to effect a change as great as switching our national driving population from practicing defensive driving to effecting supportive driving. What is the future of the world? We will continue to engage in wars as definitions of reality or will we see past our selfish intentions embedded with them, and remember what we already intuitively know; Love is only substance that matters.
John Lennon the revolutionary songwriter and member of possibly the biggest international music group ever, represented to many people a change manifesting, but that change never came, only the songs that proposed it. Today we hang onto the Lennonís vision captured in his paramount song ìimagineî, but have no reality of it anywhere. We know a higher way of life and are afraid of living it. This stems back to the duality between what we know in our conscious mind and what know in our subconscious mind. And at this point what we know in our subconscious mind does not match we know in our conscious mind. So we long for synchronization of the two. It seems to me that the rigorous work of mental familiarity building is what we need. By this I mean that we need to become intimate with our mental selves, because this is the source or cause of our world as we can only experience it. All we have is our mind and its products for us are our thoughts and emotions, which give life to our will and actions.
We need to work toward working in combination with our subconscious, because the interface between the conscious mind and subconscious mind is where change can actually exist, be planted and therefore happen. We need to uncover that we are receiving instruct into our subconscious mind without our knowing. This will be the starting point of any major change in world dynamics, or national dynamics. When it comes to working with our mind, we are all equally supplied for, I donít have any more of mind then the next, and no one has two or more minds. And money canít buy minds (for intrapersonal use anyway). This book clearly understands and points out that change is personal and individually based. The methods of change offered are based on self-witnessing, guided self-acceptance, and a call to our higher intelligence that agrees with the notion of being supportive, loving, caring, and protective of others as a way of life. This book is beautiful because it assume that we are all capable of becoming better people, we just need to work on our character a bit.
At this point in the progression of our mental evolution as a human race on the earth we have come to a road block because each and everyone of us does not have independent control over ourselves. In other words, impression-forming things, i.e. the media of images and TV, are invisibly operating our controls. We cannot, as individuals, choose to unite for a common purpose because this is guarded against, since the government has become accustomed to CENTRAL control of the masses. This is that instruct be done from one place and carried out to all. This is TV at its best. In fact this is all TV is. This is what Washington D.C. is; it is the central point of government. Our government is a centrally structured government. The future of the evolution of human mental intelligence can only happen if this central control is eliminated and a person begins to act 100% of self, not of standards or of external or natural impression.
Note that the elimination of the central control of the government is as simple as throwing out oneís TV and Radio ñ not necessarily war against the government. The answers to all our future questions of who, what, where, when and why will increasing come from within our minds, because this is where our true knowledge dwells. I see the future as being shaped by radical politicians and transformational leaders who are willing to elevate the consciousness of many through compassion and love. We will become a raised people able to understand the spiritual world while still under the natural laws that make up our physical realities.
How? How does anything happen? Slowly and with determination. Slowly we will see that life is only lived once, and for that reason we will become determined to not allow our one life to be control by something external or out of ourselves, i.e. TV. Once determined not to be controlled from without, we will turned inward and seek what is already there ñ Our higher selves or our inner masters. These forces are inner and are in contrast to that of what is outer, in that they are connected to the cause of life. By introspection into ourselves we will embark on the true journey of spiritual truth, and we will be met by god because he is eager to meet us. We will meet god in the form of his instruct for our minds. These instruct will fill our minds and translate into how to act in the world in which we inhabit. If we continue to accept our place in front of the TV, willing to fill our minds with invasive and seductive images, this is what our lives will equal, which on the raw level, is our total dismantling. TV is anti-progressive because it promotes laziness and acceptance without question, as well as unrealistic notions of reality. Basically TV is ever-ever land and we are all on a big acid trip while we accept it because we are not seeing reality as it is.
Certainly it is seductive, but it will become resisted and desisted as the future unfolds. This is because people will understand that their best interests are not being supported by TV programming, and these same people then will see that TV programming actually is counter to what they know is progression and evolution of the human race which is the increase in love expressed between people. There is not profit in expression of love between people only spiritual profit, so our capitalistic government, and everything that is part of our lives that is capitalistic (which is most everything) is there to stop us from evolution. But evolution is a law of nature ñ it will happen, capitalism, however as much as they would like us to believe it is a law of nature is certainly not and it will be dissolved due to its imperfect understanding of reality and opposition to it. There is no true power in doing something is that is inherently wrong, which is exactly what capitalism is - inherently wrong. Rest assured that those who are instrumental in promoting capitalism in the natural world, are met by an unforgiving god in afterlife and most certainly are sent to hell for their wrongdoings. This is because they are acting directly against god.
What is the main staple of capitalism? I know it to be greed, that more is always desirable, and that what one has is never enough. Its mentality of expansion is done in terms of having not learning or understanding or loving or caring. It based on falsities because having in the material world is only a sliver of what our lives are really about and (this the killer) material gain and having things are temporary while our lives are not, we are immortal and have our same consciousness in the spiritual world as we have now. Capitalism will crumble; as truth is exponential revealed and people become aware of it. What is truth? Truth is the substance that occurs when we act of self, that is when we finally decided that we are going to take control of our own life. Live life in this way and you will start to see truth.
Then levels of truths will become a part of reality and you will see that truths for humans are different then truths for god, although they bring about the same outcome. We will begin to finally understand that the mental world is the spiritual world and the material world is the natural world and that the two are not the same, that is - are not one in the same. This leap in consciousness is necessary, because it is the truth and relates to us, because within our minds is this truth. In our minds we have a natural mind and also a spiritual mind. As is the case with the spiritual and natural world is the case with our minds, they are not one in the same they are two distinct things.
What about the future of road rage and aggressive driving and driving in general? This is where the book takes us in its concluding section, which contains the last 3 chapters. I want to focus our attention on three major themes covered in this closing portion of the book. First, let us understand how becoming more autonomous and self-directed in our everyday lives is related to the future of our driving habits. If we start to think for ourselves, we will start to care about the conditions we bring to situations that involve others. This will include the road and our driving behavior. Why will we care? If we start to be introspective we will quickly understand that our actions are whom we are and that our willing of reality to be what we make it, is whom we are. Thus, by these outward manifestation of who we are others may see who we are. This will help guide us into reforming ourselves so that we are not enacting something that is not good or not safe for others and us.
Basically by rising our conscious awareness we will engage in self-monitoring and start to see what we do is evil and not good. And by activating conscious awareness this will enable us to see what we can do instead that would be good. Can road rage be good? No ñ it is us not being in emotional control of ourselves. The notion that we cannot control ourselves is insane, implying that we have lost control - what a joke or better what an excuse for being lazy. So by becoming more in control of our own lives we will start to bring more meaning to all of the areas of our life, one of which is our driving self. This will directly affect the road rage and aggressive driving problem facing us now. Things may get worst before they start to get better thought. And we could describe the present state of road rage and driving conditions as a heightened evil occurrence on our roads, which is ultimately calling for an increase in both spiritual and mental intelligence for combat against it in positive and anti-harm capacity.
What is so harmful about dangerous aggressive driving and road rage? The government has formed organizations designed to deal with these problems that are emerging on our highways. This tells us that the problem is demanding public interest and being serviced by our trusty centralized government. What kind of problem are we looking at? This question is effectively answered at times in this book by the use of statistics of surprising value. The use of statistics carries a stream of influence throughout this book, because they are so shocking when evaluated in the context of realizing that we think the highway is a relatively safe place. I will sample some here for impactís sake.
ìPeople die on our highways at an annual rate five
times greater than wars have killed U.S. soldiers since the beginning of the
centuryî (219)
There are 35 million injuries every decade resulting
from automotive crashes.
ìThis year at least
forty thousand people will lose their lives on highways and more than three
million will go to the hospital with injuries and economic losses will reach
over 200 billion.î (219)
Concerning Traffic congestion ñ ìAmericans spend an
estimated 2 billion hours in trafficî
Governmental involvement in the prevention or at least attempted prevention of the on-going aggressive driving and road rage behaviors had been mostly levied by the introduction of laws that establish aggressive driving as unlawful and finable as a crime or misdemeanor. In 1997 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) took part in congressional hearings on the subject of aggressive driving as informational support. The Administrator revealed to the congress a finding that was substantial in its weight on the subject of aggressive driving and its link to problems on the roadways. This finding was that about two-thirds of the approximate 40,000 people who die each year in automobile crashes are killed as a result of aggressive driving (Ch. 10 ñ Pg. 220). This means that about 26,000 people die from a seemingly avoidable cause. Is this is so, is aggressive driving avoidable? What did the government do? What can the government ever do? Create and pass laws, and this is what they did.
They identified what aggressive driving systematically looks like and made it illegal. Since the congressí acknowledgement of the aggressive driving problem, many states have followed by inducting the law as part of their state legislation, and more are deeply considering it. Although government has made movement on doing something about reducing the # of deaths on our road resulting from aggressive driving the statistics remain the same today as they did in 1997, thatís 5 years and no change. Maybe social change is like molasses flows when itís cold (slower than slow). The inclusion of the government efforts to do something about the road rage and aggressive driving problems facing our nation is a part of the book that I consider a major topic. And the governmentís instating of a law that addresses this issue head-on shows what will be done in the future about aggressive driving ñ it will be outlawed and banned.
What does the future of driving hold for us, as spaces of living become more multifunctional - that is, as we began to do more than one thing at a time within one space. In the world of cars, we can conceptualize this trend right now as talking on the cell phone as we drive. Here we are multitasking and this might be a reason why people get into accidents. Their attention to driving is being divided among activities. The future of cars design, as pointed out by the book, focuses on bringing functionality to the car. This means that we will be buying cars in the future that allow us to cook meals in the in-car microwave, access emails while driving, have robots (computers) read us our email while we drive, be able to watch TV and movies while driving, and other distracting things as well.
Our fast food industry has designed foods that are friendlier to eat while we are driving accommodating to our limited ability to be fully with our food while eating (because we are driving). Some example of these ìdriver friendly foods are: push ní eat scrambled eggs (only one hand needed); the construction of crumble proof breakfast sandwiches; the MacSalad Shaker ñ a salad that comes in a cup and can fit in a car cup holder; and hot-dog shaped hamburgers that are easier to handle while driving. I thought this was an interesting and striking description of how we are really geared toward functioning from our cars as a living space, including eating in them as common function. The notion that we are using our cars as more places of life than as places of driving only is a topic I think deserves my mentioning because it reinforces our cultural attitudes towards downgraded the attention we feel is needed while driving. Basically, by introducing multitasking into our driving activities we feel that we donít need to spend that much time actually driving. This could be a trap and the cause of some of our accidental deaths from automobile crashes.
I have almost run out of topics to put forth, and regrettably I have arrived at my last one, because I have enjoyed engaging my mental self in authoring this section of this review. It asked of my analytical self, and I like thinking analytically. The last topic of importance I noted in the book was a research study that showed normal drivers have two very differently motivated sides when it comes to buying cars. The research was mindfully executed, because it took advantage of hypnosis and compared it normal cognitive function. The study was done in two discrete parts, first the driver subjects were asked to give reasons why they are attracted to cars for purchasing reasons. In this first round of the experiment the reasons drivers gave for being attracted to buy cars were sensible, with focus on safety features, price, comfort and appearance.
Then the next stage of the experiment was put in to action. Phase two had the drivers hypnotized and then asked the same question regarding their attraction to autos for purchase. The answers given in this round of the experiment were not equal to those of the first. The hypnotized subjects related the liberating sense that driving has and the feelings of exhilaration that come from driving fast. In their imaginary world of fantasy these people were attracted to ultra-fast, super stylish, and powerful autos. This is quite a contrast and is a reality as established by the research. People say they want safety and security, but fantasize about going fast and being liberated by driving. This is certainly a psychological issue within the scope of driving behavior.
I would like to signal the conclusion of this section a few paragraphs ahead, so that we may recap what has been represented. At first you were entertained by my ideas about the social and economy climate in our current state of the world. I qualified the power of TV as a major arm of hegemonic practices. I started this book review in this way to pour into your brain the ideas and values that I feel need addressing on the global front. My discussion I also linked to the material of the book, because what I asserted was psychologically based relating to the subconscious mind.
I then introduced, mixed in with my on-going commentary on hegemony, the major topics in the book: 1) that we live in a culture of conflict, 2) the mediaís role in cultivating our road rage and aggressive driving, 3) what prepares us for road rage and aggressive driving (my diathesis-stress model explanation), 4) the three levels of emotional driving levels ñ Oppositional, Defensive and Supportive, 5) driver self-improvement via acknowledging, witnessing and modifying oneís driving behavior, 6) the concept of supportive driving and its proposal as a solution to aggressive driving, 7) the government efforts to do something about the road rage and aggressive driving problems facing our nation, 8) the changing nature of our car space into a more divided and multitasked environment, and finally 9) the idea of dream cars and driving realities. Of course if you read this book you will find many interesting sub topics, but in my opinion these cover the meta-flow of the topics in the book.
An overview of these topics in the order provided directly above shows that they are linked and progress in an explanatory manner. First we are introduced to the rage and its place in our culture and where is may be stemming from. Then we take a closer look at traffic, aggressive driving and road rage. Next we are shown an escape mechanism out of our self-defeating driving behavior. This is the driver self-improvement scheme. And then we are shown the ultimate national solution to the problem - supportive driving. From here we are exposed to what our government has done for us lately concerning these problems. Finally we get intimate with the car and take a look inside our cars of the future and inside our mental sphere of imaginary driver fantasies.
This text book could have been different had it been written by different authors, but to suppose that Dr. James and Dr. Nahl would produce any thing different would be to doubt that they did their best at producing a book fit for societal consumption. This stream of thought I will now actively end. The methods of self-observation taught in the book are wonderful for people to start to get in touch with their mental selves and in control of themselves. Before I was introduced to the topics brought forth in this book on the subject of aggressive driving and road rage, I was oblivious to the nation of hostile drivers that permeate the road each day or the consequences they have on others. Moreover, I had the opportunity to identify my own driving behaviors as rude, aggressive and provocative. I would not have taken a look at this harsh reality until the day it made me it acknowledges it by involving me in an accident with it. I am glad I was able to gain knowledge of it by taking a class instead of getting into an accident for the purpose of becoming aware.
This book is fitting as an educational tool and textbook for academic settings. But the un-text book aspect of it allows for the migration of it into the homes of average people who want to find our more about social problems facing our nation at present in particular driving problems. For those of us who are not directly effected by losing a loved one to a traffic accident, this book can offer a picture of how serious a problem like aggressive driving is, bring into our conscious mind the magnitude of traffic fatalities. The inclusion of many emails submitted to the Dr. Driving website, give the book a unique feel, because we are getting real stories about how the mechanisms of road rage work out there on the street. In addition to the multipurpose facet of the book, it is not over 300 hundred pages which means that more people are inclined to pick it up and check it out than if it were 500+ pages.
The book is wholesome because it presents a problem and then offers a solution to it. It does not simply present a problem and leave the reader to be shocked at the massiveness of the problem, with no recourse for change or activation of some differentiated response in real life. This is where the book shines, it is holistic in its knowledge imparting because it realizes to change our behavior we must begin with our mental ideas of ourselves and driving itself. Due to the national and widespread nature of the driving crisis facing us today, I think that all high school students should read this book, because education is the only way to make real change. Laws that prohibit aggressive driving will not change our culture to desist aggressive driving, only education on the issue will; People need tools for being better people and the first is education about the critical matters at hand. So by exposing high schools kids to this book they are at least aware and educated on the road rage and aggressive driving climate of our culture. And they will have to ask themselves if there are going to add to the negativity and strife on the road or to chose a more supportive driving style, as proposed by Dr. James and Dr. Nahl.
If all the high school students were to have this book instated as a part of their graduate requirements and with the support of a class to go along with it, this would only secure a more aware future of drivers. What about all the drivers who are not in high school? I think all post high school drivers should read this book as well. Will they? No! ñ The solution QDCs, youíll need to read the book to find out about these. I highly recommend this book to all drivers who seek truth, because it is well written, entertaining, and very informative. To drive is to accept responsibilities, one of which should be to read this book as preparation for doing a better driving job.
It is clear from the title of the book what major problem is addressed and suggested for an overhaul. This is the issue of road rage and aggressive driving and it makes up the brunt of the bookís discussion. Not clear from the title of the book is exactly how to disarm ourselves as aggressive drivers and road ragers. The solution to our driving ills is self-introspection in the form of the ìdriver self-improvementî regime spelled out for us in the book. This self-improvement involves the three stages I introduced in section one ñ acknowledgement, witnessing, and modification of our aggressive driving behavior patterns that lead to road rage. The main problem discussed in the text is the problem of aggressive driving and road rage and the main solution to the individual is the driver self-improvement program.
The text introduces tributaries that support our culture of
road rage, some of which are, the news media, family preparation of aggressive
drivers by the modeling of aggressive driving methods from parent to child, and
the entertainment industry of TV and films. Prevention of these perpetuators of
rage and disharmony is only offered in the form of our exposure to them. If we
were clearly told that specific actions add to our destruction than it follows
that we would heed what is being told to us and start to breakaway from doing
those actions, replacing them with worthwhile actions. There are throughout the
chapters, exercises that we can do to find our levels of aggression toward
others, and these serve as starting points for us to become aware of where we
stand in the promotion of anger, and aggression.
This book establishes opposition to the current driver
education of defensive driving, because it is seen as adding to the problem of
aggressive driving and road rage. This qualifies defensive driving as a problem
from the perspective of drastically reducing aggressive driving and thus road
rage. This seems counter-intuitive, but the revolutionary and radically new
theory of driver education based on supportive driving is promoted as the
bearer of massively reduced aggressive driving and road rage. Supportive
driving is a new concept of driving that stresses the need for us to be more
Tolerant of the multitude of diverse drivers and situations on the road. It
views the increase in aggressive driving and the new trend of road rage as
offspring of our lack or tolerance towards others on the road.
At the center of the supportive driving is the driverís responsibility for his/her emotional state while driving. In section one I talked about the three levels of emotional intelligence and this is key to the supportive driving paradigm. Stage or level three of the emotional intelligence hierarchy is the state in which one has supportive feelings that flow into thought sequences that are prosocial preparing the mind for tolerance and forgiveness. If we examine the defensive driving paradigm within the context of the level of emotional intelligence we can quickly see that driving defensively seats us at level two where our emotional state is that of being defensive, and our thought sequences are logical. The outcome or actions we produce when engaged in defensive emotional intelligence, or the second level of emotional intelligence, are those of competition, suspicion, and worrying.
Of course, an elevation of mental and emotional function does require intelligence and stamina, as is the case with anything we wish to elevate. If we want to lose weight, in turn elevating our physical health, then that will require us use both intelligence ñ how do we start to lose weight? - and stamina or tenacity ñ we must hold back from doing what got us over weight. The call for us to start to drive supportively is asking us to use our intelligence to raise our emotional intelligence from defensive to supportive. This will make us use our stamina and tenacity, because defensive driving is now but habit within us and to elevate out of doing it will be an effort. It is worth it? Yes, because emotional intelligence is not just going to help you in your driving space, you will carry it other places and spaces in our life and it will be wonderful because emotional intelligence is a higher method of living. That is why it is promoted so within this book. It is the new wave of living because it integrates our whole being; spiritual and natural. This is because emotions are spiritual in origin.
I pointed out about 9 major topics the made. Of these I
think that there are four that I feel are relevant to public concern and
because of their relevance to the public, they should be closely examined by
social psychology. These distilled five are: 1) that we live in a
culture of conflict, 2) the mediaís role in cultivating our road rage and
aggressive driving, 3) driver self-improvement via acknowledging, witnessing
and modifying oneís driving behavior, and 4) the concept of supportive driving
and its proposal as a solution to aggressive driving. I will address each with
a paragraph of analysis it relevance to public concern and social
psychology.
What is going on within the richest and most powerful country on the earth that creates a culture of conflict? This question pertains to the public because it asks a question about them, and the answer to this question is contained with in the publicís mind and how it understands our countries operation. Our country was taken from the native people of North American continent. This take over was vicious, deceitful, and rapid. Its wake and aftereffects are not hidden; we are now dominators of a land that once was not dominated by us. What is the message of success that is sent to the public in such a society? That force and conflict (as long as you are the winner) is the way to go. Our country does it, so our countryís people do it. And since we seek success we use conflict as a means to get it - as simple as 1-2-3. But there is a needed distinction between a country being conflict motivated, and the people of a country being conflict motivated. This distinction is that a country is in conflict against other nations or countries and does not have plans of living with that other country. But people of a country are forced to living with each other and so conflict is not directed outward toward another, but inward toward our own living space of a country. This distinction is key in understanding that conflict motivated societies will not produce the seemly grand accomplishment of countries that conquer other countries.
Social psychology, for the advancement of knowledge, should try to get at the inner working of peoplesí minds to examine how and why they choose to model their actions after the actions of their mother country. Also within exploring how and why people model their action to the standards of the governmental action, they should also inquire about what people really think about our government, to see if they really think the government is conflict motivated. This would give us a better picture of why our own culture is deteriorating so. Is it programming; the idea that we have been indoctrinated into thinking from these specialized premises? This we can look at in the next topic explored. This seems like a logical idea to me.
The media is a very important thing in our country and world today. It has a lot to with the transfer of information across great distances. If we get a dictionary definition of media see we that media means medium, or a channel by which something may pass. In fact the word medium has about 15 different definitions. The predominate forms of media in our country today are the TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines. How could it be advantageous for the government to have us, the public, be in conflict with each other? If I place myself in the shoes of a high-ranking government official, functioning from the political side of the state, I suddenly feel like I need to ensure there is not a social upraising that threatens the governmental control of the country or state.
Since I am one and the public is many I cannot force them by myself to be non-upraising, but I can look for more sublet ways to achieve public consent for governmental rule and regulation. TV seems like a great avenue for me to start implementing hegemonic tactics via the very potent method of images that slip pass peopleís conscious mind and directly into their subconscious mind. What should I subliminally teach the public, or better yet ñ what should I subliminally teach the public that maximally fulfills my desire to minimize their ability to rebel or upraise? I know what I would do ñ I would teach people to oppose each other and to be in conflict with each other, because a divided public is a public unable of unity and therefore united upraising. TV programming is expensive, but since I am with the government, money is not an object, because we can legally print as much as we want ñ ha ha. Oh yeah, and uncle Sam does not want me to fight for my country, he want you to do it for me.
The end result is a taught motivation for conflict, and the public, just like the rats in who continually run the maze for the research project and are eventually killed without hesitation, donít ever pull the plug on the TV. This is what Bob Marley sings about in his song ìrat raceî. Why donít we desist the TV? Because it treats us to something we value, but why does the rat run the maze ñ for the sugar water at the end of it. Beware of being sucked into repeating something over and over for the benefit of something you donít need.
So it occurs to me that we have indeed been indoctrinated into thinking in term of conflict as a method of social being. You, me, all of us, minus those who plan all of this ñ and those are the one receiving the security of knowing that what they have will not be challenged and taken away, namely the government and the rich or better yet the extremely rich. Road rage and aggressive driving crop up as issues in this culture of conflict because they couldnít not be issues.
For psychology to embark on telling society and the public that the government wants them to only be a certain way and that they certain way is the way of conflict, would be a very brave thing for any psychologist to do. This is because such a person or psychologist would be facing extinction from the governmental side of the equation of our state. Maybe we could start underground psychology training camps and start to get people informed about their TVís relationship to their subconscious mind. How about figuring out a way to disable the electricity production in our country??? This would disable TV, but many other things as well ñ too radical. We need something in the middle, say something like media.
Driver self-improvement via acknowledging, witnessing and modifying oneís driving behavior
The public could very much benefit from the driver self-improvement instruction put forth in the text. I say this because it does not require anymore than a person willing to follow instructions. This means that everyone can do it if they want to. The basic structure of the self-help driver self-improvement plan is to know thy self. If we know ourselves then we can change, because we know what to target for change. The first step of the program is to acknowledge that we have some imperfect driving behaviors. This is not only say that ìyesî we are imperfect; it is full-on admittance that we have aggressive driving habits and actions. Then, once we acknowledge, we take the next step, which is to witness ourselves in the acts of aggressive driving. This is good, because we etched out an understanding that some behavior is not acceptable, but then we see ourselves doing it ñ this has psychological impact on us. We feel wrong for doing something that we have ascribed as aggressive or hostile. Then we can take the last step, modification. This is that when faced with aggression provoking situations we desist aggressive and opt for emotional intelligence of the third order, which is supportive emotional orientation towards others.
We owe much to psychology for this method of personal change, because it is takes advantage of the mental aspects that prime us for change. Another method of self-improvement could be offered, but this one is especially tactful because it is simplistic, psychological, and person based. To know thy self is one of the oldest known forms of avoiding aversive complication in oneís life, this is underscored in the ancient Greek play Oedipus Rex and it known that the ancient play writes wove psychological context in to their most famous plays.
The concept of supportive driving and its proposal as a solution to aggressive driving
What is the solution to aggressive driving and road rage, which make up a massive problem in our country and indeed in our world? Simply put the answer is to teach supportive driving as the sole driver education. This is the assertion made by the book. Supportive driving means emotional driving from intelligence. This means to not let our emotions rule our actions, but to rationally deal with our emotions as they arise. We are holding the well being of ourselves and the well being of others equally in our minds when we practice supportive driving. This idea of supportive drive can and should be extended to the arena of life, because we are increasingly in need of supportive Living environments. The public needs to be informed about Dr. James and Dr. Nahlís concept of supportive driving, because it is a working and functional model of change for the better. I am glad to see that this text did actually get published because it deals with such a commercially off beat subject, so congratulations on the printing contact Dr. James and Dr. Nahl, and keep up the good work of supplying the world with analytical texts that attack problems in our world.
Psychologically thinking, supportive driving or rather the mental modes that are fundamental to the supportive driving model of emotional self-control and intelligent, are not to be overlooked because of their possible application to other problem area within our society that seem to mirror the hostility that is apparent in aggressive driving and/or road rage. Because the ideas of change and self-improvement are person based and not specifically linked to actually being in a car, there is going to the possibility of extending this model of improving the quality of life to diverse areas. Can we be supportive walker, joggers, competitive sports players, and airplane passengers? We can try. Is profit inherent in being supportive? Not monetary profit per say, but always spiritual profit.
If, so many people die on our roads each year, than we have
a serious problem on our hands. That requires work, and the kind of work it
requires is people work. The workers who carry out this work must be able to
understand the mass, or collective mind. It naturally makes sense that this
would be a psychologist. Half of the author team, Dr. James is a psychology
professor, so this supports my logic. The main reason the messages of a)
aggressive driving is a problem, b) There is solution to this problem, and c)
The solution is supportive driving and elevating our emotional intelligence,
are important to the society is because their needed. We need society to become
emotionally intelligent, we need people to be more supportive of each other.
But before we can do what we need to do, we have to be woken up from our
slumber, and alerted that ìthere is problemî with what we do while
driving.
This book looks at why we are experiencing aggressive
driving that promotes road rage. Then after examining why it may be happening,
the book focuses it attention on establishing that all of these problems are
individual based, that is, they are happening because each person is adding to
the problem or that the problem is not outside of us. From this establishment
the book introduces the concept of emotional intelligence and links it to our
driving selves and behavior, effectively showing that road rage and aggressive
are emotionally caused.
The
broad concern this book addresses it the complexity of getting along with each
other. As we become more and more involved in each otherís lives we begun to
need to take more direct responsibility for our actions in public. There are
consequences if we are not supportive and caring towards each other and these
consequences are being realized now in the form of aggressive driving that
leads to thousands of deaths per year. By not acting out in some fashion to
against aggressive driving the public sends the message to themselves that
deaths from car crashes are tolerable and acceptable. Dr. James and Dr. Nahl,
both think that aggressive driving is curable, not acceptable, not tolerable,
and to change our habits of doing it is an individual quest. No once can
improve our driving mentality for us; we have to do it for ourselves.
The questions posed and concerns raised by the text are
thought provoking, shocking, and geared toward getting us involved in our own
self-assessment and analysis. Within most of the chapters there is at least
some form of exercise to partake in that measures our driving behavior and
rates it on its value of adding to the aggressive atmosphere of the road. By
doing these self-assessment measures we can all get an objective view of where
we stand in the propagation of the this critical problem. This book leaves the
reader fully aware of exactly what ingredients within him/her-self make us tend
toward expressing rage on the road, and it offers a clear path out of such
virile thinking ñ emotional intelligence.
The
major topics covered in the text make up the bridging elements that hold the
readerís attention to the subject and projected components of value. The mood of the book is set by the
major topics and from these moods we can then entertain, in our consciousness,
the ideas of reforming our driving selves and our emotional intelligence. The
whole text is centered on getting us to look at ìwhat we doî and ìwhy we do itî
in relationship to driving, testing our ability to be truthful about our selves
and our public driving stance. To achieve success, the book supplies us with a
wide array of exercises to complete, that when done correctly, tell us where we
stand on the spectrum of road rage type thoughts, actions, and behaviors. By
showing each of us that we have aggressive driving habits, we can start to feel
like we can make a better driving environment for ourselves and others by
desisting our negative willing of aggressive compulsions and actions, and
starting to act from emotional intelligence and rationality. This is a good
facet of the book, because it shows many of us, who donít consider ourselves
aggressive drivers, that indeed we too harbor and promote aggressiveness while
on the road.
The exercises provided in the book are mostly checklist and personal inventory type exercises. There is also the occasional exercise that is based on analyzing a driving situation that has some flaw related to driving in a safe manner that we are asked to find. There is a commonality between all of them; they all focus on our state of mind and actions while being in a car either driving or being the passenger. It important to note this underlying sameness between the exercises, because after all have been done by a reader, this reader has answered more about his/her driving attitude and behavior than others who we would consider normal (having not read the book and preformed the exercises). The bottom line of the exercises is that they let us show ourselves that we are inundated with, and act from aggressive and hostile positions while operating a motor vehicle.
I think that the exercises serve the grand function of
getting the readers away from the mentality of ìthis is not my problem ñ I
cannot fix itî and on to ìI am part of this problem ñ I can help to reduce the overall
amount of aggressive drivingî. This is empowerment, but in a self-directed and
sublet way. The exercises donít instruct you that you are an aggressive driver
until you discover that you are from doing the exercises. The exercises are
flexible and allow for you to do them when it fits into your schedule, in other
words one exercise does not build on the results of another, directly. The
majority of the exercises are found in the second section of the book, which
focuses on the psychology of driving.
Since the exercises are of a self-witnessing nature and
thus explicitly having to do with our thinking, acting and emotional selves, we
can see why the bulk of the exercises show up in this section. It is all a
mental creation, and since what we are creating is not being accepted as
perfect, we are in a position of desired change. Change for what? Dr. James and
Dr. Nahl think it should be change from aggressive driving to supportive
driving, by way of replacing defensive driving with supportive driving as the
primary national driver education. How do the exercises scale into place or
match with the assertion these authors make? The exercises show us, the adult
population, that with our current driver education, we still fall into
aggressive driving tendencies and road rage dramas. This is mainly because
nowhere in defensive driving education is there a battery on emotional
intelligence or driver self-improvement type self-witnessing method for getting
to know our aggressive sides.
To extend a better understand of the exercises included in
the book, I will describe a couple in detail. On page 150 there is such an
exercise, it is titled ìidentifying your irrational driving rulesî. The
exercise is comprised of a checklist of common irrational driving rules, i.e. ñ
I must make all the lights; I must go as fast a possible in any traffic
congestion; and If someone passes me, Iím probably going to slow. This simple
exercise only ask that you mark a check mark by each irrational driving rules
you find familiar, as in you do them. Another quality example is from page 131,
from chapter 5. The title of the exercise is ìindetifying wrong
assumptionsî. This exercise uses a
commentary of a person arrested for a DUI. The story is about the event of
being arrested, and involves some wrong assumptions about driving that we are
asked to find from the commentary. The exercise gives us the answers and points
out where these wrong assumptions are, only after encouraging us to look for
them ourselves.
As I explained above, my view of the exercises is that
their function is grand. It is grand because, the exercises place you in a
relationship with yourself. The morals and ethics placed into the exercises are
universal and all humans can related to them as being ìgoodî or ìbadî. When we
are forced to do an exercise as part of reading the book, we are placed into
comparison with our higher self, that is, the self that we know who acts from
love, right, and compassion for others. When we witness and see that our
behavior while driving falls short of our higher selfís motivations of good, we
are in direct relationship with ourselves. And we notice that we have not been
doing our best on the road, because we feel it is not of that much import. But
we are wrong, and about 26,000 people die each year as a result of our
aggressive driving promotion. This number is shocking, and so is finding out
that a loved family member has involved in a deadly automobile accident.
I
can attest to this function of the exercises having done many of them. I will
admit that I did not do all the exercised; There are so many I naturally
skipped a small percentage of them. Of the exercises I did do, there are two I
would like to put forth for the purpose of sharing what I learned about my
driving self. First on page 65, there is an exercise titled ìaggressive
thoughts and feelingsî. The exercise is in the structure of a checklist with a
blank area for us to check off a thought or feeling given in the exercise if we
identify with it. This particular exercise is broken into three sections:
Fantasies of retaliation and revenge, High pressure driving and competition,
and Impulsive and reckless driving.
Each section contains a checklist of about 9 aggressive thoughts and
feelings. Before I discuss my results from doing the exercise, I want to point
out the clever way in which this exercise is working in our mind. First, when
are ever going to take this kind of assessment of our thoughts and feelings?
Even having us do it will change the way we think about acting.
This is because from thinking and feeling comes actions,
but this is unrevealed in us when we commit actions that are contrary to that
of our morals. When we act rudely, we donít think that those rude actions came
from rude rooted thoughts and emotions, but this exercise points out that they
do. In addition to guiding us to the truth about our thoughts and actions, this
exercise permeates the subconscious mind and speaks directly to it, because it
is having us compare our thoughts and emotions with those of someone else or at
least commonplace thoughts and emotions. The subconscious mind is prompted to
take heed of this exercise because it is connected to other minds and wants to
see where we consciously evaluate ourselves to be in relationship with others.
How did I score on this exercise? Because there is no
rating scale for the exercise that places your answers into a spectrum of road
rage, i.e. from no road rage
present to full road rage detected, I will share with you my record of the
exercise. In the first section, which dealt with fantasies of retaliation and
revenge, I scored a 5/10. This means that I identified with 50% of the rather
negative feelings and thoughts relating to retaliation and revenge on to other
drivers. I was shocked that I would be classified as being an aggressive driver
just because of my thinking processes. Then I took the second section of the
exercise. This section focused on the high pressure driving and competition. My
results: 5/7. This was even more upsetting to me because I thought that 50% was
high, labeling me as an aggressive driver or at least an aggressive
thinker-driver. But this 70% score on the second section really got me thinking
about my thinking.
On the last section, concentrating on impulsive and
reckless driving behaviors, I was confident that I would not score high,
because I know myself to resist reckless driving. Well was I wrong, in the last
section I score a 5/8, which is close to 60%. This exercise showed me that I am
aggressive thinker and therefore in the natural unfolding of the consequence of
thoughts in the mind and action in the physical world, I am aggressive driver.
But the mind is in opposition to this knowledge because it wants to this very
second, even after doing the exercise and reading the book, still to label
myself as a safe and conscientious driver. What a duality there is my mind. I
know that I am an aggressive driver, by way of the exercise, but I want to
resist this knowledge because it places me in an undesirable position of ego deflation.
The other exercise I want to share my result from is on
page 162, it is titled ìdrivers behaving badlyî. This exercise is within the
chapter that deals with children and road rage, so the exercise is geared
toward the child experience, but it has redeeming value to us as adults
because, we can see what happened to us as children that got us wrapped-up in
aggressive driving procedures. The basic assertion of the exercise is that,
children are exposed to driversí behaving badly in popular TV shows, so they
learn that this bad driving is actually acceptable and okay. The children see
the this bad driving behavior on TV and is not coupled with realistic
consequence, like people getting hurt from falling out of moving vehicles or
serious damage occurring from driving fast and hitting other cars (as depicted
in cartoons at times). This exercise was more of thinking exercise directed at
the children, so there is no percentage to reference or score to report, only
the after effects of thinking in the way pointed to by the exercise.
The exercise asks us to notice, when we watch TV, the
Drivers Behaving Badly within a show or commercial and to record them for later
review. On my own I was able to recognize three scenes from TV shows and movies
that represented drivers behaving badly without encountering ill effects. First
I noticed in a TV commercial that a driver is parking his car in a parallel
parking spot, but did not look backward when he was driving in reverse. This
effect was intentional, trying to show how easy the thing being sold was to
operate, but the message we get is that parallel parking can be done without
looking backward. In the movie titled ìThe fast and the Furiousî there are
untold amounts of drivers behaving badly, one such scene is when the driver of
a car is able to pass under a moving semi-truck ñ very unrealistic and
dangerous, but cool and audience engaging. I can remember the Dukes of Hazard
TV show from my childhood and this show was based on drivers behaving badly.
One classic scene from the show is the image of car ending up in a tree, after
flying through the air somehow. I have released my opinion about TV in the
introduction, but it is never too much to realize the heavy hegemonic device it
really is.
Automobile confrontations are commonplace in TV land,
because they add excitement to a dull moment, but are unwanted because they add
insidious inferences into our childrenís mind. Beware of the TV; remember that
you are its salve, and the only reason it is an industry is because of its
amazing ability to transport images into our homes with our full acceptance.
The commodification of the TV market is commercials that accompany the
programming. The TV equals advertising to the people with money. And what a
better marketing agent them something we donít even realize is the enabling arm
of the marketer, unless we think about it, but on the surface we donít see this
connection.
In the overall effectiveness of the book, the exercises are
a pivotal point. They engage the reader in interactivity with the book and even
encourage the subjects to mark in the book, creating a stronger bond between
the book itself and the owner of the book. The exercises give the book another
dimension it would not have it they were not present. By adding the exercises
the text has become somewhat of an instrument in the guiding of people to
knowledge about themselves. The useful aspect of the exercises is they get our
mental wheels turning in the right directions concerning our contribution to
the mess on the road. The exercises serve as small and dense reminders that we
are not perfect, and also allow us to see what perfect could be ñ supportive
driving.
In select chapters there are tables that show information
in data sets that apply to certain taxonomies. On page 210, there is such a
table that displays the comparison percentage rates between old and young
driver and their aggressive driving behaviors. The use of tables is not
widespread, but when incorporated in the chapters they find themselves at home
along with the subject matter being discussed. Another such table is
intelligently utilized to guide us in our beginning understanding of emotional
intelligence. This table, which appears on page 130, has three columns and five
rows and instructs us how to change our responses to aversive driving
situations that normally produce anger and rage in us, into emotionally
intelligent ìremediesî. I found that such tables leveraged the power that
tables and matrixes provide, and that there would have been no other way to get
their message across, expect to use a table or matrix format.
To start the book off the authors choose to let us in on
why this book occupied they lives during it development. In the preface of the
book, we are introduced the stories of both Dr. Nahl and Dr. James. These
stories show us that Dr. Nahl and Dr. James are not just a team of
professionals collaborating to write this book that they feel must be done for
the society of ill adjusted driver, rather that James and Nahl live together and
their motive for writing the book is of personal dimension. The confrontation
between Dixie, Dr. Nahlís grandmother, and Dr. James about his aggressive and
frightening driving is cited as the first time Dr. James ever conceived of
ìdriving psychologyî. And from
that concept of driving psychology has sprung this book. Dr. James was an
aggressive driver who saw that he needed to ìcome down from his high horseî and
start to accommodate the needs of others in his sphere of influence while
conducting a or rather ìhisî car. The book is dedicated to Dixie, who Nahl and
James state inspired them to start writing the text. With the intimate
understanding and uncovering of the reason why this book exist, we, as readers,
are compelled to take this work even more seriously, because it has familial
meaning, and family is a super-structure within our society ñ since it
represents survival and protection and most importantly love and
commitment. This is our
introduction into the text, and all of it appears before chapter one.
On the back cover of the book there is small quick
literature review of the book. In total, there are two mixed in with
promotional messages for the sale of the book. These literature reviews are
brief but carry weight because of their authors. One is written by an MD and
the other by a Ph.D., which gives scientific evaluation to the book itself. The
reviews are enthusiastic about the text and offer encouraging commentary of
what they felt was most needed from it. The MD points outs that scholarship in
the area of road rage and aggressive driving is needed and that this delivers
the goods. The Ph.D. focuses on the methods of self-analysis and self-change
offered as a path to gentle and supportive driving. He also makes the
overlaying connection that these self-help method have beneficial outcomes in
our entire life ñ i.e. other areas of our life, not just in the driving space.
The titles of the chapters are indicative of the topics and
subjects covered within them. At times I felt like I wanted to skip certain
chapters because I could see that they did not cover in depth psychological
principals pertinent to driving. This was the case for chapters 11 and 4, with
the titles of ìspeed limits: the great motorist rebellionî, and ìthe road rage
spectrumî, respectively. After I finished the book it was nice to look back
over the chapters I had read and see the methodical flow of information I had
just completed ingesting. Viewing this methodical flow of information was done
by looking at the titles of each chapter, as keystone representation of the
information they discussed. This matched what I knew in my mind that I had
learned, from reading the book, and so I think that the titles of the book are
well thought-out and even more perfectly arranged in the context of the
sections.
In addition to the well-crafted titles, there is an index
that gives full coverage of the information cover throughout the book. My
analysis of the index is that it is meticulously compiled. I canít be sure, but
judging from the near 30 pages devoted to it, it does not miss a thing a reader
might be looking for. At the end of each chapter there appear endnotes that
explain give references to the works cite within the chapter. The endnotes
normally take up a half of page, and I found that I ignored them most of the
time. I do support the use of endnotes in the book as opposed to the use of
footnotes, because I find footnotes distracting and margin disrupting thus
making the page ugly.
The book is broken into morsels that convey the information
in such a way that it is understandable and manageable by our limited
attention. Each morsel corresponds with a section of the book. There are three
sections: The conflict mentality, Driving psychology, and The future of
driving. Since the human mind is rational and works from premises, the way the
information is presented is intelligible because it follows a sequential
pattern. This is seen in the flow of presenting a problem, done in the first
section, and then discussing a solution, this is tackled in the second section,
and then we extend our view of reality into the future within the context of
driving.
This pattern is paramount to the structure of the book
because it forms the skeleton that all the sub topics branch off from. Dividing
the book into three sections was a good move, but even better was the
assignment of the topics to put in each section. The chapters each have their distinct subject and the
chapters donít tend to overlap with each other. This is nice because more can
be said when chapters deal with discreet subjects. I also want to note the
placement of the psychological element of the book. Section two is clearly
called ìdriving psychologyî and it is the most moving and personal section of
the book. We are asked to subject ourselves to the fact that we are mostly all
to blame for the mess on the road.
Emotional intelligence is introduced as the main issue we
are struggling with in our attempts to be better drivers. Then we are hit with
the driver self-improvement program and this is purely psychological. It acts
on us from the plain of the mind, and asks us to use our minds to control
ourselves. But why is this whole book not on the psychology of driving? To
start to answer this question I like to think that psychology is more than just
psychology, that is, by describing the situation in whole, as is done by the
first and last sections of the book, we aid our psychological analysis of the
entire problem and are enabled from this standpoint to better use the ìdriving
psychologyî section to our advantage.
I
really liked the statistics offered in the book, because they put a
global/national perspective on driving and how serious it is to be safe while
on the road. Plus the statistics showed how much of a problem automobile
accidents are. We not aware of the high rate of these accidents, and we donít
pay them much mind unless we are alerted to them. The straightforward nature
that the book is written in makes for smooth reading and locating of material
after you have read it. The chapter structure was logical and the
implementation of section or meta-chapter with sub chapters was helpful for
mentally arranging the information and getting to know the flow of information
in the book.
I liked the psychological approach of the book as to how to change oneís driving behavior. The system of Acknowledging, Witnessing, and Modifying really makes sense to me, even though I find that I want to resist change when I engage in acknowledging, witnessing and trying to modify my behavior. I am excited about this method of change offered, because I feel like it has great potential for widespread application. I also liked the age of the topic and of the book itself. Since this is a new social topic of interest and debate, it was fun to explore it because its still in its infancy, so we as students get to play a more active role in thinking about it, rather than just learning about it.
I thought the book was well balanced, in terms of its scope
and depth of problem analysis. The introduced idea of a culture of conflict
really set the stage for the ensuing in-depth look at aggressive driving and
road rage. Easing into the topic, via the explanation a culture with rage surfacing,
aided in gaining support for the bookís critical message that what we are doing
NOW with regards to driving is not acceptable. To intimately involve emotional
intelligence with our driving nature is key to the development of the problems
and solution pointed to by the text; namely, aggressive driving and road rage
as problems and supportive driving as the solution. The inclusion of a solution
to the presented problem is excellent since the solution is person based it is
manageable by all.
For
starters I liked this contained paragraph about heredity of aggressive driving:
ìChildren grow-up in an automobile society where they witness routine
aggressive behaviors of drivers ñ in their family cars, on school buses, in parking
lots, on streets, and in films, cartoons, TV shows, and commercials. Childrenís
prolonged exposure to adult road rage puts them in double jeopardy. Theyíre
directly at risk from being injured as passengers, cyclists and pedestrians as
they navigate in a dangerous environment made worst by aggressive driving and
parents who ignore safety rules with car seats and seat belts. Furthermore,
children automatically absorb norms of aggression and roles of hostility as
future drivers, learning how in inflame their own verbal road rage with a
biased perception that justifies retaliating to their righteous indignation.
The negative socialization produces a new generation of road ragers and
continues the cycle of violent crashes and death on the road.î
The little ones of our nation are being born into a place
where all they know is world of cars, buses, airplanes, and motorized
transport. It is second nature to them and what they learn along with it
becomes second nature. Dr. James and Dr. Nahl show us that the kids are being
instructed to acquire a ìbiased perception thatî promotes aggressive driving. I
selected this paragraph for sharing with you because it shows that the book
understands the problem of aggressive driving and road rage as being a socially
inbred problem.
I
especially enjoyed this passage from the book:
ìMany of us might like to claim, for the sake of our reputation, that
weíre compassionate and peaceful drivers. But this white-knight reputation is
quickly tarnished when we begin systematic self-witnessing behind the wheel.
When you think aloud in the car you can actually hear that youíre being angry
and harsh, more aggressive than you have thought. Itís so automatic that weíre
hardly ware of it. Seeing ourselves in this new light is upsetting and thereís
an immediate impulse to want to forget it or take refuge in the idea that
everyone else is doing it. It could be dangerous to drive differently from
everyone else, right? Yet we realize that our hostile driving persona is
unattractive, dangerous, and denigrating. Many of us sense this from time to
time and weíre disturbed by it. The happy new is that our traffic emotions are
trainable but, like keeping physically fit, it requires discipline to change
old habits.î (180)
If we are to change, we will only change for the better (I
hope). So the first step in change is identifying something that can be
bettered. This citation from the book, show us how to extract that
able-to-be-bettered part of ourselves from your thoughts, by not claiming that
we cannot be bettered. To claim that we are prefect leads us into mishap and no
growth. To self-witness oneís driving self is to see that we are not what we
think. We want to hide from our wrong doing in the shadows of othersí wrong
doing, but this is only a game. We must claim our dysfunctional driving and
then better it. I gravitate to this passage because of the last sentence that
resonates with the way I feel about personal change, that change that alters
our personality. The proposition that this type of change is attainable not by
mental imagining, rather discipline applied to old habits, is right on because
changing (for good ñ permanent) is a work based endeavor.
The main lesson I learned from reading this book is that I
need to be more careful on the road when I drive. There is a lot going on out
there, and when people become emotional behind the wheel is when road rage and
aggressive tendencies start to kick-in. I see that I am a sloppy driver as well
and need to work on bringing my driving skills up to par for the safety of
others. I will certainly take driving more seriously since reading this book.
For the safety of others who share the road with me I have learned to remember
to act more supportively and less defensively, being more focused on tolerance
for othersí mistakes than unforgiving and harsh about them.
From reading this book I became enlightened to the fact
that aggressive driving is very much connected to the occurrence of road rage,
and that aggressive driving consists of a many various negative reactions we
have while driving. Even muttering degrading things under our breathes at
passing motorists is considered a form of aggressive driving. Even, thinking
degrading thoughts in our head about other drivers is aggressive driving and
needs to dealt with accordingly. Upon my completion of the book, there was one
glaring component of it that I thought was very impression forming in my mind
relating to what I thought about the book in general. This component is the
inclusion of the emailed personal accounts of road rage and aggressive people
from around the globe have experienced. This helped me get an inside view of
what drives others mad while driving, and what they consider rude and
personally offensive. These emailed messages gave the book a real and
uncensored feel that made me think about aggressive driving and road rage from
the level of humanity and not just roads and cars.
I donít think the book did as good a job as it could have on
introducing the various mixed-up usages of differentiated examples of
experiences, i.e. emails, quotations, anecdotal stories of road rage,
testimonies and things of this nature. I felt at times that I did not know how
to handle some of these offerings. Also the book seemed to lack introductory
commentary of orientation. There was commentary, but more could have added to
the overall image of meaning before launching into a subject, a major theme,
study, or topic. On some occasions I felt like I was supposed to know more
about an out-of-context insertion than I was given knowledge of.
At times it seemed like there was too many tests to do
within the same chapter. But since this book uses these exercises to drive home
the point that we are not satisfactory drivers, I can see the value of these
populous exercises. In chapter six there are at least three exercises, and they
are the kind that take away from the flow of reading the chapter. This was a
little strange, because flow of reading is key for the comfort of and
subsequent acceptance of the reading material by the reader. There needs to be
more intrinsic motivation somehow injected into the completion of the exercise
because it is easy to get unmotivated about actually doing the exercise and
applying the guiding and personally informative results they give us.
This book shines in the area of self-directed reading and
self-initiated change, because the reading is of itself motivating to read.
Once we are introduced to such a big social problem we want to know more, so we
read on in suspense. Simply, this book established that we are all responsible
for the climate of aggressive driving on our roads today and that to do
something about it, is our own charge. We are shown that we can dump out and
discard our willing of aggressiveness and hostility, and replace it with
elevated emotional intelligence and collaborative supportive driving practices.
The driver self-improvement structure for change is a definite strength in the
book, because it so simple and failsafe if carried out per the instructions.
The colliding of the ideas of road rage and emotional intelligence represents a very strong point in the book because these two ideas are heavily interconnected. Becoming angry and insulted from contact with others means that we are at a certain level of emotional intelligence. If we investigate the relationship between the two we can see that our emotional intelligence dictates our reality as we interpret it. So, to change ourselves, we need to integrate systematic ways to get at our emotional intelligence in order to change it. Then we can change it, and this will change our interpretation of reality, in turn changing who we are. The mechanism of getting at our emotional intelligence given to us in this book is the idea of the three levels of emotional intelligence as related to our driving selves. This represents a major strength of the book, because emotional intelligence is extremely important in our society today, even if we donít know of its giant import.
In closing I want to end this book review with questions, regarding the book, I have generated and gladly answered.
How
is this book related to our becoming better humans?
I think that this book spells out some fundamental methods of effecting change in an individual. The keystones of the methods are integrating emotional intelligence in our lives, and performing self-witnessing (which we can easily forget to do). We can become better humans if we know our selves; this is not new knowledge, just knowledge that needs to be digested by the new generations that will always be resistant to knowing their true selves. This is because to know thy self is to know your pain and then to feel your pain and then to allow that pain to motivate you as punishment. This is not a simple task and much courage is called upon in its accomplishment.
Can
high school students read this book?
The text contained in the book is not too far over the heads of high school students for them to understand the main assertions made. The problem of aggressive driving is a national problem, and to start to do something about it we need to get people educated about its destructive force. First and foremost is the unbelievably high yearly rate of automobile fatalities; about 42,000 deaths/year. WOW, this is enough to scare anyone who has driven a car lately. I think that high school aged people would be good subjects to give the study of this book to because they are still forming their minds and still have room for allowing the idea of supportive driving and emotional intelligence to become guiding thoughts and associations.
Why
is this book needed in the grand scheme of things?
This book can be thought about as an action of surfacing for air of a nation that is drowning in its own destruction. Basically we are killing each other on the road. The percentage of deaths is small when compared to the total population of the country, but when not scaled to this type of mega-reality we can all clearly agree that 42,000 deaths annually, caused by mistakes and aggressive driving is no small percentage, and indeed is it 100% of all the people we wish to still be alive. Maybe we should all just die right now, if we are not willing to do something about the horrible situation on the road. Maybe not, maybe we should come up for air from our delusion of perfection and pick-up of a copy of this book that can supply us with air based in reason and psychology. The main reason this book is needed right now is the increase in the widening between the sane and the insane; this is exemplified by the latest of these insanity occurrences of the sniper killers on the east coast. It has to be that this book of truth exists in proportion to the madness that exists, this is balance and the book is defiantly an addition to the sane and helpful side of the equation.
Thank you for sticking it out and reaching the end, Kudos to your attention. Maybe you liked my commentary and review ñ If you did, check out the book, it is a real eye opener.
To My Homepage | To Dr. Jamesí Homepage | To The Class Homepage | To My Annotated Bibliography