CLARE STEPHENS: A rude stranger, a note from a neighbour and the age of utter intolerance.

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This article originally appeared on Clare Stephens' Substack, NQR. Sign up here.

There is something very, very wrong with us.

Of course, that statement could apply to several aspects of humanity right now. But in this specific instance, let me take you on board a domestic flight last week, from Sydney to Cairns.

I'm sitting with my toddler on my lap, bracing for three hours of what will likely be hell. My daughter is 19 months old, which puts her squarely in the age bracket that is too old to sit still, and too young to properly concentrate. Sweetie can't read, or listen to a podcast. She can, thankfully, focus on The Wiggles for a few minutes at a time, which is one of the sparse tools at my disposal for this flight.

Parents are shamed for putting screens in front of their kids, but there are moments where screens are a gift sent from heaven to make life just a tiny bit easier. Vaccinations, for example. Sickness. Travel. As a smug first-time parent you tell yourself you'll never do screens, or you'll hold off for as long as possible, but the fact is that being able to distract a child is a necessity.

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No adult raw-dogs a flight, it's simply a psychopathic thing to do. So I have The Wiggles ready for the inevitable crisis that awaits my daughter when she realises she's stuck in this seat inside a very loud tin in the sky.

I also have a bag of tricks, obviously. Snacks and books and toys and pencils and my hair elastic which can sometimes entertain her for ~45 seconds. But as soon as we're in the air, I know none of it will be enough. Not because of her restlessness, or my shortcomings as a children's entertainer. No. I know we're f**ked because the man in front of us is pissed, and he's making sure we're aware of it.

He's reclined his seat, and encouraged his teenage son to do the same, which is absolutely fine. Not ideal, given that behind him there's a toddler sitting on a person's lap, but go for it. Take up as much room as you like. He is, however, huffing about Matilda's legs resting against the back of his chair.

He asks if we can move her. Um, sure. Toddlers respond very well to logic and reasoning so I'll just explain that she needs to tuck her legs between my seat and the one beside me.

She's squawking — not crying, not screaming — just slightly whining in the way small children do, and he shakes his head. Grunts. He's annoyed. Fair enough. Every fibre of my being wants to keep her quiet for the next three hours so as not to disturb the people around us, so I get out the iPad I've specifically prepared for this situation. I've downloaded The Wiggles, and I press play.

Now, an important caveat. Toddlers don't compute headphones. The in-ear ones are too wide for their ear holes and the over-ear ones are too bulky and she's not even two so she doesn't even understand that headphones are where the sound is coming from.

Therefore, I'm playing The Wiggles at the lowest volume I possibly can where she can still vaguely hear it.

And the man. In front of me. Asks. Me. To turn it. Off.

Sir.

1. You're an adult, do you not own a set of headphones.

2. I turned it on to appease you because you were mad she was squawking.

3. Yes, of course. Well, I'll turn the volume all the way down. I don't think you can police whether my daughter stares at four silent performers wearing colourful skivvies.

Image: Supplied.

I've sat on flights where toddlers have screamed for 17 hours. I've sat beside babies and offered to hold said baby so their mum can go to the toilet. I've listened to kids play loud games on a phone, or argue, or sing (badly). But they're children. We were all children once. You tolerate the noise and the chaos because that's what it means to live in the world with other people.

I don't know the personal circumstances of that man who was seated in front of me, and there are countless entirely valid justifications for his irritability. Living in the world with other people also means being exposed to unpredictable moods, to disapproval, to groans and crankiness. So I don't talk back to him, or challenge him, or roll my eyes. It's fine.

I do my best to subdue Matilda with very little space and no audio. To not inconvenience this man who is flying with his teenage son — a boy you'd have to imagine was a toddler at some point in the not-too-distant past.

Look. I know this is a tale as old as time. A parent complaining about a stranger finding their child annoying, when public spaces should belong to us all! Cafes! Restaurants! Gyms! Comedy shows! Nightclubs! Why can't my baby be there?! She deserves to party on a Saturday night, too. (She doesn't).The great debate rages on about whether it's actually entitled for me to take my toddler on a flight in the first place. If she can't sit still and stay quiet, how dare I disturb the peace of the people around me? Why can't I just stay at home? Why am I expecting others to tolerate my shitty choices?

Maybe that's fair.

But I'm also noticing a simmering sense of intolerance everywhere. An energy that screams: I don't owe anything to anyone.

It seems to be coming at us, culturally, from several different directions. The West is quintessentially individualist. Capitalism demands it. Our political structures are built on it.

We want personal success and wellbeing and money and happiness and status and in order to get those things we surely have to put ourselves first. Then we stare at our phones, which are, really, just highly intelligent mirrors, for multiple hours a day.

Online, especially, we reinforce and reward prioritisation of the self. We worship individuals — that's literally what fame is — and through osmosis, we start to worship ourselves. Our needs. Our boundaries. Our triggers. Our sensitivities.

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Late at night, when I can't sleep, I spend an unhealthy amount of time on Reddit. There are forums dedicated to 'Am I The Asshole?' or 'Am I Being Unreasonable?' where anonymous users present their everyday conundrums in the hope of being validated by the masses. Recently, I saw a post drenched in exasperation, from a guy who'd received a note from his downstairs neighbour.

Basically, he'd moved into an apartment, and his neighbour had (politely) written to him explaining that the sound of his footsteps really carried to the floor below. The neighbour worked odd shifts, so was sometimes sleeping during the day, and wondered whether the man could perhaps lay some rugs down. They might help with the noise. Allow him to get some sleep. He wasn't demanding it. He wasn't angry. He was just asking. If it was possible.

Well, no. It absolutely WOULD NOT be possible because WHY should this man, who's just moved into a new building, have to buy RUGS with his finite MONEY just to help some guy he doesn't even know get some sleep? The audacity! The entitlement!

It's not that I think you should bend over backwards to do whatever is asked of you. And depending on your perspective, perhaps the downstairs neighbour was the intolerant one. But at a time where we're facing an epidemic of loneliness, where our mental health — broadly — is abysmal, can we not see that the complete dismissal of other people's wants and needs are part of the problem?

Maybe this entire post is a sign of my own intolerance. My intolerance for intolerance. I don't know.

But it feels like hyper-individualism is seeping out of our phones and onto our hands, where we leave it behind on everything we touch. Then it's reabsorbed into our screens where it grows even more extreme, until the mere concept of seeing things from another person's perspective seems utterly absurd.

In the real world, babies cry. Music plays. Neighbours ask for favours. And our communities only function when they're underpinned by generosity and grace.

That's the basis for a culture in which we're able to disagree constructively. To hold competing truths at the same time. But right now that all seems impossible, against the backdrop of a chorus howling: I don't owe anything to anyone.

Clare Stephens is the author of The Worst I've Ever Done, which you can pre-order here. Sign up to Clare Stephens' Substack, NQR.

Feature image: Supplied.