Hell hath no fury like the modern citizen's temper

So I'm down in Glasgow on family business, and I'm at the new Silverburn shopping centre in Pollok. It's Scotland's biggest shopping mall, 13 times the size of Hampden Park. This ultra-modern cathedral of consumerism boasts one million square feet of retail and leisure space. It induces in me feelings of deep melancholy.

I'm standing beside my car in the 2500-space car park, asking myself where Dante is, now that we need him. A vehicle comes along, driven by a man with a woman in the passenger seat.

Well-dressed, they are probably in their 30s. A child is strapped in to a seat in the back. The car stops beside me, just behind another vehicle with an elderly man at the wheel. He is checking both ways, and sees that another car is moving down the intersection. He waits until it passes. This short pause, though, is too much for the couple in the car behind. The driver winds down his window and issues a volley of foul-mouthed abuse. The woman joins in. The child innocently inhales the toxins. Then the elderly driver moves off, pursued by the raging, finger-jabbing dragons. Welcome to chic 21st-century hell.

We are not at war, though our soldiers are busy in foreign fields. Advances in public health and in the NHS mean that, on average, we are living much longer than previous generations. Most of us have disposable income beyond the dreams of the majority of humankind, past and present. We can travel on holiday to places unreached by medieval princes. Yet we rage, and rage again.

Not everyone, of course. Yet I'm willing to bet that most people reading this column will have either witnessed or experienced a piece of road rage within the past two years. The puce face, the throbbing temples, the contorted features, the feverish digits: we have either seen it, been the victim of it, perpetrated it or simply uttered mild, righteous rebukes. As Jerry Seinfield put it: "Anyone going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac."

The problem was highlighted in this week's BBC documentary Road Rage: the Battle for Britain's Roads. Hidden-camera footage showed everyday violence and abuse between motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, wardens and police.

School runs involving stressed-out parents, many at the wheel of high-standing gas-guzzling SUVs, which are less than child-friendly, did not reveal humanity at its best. Explosive, ranting belligerence seemed almost standard in this educated, middle-class war zone that produces real fatalities.

Driving is becoming a more and more unpleasant experience. It doesn't do to be slightly slower than Michael Schumacher in moving off the starting blocks when the traffic lights change. Or if you stick to the speed limits, you're likely to be overtaken by a furious, snarling finger-jabber.

The trend is most often seen in our cities, but even in peaceable Orkney I've seen normally placid human beings go ballistic because they got stuck for two minutes behind a tractor hauling a load of neeps. (It's not really worth having a stroke because of turnips, is it? Imagine arriving at the Pearly Gates and being asked by St Peter how you died. "Well, there was this load of neeps " Doesn't sound too heroic, does it?) Road rage, though, is part of a wider culture of in-your-face anger. Rage is all the rage. It's everywhere. Air rage. Telephone rage. Trolley rage. It's so fashionable, so cool, so happening. While assertiveness is certainly better than passivity in the face of injustice, the dumping of frustrations on to others is neither noble nor heroic.

Everybody has their own anger threshold, but the national threshold seems to be getting lower and lower. Held back by the old lady with the shopping trolley? Barge her. Mad about slow service at the till when you're in a hurry? Give the harassed wage-slave a volley of vituperative insults. You'll feel better for this aggressive manifestation of your inner being. By "letting it all hang out" in glorious Technicolor, you'll have transferred successfully a good part of your personal frustrations on to the hapless assistant.

But that's what they're paid for, isn't it? We must, it seems, be diverted from our anger if we cannot get what we want, and get it now. If we are to be "honest" human beings, apparently, we are entitled to vent our rage on whoever gets in the way of our precious little lives.

There are things worth raging about, such as the fate of millions of children needlessly dying of hunger and disease in a world that has vast resources. But petulant foot-stamping alone won't change a thing for these children.

The channelling of rage against injustice into serious moral and political choices: now that would represent emotional growing up of a transformative kind.