I’m in a middle seat. This is my third middle seat in four days.

You know, it’s not so terrible being in a center seat when your seat mates are polite and courteous. However, my flight this afternoon had me sitting next an armrest hog, who felt it necessary to repeatedly elbow me in the ribs to give him room to underline in his Bible. He was studying Galatians, I think. His Bible was in Spanish, so my normal powers of detection were inhibited.

He gave me a little card near the time we landed. It invited me to take some guy named Jesus into my heart. How did he know? Maybe it was my unwillingness to hang out into the aisle to give him more room.

After a moment, I thought to have some reply cards made up to point out the equal validity of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I probably won’t, though. Still, isn’t there quite a hateful message in proselytizing some seat mate whom you never took the effort to strike up a conversation?

Now, riding the middle out to San Francisco, I’m behind a guy who has punished his chair something fierce. He’s dropped into it several times with his full weight, and the entire seat frame has twisted and warped. Of course, you KNOW that he has banged the seat back against the tracks several times to get every millimeter out of the recline.

The person directly behind me has kicked, kneed and shoved my seat back so regularly that one wonders if they’re engaged in an aerobics program. I call the seat’s occupant a person, but quite frankly I don’t know that to be the case. It could be some dragon like monster wrestling to free itself from the confinement that some long dead wizard trapped it into.

Still, it’s cheap. I mean, astonishingly cheap. I guess that’s quite all right, because paying more for a better seat does not assure one of freedom from this bizarre dominating behavior. I considered paying to upgrade to a better seat, but then eyeballed the other 134 persons prepared to board with me.. They weren’t so desperate as to hang off if the wings, but it was rather disturbing.

This experience of course starts with “security”. Having been through security a few times in the last few days, I am convinced that the problem isn’t really with the TSA. The problem is with passengers who aren’t paying attention, aren’t prepared, are belligerent and generally making the experience more unpleasant than it need be.

This isn’t quite unique to air travel, of course. The same hostility, aggression and competitive inattention is present each day that I pilot my Buick to such exotic locales as the UPS store, or the university.

Is there any empirical data in the behavior of the masses over time? Or, is it just that there are so many more of us angling to get two ahead in the line.

One of the most memorable and startling “star trek” episodes had Jim Kirk kidnapped by a society so desperately overpopulated that they could no longer function. A blood born illness Kirk carried was their only solution. Occasionally, their deception failed and Kirk saw the heaving mobs of unhappy people – totally trapped and unable to exercise any choice.

Are the situations analogous?