Tolerance. Have we taken it too far? I’m on the train again, and the amount of anti-social behaviour that goes on is almost beyond belief. There are stickers up all over the place that tell you what you’re not supposed to do—things like putting your feet on the seats, drinking alcohol and smoking. Signage also dictates that some seats should be vacated for elderly, pregnant or less mobile passengers. Social common sense suggests that on a crowded train, you shouldn’t take up seats with your luggage. CityRail recently launched a campaign to label people who indulged in antisocial behaviour as blockers, grubbers, blarers and suchlike.

A journey outside of peak times was a real eye-opener. A pretty normal looking girl in her mid- to late-teens was sitting by herself, and at one point phoned ahead, and agreed to meet a friend on this carriage. At the nominated station, a similarly aged boy (I really can’t use the word “man”) boarded the train and conversation commenced. I call it conversation because there was more than one person speaking. I could equally call it a two-sided torrent of abuse. Looking at their faces, you wouldn’t know. They used pretty much every bit of foul language with which I’m acquainted in reference to each other. The girl was called a slut, a whore and worse; the boy was accused of a variety of indecent acts. There didn’t appear to be anything private about the conversation: they certainly weren’t keeping the volume down. And I just sat there. Eventually a young man behind me said: “Dude! Stop the swearing!” Surprisingly enough, they did. A bit later, he started hurting her, or so it seemed. He was squeezing her hands and feet, and she was squealing “Ow! Stop it! You’re really hurting me!” At that point, I’d had enough, and spoke up. “Is he assaulting you?” She looked at me and laughed. “No,” she said. “It’s OK.” The boy asked, “What makes you think I’d assault my girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?” What planet did these two think they were on? I thought that relationships at that age were practice relationships for a life-long commitment to partner with and build up another person for the rest of their life. Is this the way people practice for marriage these days?

Oh, and I didn’t mention earlier that while I was on my way to work, they were on their way to the Easter Show. And the boy casually mentioned something that had happened at Church on the weekend.

And that’s a long way short of some of the behaviour that I’ve seen.

One of the most appalling instances of poor behaviour that I saw was when I heard some people talking loudly about a Hillsong conference they attended—about how wonderful was the presence of God. Yet they were three, their luggage took up two seats, the luggage rack above them was empty, and there were four people standing within two metres of them. Don’t we expect a higher standard of behaviour from Christians? Maybe if someone had asked them to move their luggage, they would have been happy to do so, but surely they should have been aware enough of their surroundings. Maybe no-one wanted to sit next to a bunch of loud Christians that were so obviously oblivious to the needs of others. Don’t know.

So who enforces these rules? Have CityRail done their bit by putting up stickers stating what is unacceptable behaviour? It should be enough, but it’s not really. So what about the rail security staff? Well, they have recently declared that they are no longer going to get involved in disputes on trains and in stations that they determined could result in personal risk to themselves. Do they tell people to get their feet off the seats? They’re obviously not able to be everywhere at once, so what do we do?

I’ll tell you what we do … we put up with it. We tolerate it, and thus endorse it. All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to remain silent.