For many years now, incivility has been in fashion. Not just in how we behave in public, but especially among social commentators, who see everyday boorishness as a symptom of larger maladies, such as the breakdown of community or moral decay. All sorts of damage are said to follow from our bad manners and disrespect toward others, ranging from crime and outbreaks of social violence to gridlock in government and lowered business productivity.

Now joining this chorus is the British writer and broadcaster Lynne Truss. As a sequel to her surprising bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, about growing carelessness for the rules of punctuation (another type of incivility), she has written a sharp-eyed and witty diatribe about rudeness in modern life, especially in her own country, where the problem is apparently so severe that Prime Minister Tony Blair has seen fit to propose a new government program to prevent it and foster greater “respect.” But, as Truss makes clear, the prospects for its success are slim, since today’s incivility is the price we are paying for making self-fulfillment the ultimate purpose of life.

Every account of contemporary rudeness invariably seems like an inventory of the author’s pet peeves, and this one is no different. Among those that particularly bother Truss are the declining use of common courtesies, such as saying “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me,” and new technologies, such as automated telephone “help” lines and the Internet, that reduce the likelihood of needing to be courteous at all. Cell-phoning in public or wearing low-slung clothes also attract her displeasure, as do expressions of resentment at being criticized for such behavior, especially what Truss calls “the universal eff-off reflex,” well known to anyone who has honked a car horn at an inconsiderate driver. Those who seek to uphold rules are more likely to be booed than cheered for interfering, Truss notes critically, while those who act disagreeably on television or elsewhere are apt to be admired for their audacity. And she unhappily concludes that fewer and fewer people seem willing to acknowledge responsibility toward anyone else in society, or even for their own conduct.

All this, Truss contends, is the result of individualism run amok. People are behaving badly toward others because they are too absorbed in pleasing themselves. They cannot even imagine how their behavior affects those with whom they come in contact. An egalitarian culture makes matters worse, she writes, by insisting that one person’s wishes and feelings are as good as another’s (except, of course, those which cross the boundaries of political correctness). And by placing childhood self-esteem ahead of self-control, “enlightened” parenting has given no help either. If once we understood that living together required making compromises, today, Truss asserts, we live in an age of “social autism,” preferring to deal with one another at a distance rather than personally, to talk “to the hand” rather than “to the face,” the former being an expression drawn from that avatar of incivility, The Jerry Springer Show.

Much of this would command hearty assent from others who have examined the state of public conduct in recent years. For example, a January 2002 poll by Public Agenda, a research organization founded by Daniel Yankelovich and Cyrus Vance, found that 79 percent of Americans thought lack of respect and courtesy was a serious problem, and 73 percent that it was worse now than in the past. Among the chief irritants: bad driving, public use of cell phones, bad language on television and in the movies, and poor customer service. Another survey by the University of Southern California’s business school discovered that 90 percent of employees had encountered incivility on the job. Starting with the work of the Harvard Professor Robert D. Putnam in the early 1990s, studies reporting on the growing disengagement of Americans from voting, volunteering, and other aspects of community life have been piling up. Similar research has appeared in Britain, as has a widely noted book by Frank Field, a former Labour Party cabinet minister and one-time Fabian Society sympathizer, with the revealing title Neighbours from Hell.

Even so, how people are actually behaving presents a more complex picture than the one Truss and the other social observers offer. For all the hand-wringing about incivility, crime and other forms of anti-social behavior have declined in the United States (and Britain) in recent years. Workplace violence has dropped, too. Last fall’s outpouring of contributions and volunteering following Hurricane Katrina (and before that, the Asian tsunami), far outstripping the help provided in previous natural disasters, suggests that Americans (and Britons) may not be quite so self-centered and unsympathetic after all. Likewise, the increased voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election indicates that concern about who governs still runs high, especially when the differences between the candidates on important issues are substantial.

As irritating as cell phones and inconsiderate drivers can be, civility is much greater now than it was in early modern times, when standards were still evolving. (In what is generally regarded as the first effort to define polite behavior, Erasmus of Rotterdam felt it necessary to warn children against succumbing to the temptations of prostitutes and sitting in chairs in which the previous occupants had defecated.) Getting along well with others is not always a virtue either, especially if their desires or actions are themselves improper and uncivil.

Indeed, not long ago, writers and sociologists worried that conformity, not incivility, was the problem with American and British society. Then came the 1960s and a new social ethic began to emerge, one that was not very social at all, but rather glorified independence from conventions of every sort, including those that, whatever their flaws, had enabled people to get along tolerably well. To be sure, the old rules did not entirely disappear, and, in those portions of the population appalled by the excesses of triumphant individualism grew even stronger. But if we have not returned to the vulgarity of Restoration England, with songs featuring belches and passing wind, the popularity of Howard Stern and other loutish cultural icons shows we have taken more than a few steps back.

How to balance individual rights and responsibilities has been a question philosophers and social thinkers have wrestled with for millennia. In an era that usually puts self-fulfillment first, and social obligations a distant second, no one should be surprised when many people decide to do whatever they want, when and where they want, and to deal with the rest of society by pretending it does not exist. Nor should anyone expect government programs, ultimately dependent on the support of these same people, to be able to do much to change that (except, perhaps, among groups for whom there is little popular sympathy, such as criminals, welfare recipients, and smokers). If she offers little alternative besides bolting the door, Lynne Truss has at least understood that the problem we are facing results from our successful effort at personal liberation, which, ironically, now leaves us more exposed to the rudeness of others.