THE vast majority of us prefer to rub along nicely together if at all possible.

At the opened door, we prefer, if given the choice, to say: “After you.”

And we like it when the person to whom we have offered the open door returns: “No, after you.”

But what a swirling storm of ire erupts in our little world when the person for whom we have held open the door pushes through without so much as a by your leave.

“I was so angry I could have ripped his/her head off and stuck it on a red hot spike.”

Yes – but you didn’t, did you?

The things we could have said or done, when faced with a situation that has made our blood boil, in which we describe ourselves as being incandescent with rage, are far fewer than those occasions when we actually do rip off someone’s head and stick it on a red hot spike.

This steady reduction in violent behaviour has been noted by Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Steven Pinker.

Prof Pinker, author of the recently-published tome The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, says his research shows we’re becoming, as a species, less likely to erupt into violence, no matter what impression the newspapers give that we’re all bloodthirsty idiots with a propensity to stick our knuckles in someone’s face at the slightest provocation.

The development of agriculture, the city-state, feminism and planetary overcrowding are some of the reasons given.

If you live in good old repressed Britain, you are a thousand times more likely to seethe inwardly than to lash out and have done with it.

When push comes to shove, we are not a nation of people who do much shoving. We are not fond of confrontation.

Our best seethers, John Cleese and Richard Wilson, rarely did anything with their seething other than strike out in a frenzy at inanimate objects – or, in Basil Fawlty’s case, at poor Spanish waiter Manuel.

And they accurately reflected ‘the British way’ with violence. We sincerely believe that it is not our right to roam the streets with a gun or machete and have almost unanimously told our dear old police to lock up those who do.

My parents were excessively non-confrontational. My mother often told the tale of the time when, in a restaurant, my father was served a piece of cod that was still frozen.

“We’d half a mind to walk out,” said my mother, as if that would have solved everything.

“But no, your father was having none of it. He called the waiter over and told him that the fish was frozen. The waiter said he was sorry. He got a portion that was properly cooked. Isn’t that so, George?”

“It certainly is,” my father said with quiet pride.