You’d imagine in our chaotic lives that it would be bliss to sit and do nothing for 15 minutes. I don’t mean just put your feet up, have a cuppa or a glass of wine and watch telly.

No, I mean do literally nothing. Close your eyes, no distractions, just silence and solitude and reflection for 15 minutes. Possibly not that easy, no?

Such is the rush and noise of a 24/7 modern lifestyle, we may have lost that art and it seems we’re programmed to think that stepping back even for a short period means we’re wasting time.

Things to do, places to be, phones and devices to be checked in case there’s a message since the last time we checked 30 seconds ago.

Technology hasn’t produced the mad pace on the treadmill of life nowadays, but it feeds it and it reveals a nastiness towards others and the fomenting anger towards anyone of difference; it’s anger which is now so endemic that it is in danger of spilling over.

Are we really nastier now than we used to be?

Many will have been shocked that the Jeremy Kyle show has been taken off air after the death of a man who had participated in the show. Friends say he may have taken his own life after failing a lie detector test. There’s some irony in this emerging during mental health awareness week.

Why should we be shocked though? The Kyle show is all about confrontation and anger where people expose their conflict to entertain an audience. Relationship problems, drug abuse, guilt; they’re all grist to the mill for Kyle who goads the person painted as the bad guy into a reaction, then barks at them and brings them down.

It’s horrible. And yes, I have watched it but rarely because watching people with problems being thrown to the lions is uncomfortable viewing.

But before we all get too hypocritical, let’s remember that Kyle wouldn’t be successful if viewers didn’t lap up the anger-fuelled confrontations. After all, the Jeremy Kyle show is ITV’s most successful daytime show with over one million viewers.

Anger and verbal abuse, it seems, is entertainment. And it doesn’t stop there, with social media an even greater source of hostility.

Last week, I was horrified to watch an interview with a young blogger called Emily Davison, who is severely sight-impaired, works with a guide dog and has a very demanding chronic illness. Her reward, by some, for showing courage to get on with life and help others is to be hit with a barrage of endless negative comment just for her disability. Why don’t you drink bleach to cure it, one suggested, ha ha.

The Leonard Cheshire organisation reports that online abuse of disability was up 33 per cent last year and their chief executive says: For some reason, some people when they get behind a keyboard feel protected by anonymity … they feel able to express things that would be totally unacceptable in other environments.

Well done, therefore, to Irish News journalist Allison Morris and indeed her colleagues and employers for pushing action the whole way after false allegations against her were posted in the name of former DUP MLA Nelson McCausland in 2016. He’s accepted there was no truth in them and apologised unreservedly.

Allison has been scandalously subjected to misogynistic abuse online before, a factor which seems rife. Abusive anger is directed at women from all walks of life, on all sides of the community.

In Trump’s America, the phrase “coarsened public discourse” sums up the mood of what is being described as the battle for the soul of America; and the bearpit of British politics is no better.

How many times in recent months have you strained to hear interviews on live television broadcasts outside Westminster as the enraged protesters yell their venom at the likes of Anna Soubrey.

And worse, it would seem there is an acceptance of levels of abuse in public debate now. The MP Jess Phillips has suffered years of it, and UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin told her “I wouldn’t even rape you.”

Now that’s he’s standing in the Euro elections, he was challenged and said “With enough pressure, I might cave in but let’s be honest, nobody’s got that much beer.”

If you think an apology, at least, should be forthcoming for a sick joke about rape against a named woman, think again. Apparently, it’s “satire.”

And so the anger and venom goes on.

Listen, anger is a natural human emotion. Who doesn’t get angry, and sometimes justifiably so? And there’s nothing wrong, either, in robust debate. Also there’s nothing wrong with division, having different opinions is OK, and who wants a boring world of everyone thinking the same way. But this is out of control and reveals a malaise of hate running through society. There’s such a thing as hate crime and people should remember that social media is also subject to the laws of libel.

In the context of all this, though, I listened this past weekend to Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence, always an oasis of calm and thoughtful debate of issues. Questions were posed, what does it mean to live a good life today? And is it possible in an ever-competitive world?

The programmed referenced the life of the esteemed Canadian philosopher and humanitarian, Jean Vanier, founder of the L’arche network of communities, whose life was the epitome of respect for each other and of working together.

There were interviews about people’s needs, social justice, good values in society, and the Rev Ruth Patterson spoke about the work of “Faith and Friendship” which for 20 years in Northern Ireland has been bringing groups of people together across divides to share faith in an atmosphere of friendship.

Issues like respect, peacemaking, showing compassion and addressing people’s needs, don’t often get the coverage that the angry confrontation does, probably understandably in many ways. But they’re laudable things that are going on and which society needs. Indeed, I believe there is far more goodness in society than bad.

Perhaps we should reflect on that.

Ah, reflect, that word again. As an American friend once told me, sometimes you have to get off the dancefloor and go up on to balcony and watch for a while.

On Sunday Sequence, the Rev. Ian Cowley spoke about his article in Church Times in which he suggests even the church gets caught up in the “numbers game” when it comes to understanding success. Yet, what does success mean?

He says that for 20 minutes every day, he tries to “be still”, to switch off all devices, meditate, centre on prayer and find one’s true self.

In Japan this month, there was a 10-day holiday when people were encouraged to switch off social media, “a place that can sometimes feel almost as stressful as working”, travel abroad or stay at home and chill.

In this area, we have the most wonderful place in God’s creation; but rather than enjoying bird watching, the peace of the lakes, the company of our friends and family or simply relaxing in the beauty of the nature surrounding us, we’d rather be contorted with rage.

Remember, in the rat race, even if you win you’re still rat!