Another former sailor here, I must admit that my speech can be coarse when I get excited or emphatic about things. But I do not raise my voice when fishing within ear-shot of others.

I don't care what someone is saying when I'm fishing. Unless they're fishing with me or there is some sort of emergency they are warning me about, I don't want to hear what they are saying from across the water. I think this is the real issue. Let me explain.

It's about space and the invasion of it. It's about the lack of respect of another's right to use the same space you are and enjoy themselves too. It's about courtesy. It's about manners. It's about good sportsmanship.

All of these things I mentioned above are rapidly becoming extinct in our culture. We live in a neo-barbaric age brought about by the popularity of vulgar music, films and TV that mostly seem to celebrate and explore excess and mayhem, a video gaming culture that does the same and simultaneously isolates the players from social interaction, and a whole generation of parents and teachers and coaches and religious leaders who have abdicated their moral responsibility to lead...both my example and through proper training and discipline. You can sum up contemporary American culture with two words: Self-obsession and Excess.

My father taught all six of us (and repetition is the mother of learning!) that our rights stopped where another's began. And he would amplify that with a follow-up question: where do other people's rights actually begin? We'd think about it as youngsters when he first began this lesson with us and eventually admit that we didn't really know. He'd put his finger on our noses and say, "Right there. Your rights end at the tip of your nose and the tips of your fingers, because someone else's rights are going to start pretty close to there." And then he would give some examples. Your example of the stream incident is very similar to the ones he would use: inconsiderate behavior robbing others of their peaceful enjoyment, cutting in line in front of others, cheating on a test others had studied hard for, running a red light in a car and perhaps causing an accident, etc.

Most parents stopped engaging in this sort of aggressive program of individualized moral instruction of their children a long time ago. My parents had a system and followed it through the rearing of six kids over a period of 40 years. They also had an academic set of priorities for each of their kids and supplemented anything lacking in the public schools. And they had a set of goals and objectives for the athletic and arts and cultural rearing of their kids, too. They dedicated their lives to this.

My dad passed on an offer to become an NFL referee...a dream job for him...because it would have kept him away from us much of the year for 4 days/week, including the weekends when we were out of school. It would have paid much better and been a lot of fun for him. It would have gotten him away from a career he didn't enjoy. But it would have violated his priorities and values. He was a man of principles, ethics, and self-discipline. I suspect that most men like him died on the battlefields of WW2, but he survived. Otherwise, I cannot explain how such a big chunk of the Baby Boom generation turned out to be such a bunch of self-absorbed, over-indulged pansies with a raging sense of entitlement. And the generation that they (failed to) raise are a bunch of young folks with good hearts and amazing talents, but have almost zero social skills.