Here is a modern scenario: you have a girlfriend to supper, and before you sit down, she asks if you would mind if she shut the window, turned up the heating, switched places and opened her own bottle of wine. Then she tells you she’ll have to leave before you have finished eating because she has something important to do. And her boyfriend won’t be coming after all.

Not so long ago, such behaviour would have been thought extremely rude, but now we live in a world where everyone feels justified in putting their own needs first. It is perfectly common for guests to ask for drink that isn’t being offered, variations on the food you are serving or alterations to the heating, lighting or music. If you make a date with a girlfriend, she will think nothing of postponing it if something more important comes up, or just if she’s tired. You could put all of the above down to a crisis in manners, but these are not just examples of thoughtless behaviour – they are all driven by the same desperate impulse to be the absolute master of our destiny.

The poster girl for such control freakery is, of course, Victoria Beckham, who stage-manages every detail of her life, from her coordinated Kelly bags to her Los Angeles social schedule (fine-tuned with the help of several PRs). And though we laugh at the lengths to which she is prepared to go in pursuit of total control, the truth is, we’re all suffering from Victoria Beckham disorder – let’s call it a nasty dose of VB – just to a lesser degree.

It’s not so long ago that being called a “control freak” was an insult on a par with “bully”. But then “controlling” went the way of “superstressed” and became almost a badge of honour. Now, people don’t mind being seen as inflexible and demanding, because it suggests a certain purpose, and because we equate getting our own way in everything – from where the sauce is placed on the plate in the restaurant to how and when we give birth – with power and success. We look to successful celebrities such as Beckham, J.Lo and Nicole Kidman to show us the way, and they oblige: eating strictly raw food off only white plates and demanding that nannies sign confidentiality deals and that their chefs and dermatologists are available at all hours of the day and night. Who could forget the tale of Trudie Styler and the chef who was made to travel almost 100 miles to make a bowl of soup?

We think of this behaviour as extreme, but the chances are that you have accepted an invitation with conditions, or forced a taxi driver to take your route, or ordered a coffee-to-go “with just a dash of milk, but make sure the coffee is red hot, and I’d like it in the extra-small cup”. Previously, we put our faith in God, or in fate, or simply just in life and the people we knew. Now we believe in exerting our will in every situation.

Who knows what is behind this epidemic? Is it the cult of self-determination gone mad? Are we scared of making the wrong choice? A friend told me that at Glastonbury this year, she and her group of mates spent most of the festival apart from each other, because none of them could agree on what to see when, and nobody was prepared to compromise. But this has to be about more than just chronic selfishness. It suggests a lonely view of life, a fortress mentality. And something like fear.

If you dig a bit, you realise that these are the products of a culture that says, “It’s dog-eat-dog out there, and time is short”; a culture in which even the relatively secure can succumb to control freakery. Heard the one about the woman who sacked her cleaner for not “rotating” the plates – as in, putting the used plates to the bottom of the pile, so that the same ones were not in constant use? Desperate housewives have always run their houses and families like military academies in an attempt to distract themselves from their unhappiness. But that woman wasn’t miserable; she was just an extreme case – the creation of a culture that says perfection is attainable, and all you have to do is eat less, work harder, earn more and leave more instructions scrawled on Postit notes.

“I can’t go on holiday with anyone other than my boyfriend any more,” says a PR executive who wishes to remain nameless. “I feel really stressed when everyone takes hours to get going in the morning. It’s easier to move quickly if there are just two of you. And I can’t bear it when they all want to eat at some pavement cafe, where you can see the food is going to be terrible.” Does she think she is a control freak? “My boyfriend does. But I don’t mind. I think, if you have good instincts, you are entitled to be a control freak. Control freaks give great parties, and they run efficient businesses.”

And there is a place for control. We lead complicated, multidimensional lives, where exerting more control counterbalances all the white noise, according to the clinical psychologist Dr Cecilia d’Felice. “It is a way of psychologically containing what feels uncontainable. Often, we succumb to controlling behaviour when we are stressed or overwhelmed – women, in particular, can appear hysterically controlling, because they have responsibility both at work and at home in a way that few men do.” Control goes hand in hand with stress, that other epidemic.

Maybe the real reason we leave nothing to chance is that the world seems a crueller place. It’s the reason people push their children academically, or leave marriages when the going gets tough. It’s the reason for commitment-phobia, the £20,000 handbag and the rise and rise of plastic surgery. We have a sense that you get only one chance at life, and nobody gets anywhere without pushing their own agenda. It’s quite sad, really.

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