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So an innocuous conversation this afternoon sparked a tinderbox of thoughts that I have to exorcise -- here. Sorry. My question is, "What happened to civility?" Or, in other words, why have we largely come to accept rudeness as being alright?
It's way to easy to jump on the pedestrian sort of rudeness like the broad but noticeable absence of "please" and "thank you," "excuse me" and so forth. Almost as easy is to observe that almost never does a man give up a seat to a woman in a public place, and absolutely never does a youth do that same courtesy for anyone their senior. (You will, of course, prove me wrong with complaints that just last week some teenager or another did just that. Well, OK. But it's not common.) Even the day in day out "me" approach to guiding a six ton propelled missile on the street is far too easy: when was the last time you watched somebody come up the obviously wrong lane and merge inappropriately in order to avoid the long line-up everyone else has to sit in? Dave Rogers, in examining his own "anger problem" lines up the possible valid excuses for this last commonplace action. My response is, "Maybe, but I doubt it. Not everyone has an emergency."
But, at the end of the day this is all in its own right small beer. That might be the problem. I'm on a roll about the widespread ignorance of what is, in fact, rude.
From my own life's experience I draw the following anecdotes.
When I was young, in a small town in Western Canada, there was a pecking order and it cost nothing to be polite. The people were mostly not wealthy nor -- given that it was a farming community -- preoccupied with their perceived station in life. (Note that this would be key differentiating factor exhibit one.) No matter how little affluence, one could have pride in being clean, standing straight, and being polite. There wasn't a lot of change to the community in terms of who came and when. It was like I once read about some Germanic description of the "right people": they were of the blood and the soil. Here, at least in Quebec, they would be described as pure laine (literally, pure wool). Pretty much everyone knew their place in the pecking order. Adults -- any adult -- were treated with respectful deference by juniors (especially small children). I could go on.
That does not seem to stand any longer. Children have the misguided notion, apparently propagated by their self-absorbed parents, that they are equal in every standing. Parents beat on teachers to defend their (often culpable) children against the tyranny of "the system" that dare to punish them for some transgression of good form -- let alone reprehensible act -- in even the most lax way. In concert with this zeitgeist, the school system organizes and operates itself in a way that doesn't harm the child's self-esteem. That means, they never know real discipline and that the teachers/administrators really are in charge. Dear angels. How can they possibly understand that the world is not yet their oyster?
Eventually these self-absorbed, unguided children become self-absorbed, unguided adults. They are the "me only" generation and they reproduce like upon like. But I'm digressing.
The trouble is the rude adults probably don't even know they're being rude. Nobody tells them. Everybody else seems to be the same way. It might require a visitor from another planet to say, "Hey what's wrong with you people? Don't you know that you're not special? You don't deserve to get to the front of the line just because you're the fattest person to belly up to the teller? Don't you realize that your little world of half a dozen people who are "your friends" is fragile? Have you yet to be in the shoes of those people you dismiss because they're not part of your group?" That visitor won't come. And if she does, she'll likely not bother with the warning. What's the point: nobody will listen anyway.
Another anecdote and simple illustration of how rudeness doesn't even seem to be noticed. Let's say that you received some tickets to a show and were looking for someone to go with you. You decided to invite someone you spend a little time with and with whom you know there is a mutual friendliness. You call. Answering machine: everyone is so busy these days. You don't get a response until the morning of the show. And what you get, utterly unapologetically is, "Yeah, I didn't want to go, so I didn't bother calling." Nice. Only person in the world, I guess. Couldn't possibly be that you would want to invite someone else . . . I won't even get into the standard ambivalence toward responding to an invitation -- obviously not to commit just in case a better offer comes up.
Further anecdote. Just to show how little regard you have for people who might host you in their home, once you arrive (inexplicably and unapologetically forty-five minutes late) you proceed to spend the better part of the evening on the cell phone with your children, their care-giver, or anybody else who has your number. And, of course, the evening is cut short because even before the flambe dessert has gone out you've got a coat on and are on the way out the door. Well, thank you for the wine.
I mentioned that in the small town where I grew up there wasn't a lot of ebb and flow with the population. Not so in our transient urban times. Most of us move once or twice -- or more -- these days. Well, back in my home town if somebody moved in, everybody knew about it and acknowleged it. I'm not talking about bringing over baking, etc., although that did happen -- a lot -- but general hospitality. Newcomers, as we were (for about eleven years we'd hear "Oh they're the new people.") once, received many invitations for dinner, to social events, to be part of things. And this was in an inward looking little community that had a challenge with "outsiders."
[This was feeling like a rant, and my wife wanted me to come watch "Hitch" last night. So I've slept on it. No change in my feelings. Hitch was worth the 90 minutes invested. So . . .]
Yet, it's been my experience in the seven or eight moves across town and between cities in the past five or six years that it's not the way of the much more cosmopolitan ;^) urban world. We've moved to a new city and in the course of 48 months had 3 (!), yes that's correct -- three -- invitations to be a guest at someone's home. If it weren't for the few people that we knew before arriving in that town, it could have been quite lonely in the cocoon. I won't get into any more of the details. Suffice it to say that everyone (including us, admittedly) has so much already planned that it's near impossible to work things out. (I'm relatively certain this fully scheduled crap is just that: crap. It's spin. It's what we believe is expected: sort of like how the Japanese company man stays at work until 8:00pm whether he's busy or not. But that's another post altogether.)
What the night off did effect is my desire to continue with more anecdotes. I think the point is made: it seems that every day I see another example of what used to be considered rudeness delivered in public and accepted as commonplace usage. I find myself occasionally (sp?) falling into the same habits. And they are just habits. They can be undone. I, for one, am a little tired of it. Be fierce; be aggressive; be direct; be yourself; be polite God dammit! Letitia Baldridge where are you now?
Posted by Grayson at June 17, 2005 08:48 PM