Manners: Cheap, Easy to use, and Very Unfashionable

[major_clanger]

This mornings Independent features an opinion article on public rage attacks (warning: contains strong language). It's about life in London, but from my experience it applies to much of the rest of the UK too. This item struck a chord with me: I'm getting more and more aware of the tendency these days for people to act as if any minor inconvenience or obstruction to their unfettered actions is an insult requiring a tantrum and threats as the immediate response.

It ties up with another bugbear of mine, the seemingly wide assumption that rules meant to help or protect us (be it as individuals, groups or society as a whole) are somehow now optional and can be disregarded if remotely convenient. Disabled parking bays, for instance - it seems they don't apply when it's raining. Or the hard shoulder? A spare lane in traffic jams.

I don't want to turn into a reactionary old fart. (And some of the worst offenders re the above are ROFs who think they're above regulations or manners). But should I ever manage a military coup (ha!) there's a subset of the population that is going to get a sharpish introduction to the Pillory and the EU Rotten Tomato Mountain as a stern reminder that actually no they can't do what they like when they like and throw obnoxious fits at the rest of us when they don't get their way.

MC

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Yes, the min thing that *really* gets my goat is simple lack of manners. Like parking in a car park so as to make it really difficult for anyone else to get past. Or rushing the tube or the bus while people are trying to get off.

Grrr.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose that there is any great sea-change in how well-mannered is the behaviour of people in general. I suspect that these things do go somewhat in phases in society at large, but there are also certain phases in our own lives when we take more notice of such things, and certain situations too.

I'm a great believer in the fundamentally unchangingness of human nature: a bizarre mixture of selfish thoughtlessness, and selfless generosity. And, yeah, people can get away with using the hard shoulder as a spare lane in a jam - because they do - so, some people always will. Annoying.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

After all - you've read "The Selfish Gene", haven't you? Or anything on elementary economic theory? There's really no basis for expecting everyone to always (or even, usually) act altruistically.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

No, indeed not. But the point is that people have the capacity to and yet choose not to. To quote Dawkins's closing comments to the original version of The Selfish Gene</>:

"...even if we look on the dark side and assume that individual man is fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight - our capacity to simulate the future in imagination - could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the blind replicators. [...] We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."

Yes, I expect individuals to act as obnoxious little gits some of the time. But I also expect society to collectively frown on and discourage such behaviour, and what depresses me is the feeling that more and more it is accepted as the norm, after which it is not far to it being seen as the only way to get what you want in life.

MC

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure this is the case. Partly it is an issue of more opportunity to be an arsehole - there used not to be disabled parking spaces - but also I think the Thatcherite doctrine of 'there is no such thing as society' is having its long term effect on those brought up during her reign. If there is no such thing as society you have no broader context for your actions other than your own selfish interests. This is, as purpletigron points out, at the core of modern economic theory which drives many elements of current and past policy. But that theory was not always reflected as strongly in education and culture as it has been over the last 20 years.

Discipline in shcools is the central issue here, I think. If you aren't made responsible to the larger society of school, then, when you leave, you'll have the same problem with society at large. Teachers and parents have a lot to answer for here, but then so do those who make policies where it is ever harder to make children behave, and where expulsion (ie. getting rid of the problem rather than solving it) is the only recourse. Now I'm sounding like a reactionary old fart!

More and more we're turning into Americans...

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Understandable, but I think you're both being very middle-class, middle-aged intellectual about this. I don't think there's been any radical sea-changes, just a few boundaries shifting slightly, along with your perspectives?

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

I watched a lady yesterday drive into an almost full car park and swing in to park RIGHT ACROSS two parking spaces. If she was in a mercedes I'd have understood it a little, but she was in a clapped-out little fiesta.

My passenger stopped me from saying something to her.

Listening to "Home Truths" a few weeks ago I sympathised with John Peel who was amazed at the apparent ill-health of all those shopping with him in the supermarket. Not a disabled bay was empty yet everyone looked sprightly enough.

Most annoying of all. Mothers who push their prams out into the road in front of them to stop oncoming traffic.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

But all these things benefit the people who are doing them - easier parking, etc. Reason enough, I feel, however `immoral'. Sorry :-(

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

I don't know why you are apoligising to ME. ;)

What I find strange is the lack of empathy. The whole "eveyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I?" generation. I while back I had a real moral dilemma about not paying for something and the attitude of a lot of people was "Why are you worried, no-one else is."

I could never park in a disbled space because I would imagine, all the way around the store, an elderly lady falling over in those extra few yards. Maybe it is just me.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

What I'm saying is, that empathy is a variable quantity/quality in people, just like everything else. When someone says, "I just can't understand why people do/don't...", you could call that reaction in itself a lack of empathy on both sides.

It isn't just you, but everyone has different priorities. I don't find it at all surprising that some people put themselves first most of the time - we all have to put ourselves first some of the time.

I still don't think that the human race is getting, on average, ruder and more self-involved. The range of selfishness which is currently considered `normal' in our culture may have drifted a bit over the past 20 years, but I seriously doubt that the capicity of humans to be selfish or selfless has changed at all.

A lot of what we all do is governed by what we think that we can get away with - the controlling forces include conscience, the disapproval of our peers, family or community, and of course, the law. I find it just as rational to have the ethic `look after No. 1' as I do, `be altrustic' - in practice, we all have to do both to some extent.