My rant for the day

Are you talking about poor people?

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I think there has been decay in social etiquette, if that’s what you’re talking about. People no longer stand when guests enter a room, or remove their hats indoors. There is less…respect…for time and place. People are more brusque and salty generally.

I think television in particular has led the way by making sassy kids and self-aggrandizing behavior funny and cool. People imitate the behaviors they see, and I think Hollywood has become our cultural teacher, rather than families.

I have no way of knowing how much erosion there has been. Your complaint is hardly a new one, and one can find examples of writers lamenting the same thing for centuries. But I tend to agree that basic manners have eroded somewhat.

waterfield wrote:

I agree with every single word in your post Zooey. Especially about how TV has become our cultural teacher replacing families. Much tougher on parents to teach respect when TV makes it so cool to be disrespectful-as does the internet in that its a safe way to insult someone w/o fear of reprisal.

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Well, we probably see the same ‘symptoms’ in Americans. Rudeness, shallowness, violence, indifference,
self-absorption, ignorance, anti-intellectualism, etc, etc, etc, etc.

I live in the Poverty-plus-Opioid Capital of the world. Trust me, i see all kinds of symptoms.

The poor (I’m over-generalizing and over-simplifying) tend to have a certain array of symptoms. The middle-class has its special array. And the rich has its array of symptoms.

So yeah, there’s a lot of shit goin on, in Amerika today.

What we disagree on are the CAUSES. I’m a system-blamer. Youre an individual-blamer, i think.

At any rate, i dont think a return to ‘centrism’ (Obama, Hillary, Biden) is gonna change anything. The ‘system’ is what it is. Its gonna roll along the way it has, until….

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• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by wv.

nittany ram wrote:

Is that decay or just a change in what is considered normal social behavior? What is lost by not removing a hat indoors or not standing when someone enters a room?

I agree more with this. Stuff hazz changed is all.

I get about 100 kids at my house every year for Halloween. Over the last decade more and more of them have gotten ‘graspy-er’ and fewer and fewer say ‘thank-you’ every year.

Last year, I only had one kid out of 100 that was ‘notably’ kind and considerate.

Put that in the meaningless-anectdote category. Still, thats been my experience.

Could be as we age, many of us mistakenly just fall into that “theze kids today are rotten” mentality.
Could be as a corporotacracy ages, it produces more greed, harshness, desperation, etc.

Hard ta say whats really goin on.

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Zooey wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Zooey wrote:

I think there has been decay in social etiquette, if that’s what you’re talking about. People no longer stand when guests enter a room, or remove their hats indoors. There is less…respect…for time and place. People are more brusque and salty generally.

Is that decay or just a change in what is considered normal social behavior? What is lost by not removing a hat indoors or not standing when someone enters a room?

I anticipated that argument, and thought carefully before I made my statement.

It is certainly true that there is nothing empirically “well-behaved” about removing one’s hat indoors, or…you know…making a better wardrobe effort than shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops when going to an upscale restaurant, or a Broadway show. Those are arbitrary markers of Respect, or Class, or Etiquette, or whatever, and have no merit in and of themselves.

I think, however, that those Pointless Conventions demonstrate an awareness of others, and a deference of Ego.

I mean…I think that unless you can show me that the Deference and Respect have been simply altered and assumed shape in some other sphere or behavior, I’m gonna stick with that. I think it reflects a trend towards selfishness, basically. We are now saying, as a culture, “I’m gonna be comfortable doing what I’m doing, and not stop to acknowledge our Common Space as worth respecting. You matter less than this arbitrary convention, and the fact is that I’m comfortable in this chair doing what I’m doing, and I don’t want to interrupt that just because you waltzed into the room. Etc.”

Yeah, I dunno. There was a time when people dressed up when they went anywhere. Is that out of respect for where they where going or more about trying to meet a social standard for appropriate attire. Maybe it wasn’t so much about respect for the venue but more about not wanting to be embarrassed. Perhaps it’s as simple as what is deemed appropriate attire has shifted since then, as it has throughout history.

My wife and I spent a day in NYC a couple weeks ago. We saw the 2pm matinee of “Phantom of the Opera” and an 8pm showing of “Hamilton” on Broadway. People were dressed very casually – shorts, t-shirts, and not just at the matinee – at the 8pm showing as well. To me, it didn’t seem like it was due to a lack of respect, but because it was 90 fricken degrees outside.

Billy_T wrote:

To me, it’s the little things, the easy things, the things people could do without causing themselves a single drop of sweat, but refuse to.

Example: Perpendicular streets. There is room for two cars in front of you — to make a left or a right turn. But the car in front of you rests roughly in the middle of that area, blocking your ability to make a right turn, as he or she gets ready to make a left.

Similar example: You’ve dumped your trash off at the local recycler, and want to leave. The truck in front of you is waiting for his turn to get closer to the regular trash container, which involves a quick left turn. His truck is in the middle of an area that could easily fit two cars. This blocks your ability to leave to his right. You honk the horn. He does nothing. You honk it again. He ignores you. Not that he could know this, but you’re on your way back from a chemo treatment and already feeling lousy. If you had been younger and healthier, this may well have ended up in a fight. You end up backing up and leaving another way, after the person behind you is considerate enough to back up and clear some space.

Or, loud music. People can enjoy their music without drowning out all the thoughts their neighbors may be struggling to craft.

etc. etc.

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Yeah all that stuff is goin on. The question is: Is it worse than it used-ta-be? Is it worse than the Middle Ages? The 1930s? The 80s? I dunno. I dunno how it can be measured.

But i do think a biosphere-killing-system thats built on greed and lies and imperialism, would indeed influence/shape its ‘citizens’. I mean how could it not.

Granted, there are worse systems. And better systems.

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wv wrote:

But i do think a biosphere-killing-system thats built on greed and lies and imperialism, would indeed influence/shape its ‘citizens’. I mean how could it not.

Granted, there are worse systems. And better systems.

w
v

I dunno. Classicly bred German officers in WW2 were renowned for their politeness in social interaction.

I personally don’t find that people have gotten worse in terms of everyday civility. I just find that it is expressed differently, ie. that the rules and customs have shifted. They’re not ruder, they’re just polite differently. (Corporate capitalism after all depends on having civil consumers. So for example we are all trained to not take too much time at the register when ordering fast food. Our training in that makes us part of the machinery that makes the whole fast food system work. If you doubt me next time you’re in a line in a fast food place, take longer than 20 seconds to order…like, act like you’re reading the menu on the wall for the first time. You will feel the social disapproval falling down on you like invisible rain.)

If I wanted to come up with stories about people being dicks or acting in uncivil ways in public, I can think of ones from every decade of my short humble life.

And it’s not just shifts decade by decade in how people in general behaved…of course, as I visibly aged over the years I got treated differently too.

One thing that’s funny now is people opening doors for others. I could do my own stand-up routine about that. When young I was taught, always hold a door open for a woman. Then in college and after, I started to get rebukes for it. Like, hey I can open a door myself you know. These were reminders that “chivalry” is double-edged and assumes superiority. Okay. But then in the last decade or so everyone holds the door open for everyone. Except, as often as not, younger people now don’t know how to do it. They stand there and hold it open too soon, with you too far away. I have bad knees so I don’t really run or walk fast. I see someone too many paces away holding a door open and it feels like pressure to speed up and close the distance. Often I smilingly, politely wave them off. Back when I had to open doors because otherwise I was a thoughtless impolite male, I had a sense of how close someone had to be to perform that gesture. You don’t add pressure to make them walk faster to accept your presumably kind gesture. Now both young women and men will hold a door open for me, making it a more universally polite and less loaded gesture, but, they invariably don’t know how to measure the right distance on when you do that.

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zn wrote:

I have bad knees so I don’t really run or walk fast. I see someone too many paces away holding a door open and it feels like pressure to speed up and close the distance.

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I have bad knees now, too. So, I hear ya. I haven’t had the big blow-out yet, but i can tell its coming 🙂

I dunno about the “is behavior getting worse or not?” question. I’m open to the notion that yes, indeed it might very well be getting worse. But I’m open to the idea that it aint. I just have no idea how any social scientist could devise a study to figure it out.

Maybe we could narrow it down, and study it that way…Are Viking fans getting worse?

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