the state of courtesy - rbc · the state of courtesy courtesy is the lubricant that makes society...

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Published by The RoyalBank of Canada The State of Courtesy Courtesy isthe lubricant that makes society run smoothly. Itsoutward forms arechanging aspeople become freer intheir ways. Isit a dying art? Not ifthepublic shows that it will not countenance boorishness. It’s uptous... [] Nobody can be quite sure when courtesy first appeared on the human scene, but we can all be sure that our specieswould not have gone far without it. Somebody in prehistoric times had to be willing to stand aside and let theother fellow go ahead without thumping him over the head with a club; otherwise people would havethumped themselves into mutual extinction before civiliza- tion gotitsstart. Butif courtesy began as a means to the end of physical survival, it was not long before it became an end in itself, at least in reli- gious and philosophical circles. ~Leave off first for manners’ sake," theBook of Ecclesiasticus exhorts. Over the centuries, manners have come to be practised more and more for their own sake,and lessand lessundercompulsion. There was a time when vassals wereflogged for paying insufficient obeisance to their lords andmasters; until relative- ly recently in western countries, a lapse in man- ners could provoke a fatal duel. But while it is true that realor perceived rudeness todaycan still result in a bloody nose or worse, we havereached thepoint where most of us are courteous primarily because we want to be. If thereis an ulterior motive behind common courtesy, it is thatmaking other people feel good makes us feel good too. Yet unconsciously we are supporting the very structure of society every time we wish someone a good day, ask how they are, or say please or thank you. For the agreeable modus vivendion whichcivilized social relations rest cannot be enforced by written law. Courtesy is thelubricant that eases thefriction arising fromdifferences amonghumanbeings. By setting accepted limits on whatpeople may say or do to one another, it prevents thosedifferences fromsparking strife. The elaborate politeness of diplomacy, the law courts and parliamentary as- semblies may seem forced and hollow, but it serves a vital purpose. It recognizes that contentiousness is part of humannature, and allows this normal instinct to runits course within peaceful bounds. There is a difference, however, between polite- nessand courtesy. Diplomats, lawyers and legis- lators mustbe polite as a matter of form. Theydo not necessarily haveto be courteous, because by definition, courtesy is acting with kindness and civility in address and manner. Politeness may be civil enough, butwhen it turns cool, it is anything butkind. "Politeness is fictitious benevolence," wrote Dr. Samuel Johnson. Courtesy, on the other hand, has benevolence built in. One cannotbe genuinely courteous without having a genuine regard for the feelings and general welfare of one’sfellows. Politeness is a quality of the head, courtesy of the heart. Similarly, manners are nothing more than modes of behaviour which may have little or nothing to do with kindness or civility. Historians tell us that in theEurope of theearly Middle Ages, the prevailing manners were simple and sincere. In the 14thcentury, however, their role began to change as the merchant classes sought to better

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Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

The State of Courtesy

Courtesy is the lubricant that makes societyrun smoothly. Its outward forms are changingas people become freer in their ways. Is ita dying art? Not ifthepublic shows that itwill not countenance boorishness. It’s up to us...

[] Nobody can be quite sure when courtesy firstappeared on the human scene, but we can all besure that our species would not have gone farwithout it. Somebody in prehistoric times had tobe willing to stand aside and let the other fellowgo ahead without thumping him over the headwith a club; otherwise people would have thumpedthemselves into mutual extinction before civiliza-tion got its start. But if courtesy began as a meansto the end of physical survival, it was not longbefore it became an end in itself, at least in reli-gious and philosophical circles. ~Leave off first formanners’ sake," the Book of Ecclesiasticus exhorts.

Over the centuries, manners have come to bepractised more and more for their own sake, andless and less under compulsion. There was a timewhen vassals were flogged for paying insufficientobeisance to their lords and masters; until relative-ly recently in western countries, a lapse in man-ners could provoke a fatal duel. But while it is truethat real or perceived rudeness today can stillresult in a bloody nose or worse, we have reachedthe point where most of us are courteous primarilybecause we want to be. If there is an ulteriormotive behind common courtesy, it is that makingother people feel good makes us feel good too.

Yet unconsciously we are supporting the verystructure of society every time we wish someonea good day, ask how they are, or say please orthank you. For the agreeable modus vivendi onwhich civilized social relations rest cannot beenforced by written law.

Courtesy is the lubricant that eases the frictionarising from differences among human beings. Bysetting accepted limits on what people may say ordo to one another, it prevents those differencesfrom sparking strife. The elaborate politeness ofdiplomacy, the law courts and parliamentary as-semblies may seem forced and hollow, but it servesa vital purpose. It recognizes that contentiousnessis part of human nature, and allows this normalinstinct to run its course within peaceful bounds.

There is a difference, however, between polite-ness and courtesy. Diplomats, lawyers and legis-lators must be polite as a matter of form. They donot necessarily have to be courteous, because bydefinition, courtesy is acting with kindness andcivility in address and manner. Politeness may becivil enough, but when it turns cool, it is anythingbut kind.

"Politeness is fictitious benevolence," wrote Dr.Samuel Johnson. Courtesy, on the other hand, hasbenevolence built in. One cannot be genuinelycourteous without having a genuine regard for thefeelings and general welfare of one’s fellows.Politeness is a quality of the head, courtesy of theheart.

Similarly, manners are nothing more thanmodes of behaviour which may have little ornothing to do with kindness or civility. Historianstell us that in the Europe of the early Middle Ages,the prevailing manners were simple and sincere.In the 14th century, however, their role began tochange as the merchant classes sought to better

their social standing by duplicating the style of thearistocracy. The aristocracy closed ranks bymaking its manners more esoteric. Thus snobbery--both in the sense of social climbing and in thesense of looking down one’s nose at others -- cameinto being.

By the time that classic snob Lord Chesterfieldwas writing his much-quoted letters of advice tohis natural son in the mid-18th century, theEnglish gentry had devised a Byzantine code of"good breeding" that opened the door to their ranksonly to those schooled in its intricacies. Chester-field urged good manners on the boy not to havehim make life agreeable for others, but to help himget ahead in the world. He wrote: "A genteel man-ner prepossesses people in your favour, bends themtowards you, and makes them wish to like you...As for your keeping good company, I will take careof that; do you take care to observe their ways andmanners, and to form your own on them."

It was not at all uncommon for the aristocracy ofEngland and the Continent to be effusively politeamong themselves and brutally boorish to thosethey considered their inferiors. As early as the15th century Montaigne remarked that he had"often seen men prove unmannerly by too muchmanners," presumably referring to the upper classhabit of acting with overpowering correctness tomake the uninitiated ill at ease. Things could nothave changed greatly in the next 400 years or so.In the early 1900s Henry James referred to aris-tocracy as "bad manners organized."

The more "refined" manners became, it seems,the more they drifted away from the spirit of cour-tesy. It is clearly neither kind nor civil to makesomeone feel bad for not knowing what you know,be it etiquette or anything else. True courtesy isuniversal. As George Bernard Shaw said throughProfessor Higgins in Pygmalion, "The great thing,Eliza, is not having bad manners or good mannersor any particular sort of manners, but of havingthe same manners for all human souls: in short,behaving as if you were in heaven, where thereare no third-class carriages, and one soul is as goodas another."

"I am not a gentleman! I am a representative ofthe Soviet Union!" protested a Soviet delegate tothe United Nations in the 1950s. Class discrimina-tion as practised by the European social elite has

given gentlemen a bad name in many parts of theworld. But the outburst drew titters when it wasreported in the United States, where a gentlemanis not thought of as a man of property lording itover the masses, but simply as one who behavesgently towards others. To call a man a "real gentle-man" is about the highest accolade an American --or a Canadian -- can bestow.

In a democratic egalitarian society, dignityattaches itself not so much to social status as toconduct. Given the basic knowledge of mannerstaught in most homes and schools, a person maybecome as much of a gentleman or lady as he orshe chooses to be. It is simple in theory but difficultin practice, because being a real gentleman or ladymeans running a continuous check on one’s wordsand actions to ensure that they do not needlesslyoffend or disconcert anyone.

Children are exposed to whatthey should be growing out of

~The hardest job kids face today is learning goodmanners without seeing any," Fred Astaire oncequipped. In too many cases, there is as much truthto this as wit. At a time when manners are infor-mal, relaxed, and more or less up to the individual,they are in danger of being the babies that go outwith the bath water. The new manners, such asthey are, have emerged out of a general movementtowards personal self-determination that hasstripped our society of much of its former hypo-crisy. But it is one thing to be yourself with otherpeople, and quite another to take this as an excuseto behave any way you please.

"We live in a society in which ’letting it all hangout’ and being candid are regarded as virtues, andthis leads to rudeness," says Harvard Universitysociologist David Reisman. The climate of open-ness has had an especially deleterious effect uponcourtesy within families and other small groups.Candour is carried to the point where people areconstantly telling their intimates exactly whatthey think of them, with heavy emphasis on theirdefects. Courtesy implies keeping some thoughts to

yourself so as not to hurt others. This sort ofcharitable reticence is not much in evidence inmany homes today.

Even children whose parents remain old-fashioned enough not to savage each other in frontof the children stand to be influenced the wrongway by the bad form they witness on television.The tart-tongued anti-heroes and insult-slingingcomedians on the tube offer no guidance in theprime purpose of courtesy, which is to make peoplefeel at ease. Sports celebrities reveal themselvesto be egotistical boors, while TV commentators inthat field spread the message that winning by fairmeans or foul is all that matters. Interviewers onpublic affairs programs grill their subjects- ortheir victims- with a maximum of pugnacityand a minimum of grace.

It is all part of a peculiarly aggressive andargumentative age, and aggressiveness and argu-mentativeness are the enemies of courtesy. Whenthe preferred method of dealing with problems is"confrontation," good manners can hardly be ex-pected to thrive. Everybody seems to be using hiselbows, calling names, and shouting down hisadversaries. Hyperbole and invective have takenthe place of polite, reasoned discussion. Childrenare exposed to the kind of childishness they shouldbe growing out of: if you don’t get your way,scream.

If the Titanic were sinking,the men would leave first

"I don’t give a damn about what other peoplethink of me," a well-known pop singer was recent-ly quoted as saying. She might as well have saidthat she doesn’t give a damn about other people,period; it amounts to the same thing. A certaindegree of submersion of one’s own will in deferenceto others is implicit in any effort to be kind andcivil. If you insist on doing just what you want,you are liable to trespass on other people’s sen-sibilities, if not their rights.

Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that goodmanners are made up of sacrifices. It is an openquestion whether people are willing to make thenecessary sacrifices at a time when so many of

them subscribe to the motto, "look after numberone." Certainly the narcissistic self-assertivenessof what Tom Wolfe has called "the ’me’ generation"flies in the face of the idea of self-sacrificinggallantry. It has been seriously suggested that ifthe Titanic were sinking today, the ablest menwould scramble for the lifeboats first, leaving thewomen and children behind.

If you don’t respect someone,you might not respect anyone

It is a principle of gallantry- of "being agentleman"--that the stronger should employtheir strength to protect and help the weaker.Conversely, they must not use their strengthagainst the weak to get their own way.

Still, some adjustments may be needed in thetraditional niceties associated with the concept of"the weaker sex" to accommodate female demandsfor equality. A recent article in Management Worldon non-sexist communications in business, forinstance, tells men not to moderate their languagein front of female colleagues, not to stand aside asthey are getting off elevators, and not to light theircigarettes simply because they are of the oppositesex. It sensibly concludes, however, that if a manwants to do such things, it might make lifemore pleasant for all concerned: "If you want tohelp someone with their coat, assist someone inbeing seated, open a door for another person, byall means do it... The advantage of these newbusiness manners is that the decision to extendthese courtesies is up to you- business etiquettedoes not require it!"

The drive for sex equality brings up the questionof whether there are such things as ladies any-more, and whether there should be. According tosome feminists, ladyhood is just another of thebonds designed by men to tie women down in aninferior place. A man who treats a woman "likea lady," they say, is perpetuating male domination.Be that as it may, it would be a pity if a coursecannot be found to retain some of the gracious-ness of polite relations between the sexes withoutthe discrimination.

The system of ladies and gentlemen runs largelyon the concept of respect. This originated in aris-tocratic times, when persons of noble birth were

deemed to be respectable regardless of whethertheir conduct warranted it. Later it was extendedto ordinary women, office-holders, and people ofsome distinction. Later still, it came to be takenfor granted among the more enlightened thateverybody was entitled to respect until theyshowed they were not.

Some individuals today have taken it uponthemselves to shift the burden. In the process ofthumbing their noses at traditional values, theyhave come to the conclusion that nothing and noone is worthy of respect until it has been earnedin their eyes. In the era of the debunker, thoseformerly held in the highest regard are under thedeepest suspicion. The trouble here is that if youdon’t respect something or someone, you are likelyto respect nothing or no one at all.

Behaving as if everybodyis your maiden aunt

The symptoms of this generalized disrespectcan be seen in the professional tennis players whohave stripped that sport of its grace and dignity.They started out insulting the traditional figuresof respect, the court-side officials; after gettingaway with that, they began directing insults atthe crowd. In the same bag with them are thegraffiti scrawlers and the people who display scur-rilous or lewd slogans on T-shirts and bumperstickers. It is as if they are waiting for some oldlady to come along who will be suitably horrified.It is the shotgun approach to bad manners, posingan affront to anyone it happens to affect.

Shocking behaviour has become tolerated as avent for self-expression in the absence of any moredemanding way of expressing oneself. It used to beconfined mainly to madmen and artists, who weregranted a certain licence on the grounds that theywere special cases who could not be expected toconform. "Much is forgiven a poet that is totallyculpable in a dustman or journalist," as AnthonyBurgess put it. Now, however, outlandish and evendisgusting conduct has become an art form in it-self, as witness the punk rock cult.

Many of the more extreme manifestations ofindividual freedom are offensive at least to a por-tion of the population. When it comes to knowing

what is offensive, there is a good rule of thumb inProfessor Higgins’s dictum that one should havethe same manners for all. If you do not say or doanything ordinarily that you would avoid saying ordoing in front of your maiden aunt or a clergyman,the chances are that you are behaving courteouslyto everyone.

With all the forces now working against it, iscourtesy dying? It might look so to those whodeplore the evident decline in the old social graces,but it is salutary to speculate that the first suchsentiments were probably expressed in inarticu-late grunts around a fire in a cave. As social con-ditions change, so do manners. An aristocraticbanquet in centuries past, when people ate fromcommunal plates, doubtless would prove disgustingto the least genteel citizen of a present-day westernnation. Still, a 16th century book of etiquettewhich warns its readers not to "poke everywherewhen thou hast meat or eggs or some such dish"shows that the spirit of courtesy has been constantthrough the ages. For "he who pokes about on theplatter, searching, is unpleasant, and annoys hisneighbour," it says.

Try not to be unpleasant, try not to annoy yourneighbour. This makes a good start towardsgenuine courtesy, no matter what the present out-ward forms of politeness may be. If you add thatyou should try to act with solicitude for the feelingsand well-being of others, then you will know howto be courteous. But to do so takes self-control,self-effacement and self-denial, virtues that seemto be out of style these days.

But are they really? Despite the highly conspic-uous minority who abuse the new freedom to makenuisances of themselves, contemporary westernsociety shows more concern about people than anysociety before it. And concern about people isessentially what courtesy is all about. If the good-hearted majority becomes less prepared to counte-nance anti-social behaviour, if the age-old powerof public disapproval is brought back into play,there will be little to worry about. There will becourtesy- and if there is courtesy, manners willlook after themselves.