On Manners and Murder

Our children are dying for lack of good manners.  Literally. It’s not a farfetched notion.  If bad manners is incivility, if good manners is thoughtful consideration for others, what is the most uncivil, inconsiderate thing you can do to someone?  Kill them.  This is not to trivialize the brutality of murder, but I have no doubt that a more mannerly, polite society would have less of it.

It doesn’t require death-row interviews to find the attitude.  Parking is at a premium near a business I frequent across the street from a university near home.  In front of the store is a handicap parking space. It was empty, the only open space available. I parked some distance away and hiked over to do my business.  As I neared the store a shiny new convertible swerved into the handicap space and out popped two young women diapered in sorority gear.  Trying to be polite, I asked with a smile if they realized they had parked in a handicap space.  One of them made a vulgar remark accompanied by an equally vulgar gesture, neither repeatable in polite company.  The other said, “Mind your own business old man.”  They laughed and skipped off down the sidewalk.  It wasn’t murder but the mindset was right.

Think about it—we have drive-by shootings, hand-to-hand mortal combat among twelve-year olds, premeditated murder by pre-teens, gang-directed hits by swaggering punks not old enough to vote, carefully plotted mass murder in junior high, and teenagers on death row.  I wager that not many of these killers, upon receiving a kindness, regularly says thank you.  Nor do I expect they offer much as examples of self-sacrifice, even for modest acts, such as delaying their hurry to hold the door for someone else.  We have reared a generation too self-absorbed, too entitled, to bother with such trivialities.

In defense of current culture some protest that good manners and proper etiquette are unnatural or artificial thereby, I suppose, bar the way to organic paradise.  This drives me nuts. Civilization is unnatural, so are good manners, which serve as a balm to smooth the chafe of daily life.  Thomas Jefferson put it this was, “Politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute equivalent to the real virtue.”

Americans, including Mr. Jefferson, have long had a problem with manners.  Americans are at heart irreverent revolutionaries, deeply committed to the Jeffersonian ideal that “…all men are created equal.”  But when it comes to manners and etiquette this noble thesis creates trouble.  The problem defeated even Mr. Jefferson. Upon gaining the White House he decreed rules of diplomatic etiquette that forbade use of titles claimed by virtue of social or professional rank—Mr. Jefferson had no use for “Your Excellency” and similar.  He succeeded only in offending diplomats and other non-American officials and promptly retracted his new rules.  But Jefferson gave voice to the core premise of America—the equality of Man—but he was quick to learn that it need not mean erasure of distinctions among people or a leveling of hierarchies of merit.

The failure of modern American manners is that in pursuit of the core American notion that “I am as good as anyone else,” we disdain convention and insist on behaving according to our own set of rules.  “Do your own thing” is the guiding principle.  The noble premise of equality has been transmuted into “Nobody is important but me.”  The result is a confusion of conduct equal to the tower of Babel and an epidemic incivility and bruised feelings, which some take as mortal offense.  

What we need is a return to good manners.  The place to begin is at home, with us—parents.  Walt Kelly’s Pogo cartoon possum put it best, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  We worship at the altar of celebrity and sup at the table of self-interest; it should be no surprise our children do the same.  We need to relearn the things our parents, the WWII generation that saved the world from Hitler and Stalin, taught us: that modesty and self-denial are virtues; that gratification of every whim leads to misery; that children are to be seen not heard; that adults are people, too; that persons of attainment, even so modest a triumph as living to a ripe old age, deserve deference and respect; and that the Golden Rule is an indispensable guide to life.  In short, we need to relearn that it matters if you say “Please” and “Thank you.”

© 2001