Interesting question, isn't it? In
Age of Rudeness, we may be losing touch with what etiquette and good manners are all about. In fact there may be those among us who haven’t experienced it. According to a recent survey, more than 50% of Americans are concerned about growing rudeness in U. S. We assault each other more all time with upsetting noises, sights, sounds, smells, and attitude. It’s getting to where we need to protect ourselves from one another! Maybe it’s getting a little too wild out there.
Good manners are, first of all, civilized behavior. That’s as opposed to wild behavior. “He acts like he was raised in a barnyard,” my mother would say, about some hapless boy who pulled up in front of my house for a date and just sat in car and honked.
Whether that was a particular rule in your household, or culture, all cultures have “rules” and they are learned, not innate. It Italy it’s good manners for a man to greet another man with an embrace and a kiss on each cheek. Not so in South Texas, where men stand 3 feet apart and at 90 degree angles to converse with one another.
All cultures have rules and if you violate them, you’ll be excluded. Excluded from what? Well, what we all want more of now – to be where polite and pleasant people are. Yes?
Emily Post, Diva of Etiquette, by virtue of her book of same name, “Etiquette” ( http://www.bartleby.com/95/7.html ) defined this certain set of people as "Best Society."
"Best Society," she wrote, "is not confined to any one place or group, but might be better described as an unlimited brotherhood which spreads over entire surface of globe, members of which are invariably people of cultivation and worldly knowledge, who have not only perfect manners but a perfect manner."
“Cultivated,” you see, as opposed to “wild” or “weed-ridden” or “out of control”.
“Manners” she says, “are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.” “Manner,” on other hand, “is personality – outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.”
Manners must be really ingrained; a matter of who you are, not how you are. The attitude must be without thinking, but particulars require great thought. It’s always easier to revert to feral state. Ask cat! Miss Post suggests that once we’ve learned it, etiquette becomes – to those of Best Society – “a matter of instinct rather than of conscious obedience.”
There are those among us who still blurt out “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” “excuse me,” and “May I?” But there are a lot more among us who don’t!
Good manners and etiquette are based on a concept that’s somewhat in disfavor today – being selfless. “Unconsciousness of self,” says Miss Post, “is mental ability to extinguish all thought of one’s self – exactly as one turns out light. Hmmm. You mean put other fellow first occasionally? Now there’s a novel idea.
And so “one” – that would be you and I – one does not burp because it feels good, acting as if no one else was there; or elbow through queue, because WE are in a hurry and WE matter most; or talk about our sex lives on cell phones in restaurants as if others would find it interesting; or shout profanity and throw tantrums because we’re entitled to our anger, to indulge it and to “let it all hang out,” as if it didn’t stress listener as much as it stresses us. (Second-hand hostility is as dangerous to our health as second-hand smoke!)
