Please and Thank You

To no one's surprise who uses their eyes and ears, and leaves their house, Americans are losing (or have already lost) good manners -- even more devastating, they have forsaken the very idea of etiquette. This article, discussing the post-1960 abandonment of American manners, in last week's Globe flew under my radar, but is worth considering.

Despite the 19th century cliches about uncouth Americans, spitting and swearing their way through life, there once was a day when etiquette informed our behavior, silently and unconsciously regulating and directing our social activities. Certain ways of acting were shamed, condemned, and looked down upon. Other ways were encouraged by practice and every day use, by teaching and parenting, and "the soft collar of social esteem," Edmund Burke's telling phrase about how we value our neighbor's opinion of us. I bought the 1941 New American Etiquette the other week at a used book sale (does the fact that is cost me $1 say anything?). The book is remarkably, almost ridiculously, thorough, covering everything -- how to act in restaurants, how to name your children, how to act on-board ships, how to address royalty, how to write letters to, well, every type of person, how to act on the phone, etc. Today, many would consider this a silly contrivance, a sort of social intimidation bent on infringing the "real self," but read what the preface says: The rules of etiquette are not swords hanging over our heads by a slender thread which we may sever by a violation. The true aim of all etiquette is the development of a kindly interest in and consideration for others. Some of the most liked persons who have ever lived have known little of the arbitrary rules of the etiquette of their day but invariably they were kind and considerate of others and inspired those qualities in all with whom they were in contact. Etiquette is not about arbitrary social force, pressure to conform with no aim, but about enforcing consideration to make what could be (and now too often is) an ugly inconsiderate daily life into a livable and lovable one.

Good manners drifted away, the Globe article asserts, in the 1960s when young Boomers rejected social artificiality for individual authenticity, never realizing that when people are unmoored from the "soft collar" and humane purposes of social etiquette they become rather selfish unfriendly boors -- terribly authentic, terribly rude. We have never recovered and now the "ugly American" is thought to have always existed, as if the pre-1960 nation which had a least a semblance of good manners and restraint was a bad dream. Swearing in public is commonplace (walking across a college campus, one usually hears a collection of about 10 words, none of them fit for repetition, all used to express a variety of emotions), dress is sloppy, road manners are non-existent. Don't believe me? Think I am exaggerating? Check out this site called Etiquette Hell.

So what is there to do? Teach it anew, I guess. There are etiquette classes one can take, filling the void for those who were not taught such things at home. There are books to buy on the subject of good behavior. I taught one such book, P. M. Forni's Choosing Civility, to my college seniors. My undergraduates seemed to "get it," that good manners are not a burden, but a liberation meant to make life livable. Yet, they chafed at being told what to do by social pressure. For example, a solid majority could not understand why playing loud music in your car with the windows open was rude -- "if it bothers you, it's your problem, not mine," "I'm just driving by, it'll be gone in a few seconds," "get a life," "hey, it's my car and my radio, I can do as I please." So effectively drilled by pop culture and perhaps their parents that "doing as you please" is natural and right, these young people see etiquette as fake and burdensome. They cannot make the connection between an ugly rude world (one which they often complain about) and a "liberated, more authentic" way of acting. The world has always been this way, they say, let me be who I am. In the tug o' war between social consideration and individual expression, expressing and "doing as I please when it pleases me" wins out.

Unfortunately for all of us, that attitude is how the world became ugly in the first place.