The Decline of Manners

Like most people, I don't pay much attention to studies unless they conform to what I already believe. I'm not sure they are particularly useful except as a rhetorical device. For modern man, a sentence beginning with 'Studies say that...' or 'They say that...' is used in the same authoritative way that classical quotations once were. There is an endless desire to back up one's argument with 'facts', however arbitrary, and preferably of the pseudo-scientific kind. I blame it on (most) university education, to which half of the population is now subjected, and in which one is marked not on logic or strength of argument, nor especially on clarity of thought or ingenuity, but on footnotes and bibliographies. Everything has to reference something else. And so people give studies and other nonsenses almost biblical authority.

There is a new study which says that traditional manners are considered 'outdated' by the young. The results are not interesting, but the subject is. I'm afraid that far too many people, though they can see for themselves the ever-increasing vulgarity of manners, refuse to believe it, often saying that they need to see some sort of study or evidence. Such a study doesn't exist of course, because no one admits the results of a study against which they are already prejudiced. One sees the same phenomenon with immigration, where people refuse to believe its negative effects and demand to be shown some sort of study. And when you do present such evidence, they refuse to countenance it. There are always hostile questions about who conducted the study, their 'biases', picking at possible flaws in the methodology; many simply ignore the study and instead offer a counter-study -- about which they are far less critical.

In this spirit I offer you the aforementioned study which tells us that manners are declining. As I have no wish to question the results of the study, I will gloss over the odd facts of the study's provenance (why, a sceptic might ask, was the study conducted by an insurance firm?) and I will gleefully ignore the limits of its methodology. The study tells us that young people consider 'please' and 'thank you' as outdated courtesies. Nor will most say 'bless you' when someone sneezes, or hold the door open for you.

Of course, I didn't need a study to tell me this. I sense that people don't like you being polite to them; they see you opening a door for them, pulling out a chair for them, or offering to take their coat as some kind of inconvenience -- perhaps even an insult to their selfist way of life. They want to keep to themselves, and they want you to keep to yourself.

I quite understand this. This attitude exists within me too, though unlike many I try to overcome it. Rudeness is often much easier than kindness, and indeed more immediately rewarding. Good manners are a way of making kindness and respect into a habit, because otherwise too many of us default to a sort of standoffishness.