By John Lloyd
Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:40pm EDT
“Rudeness is just as bad as racism”: thus David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom, when he was leader of the opposition in April 2007. It was a remark he should know better to make now: not because it is politically
incorrect (usually a bad reason for doing, or not doing, anything) but because it’s
crass.
Rudeness is being uncivil. Racism can be murderous.
But there is some excuse for the future Prime Minister’s confusion. The two are linked:
the common denominator is respect. Racism is a radical lack of respect for an ethnicity
which you have convinced yourself, or brought up, to despise. Rudeness is a milder
lack of respect for others you meet in your journey through the day – or through life.
Further link: one of the reasons why there’s less rudeness is that, in the past couple
of decades, casual racism has largely disappeared from public discourse in most advanced
societies -- though some of that is because it has gone underground.
Less rudeness? Who says less? Don’t we all know that what’s the matter with kids today
– and quite often, with their parents – is that they have no manners?
It doesn’t seem that clear cut. In the UK, where unmannerly behavior – the blast of
stereos, the jostling of the elderly on public transport, the drunkenness and worse
of young women in city centers on a Friday night – is a daily moan, a new report says
it’s improving. It seems as counter intuitive as that other recent claim, by Steven
Pinker of Harvard (in the 700-page The Better Angels of our Nature) that violence within and between societies has been falling for more than two millennia
– and that we live in unprecedentedly peaceful times. Can we be living in unprecedentedly
nice times? …
Robert Desman, a Professor of Management at Kennesaw State University in Georgia -
in a speech in Stockholm earlier this year – translated that to our times as “do not
read or send text messages 1) when involved in a conversation, 2) in class, 3) during
meetings, or 4) while driving.” The sheer fascination of hand-held computers which
can give you friendship, organization, entertainment and enlightenment demands new
rules of civility: and so far, these are slow in coming (whatever the Young Foundation
says). …
