Nicholas Higgins 08/06/2020

Manners Maketh Man 

‘The world was my oyster, but I used the wrong fork’, Oscar Wilde

It’s been said before, manners have gone the way of fish forks. The door that’s slammed in your face, the old lady who no one will offer their seat to, the barrage of angry horns as you stall the car at the traffic light. Last week I witnessed a happy dog walker let their four legged friend piss on the back wheel of my car.

Meanness is almost the new normal. Politics is an opportunity for personal attacks and mudslinging. Social media allows for the spewing of slurs under the emboldening cover of anonymity. Reality TV seemingly glorifies aggressive, condescending and catty interpersonal drama. In a recent study commissioned by Sky Atlantic, more than half of those surveyed think the notion of ‘ladies first’ is on the way out, and 47 per cent think nothing of using their phone at the table.

Of course why should we follow these rules any more? Waxing lyrical about the ‘good old days’ when everyone was more polite is just misplaced nostalgia. In any case, manners conjure a Victorian world of servility and deference to authority. Not an unfounded accusation. In the 19th century, while the lower orders were expected to be courteous to their superiors, no such duty weighed upon the upper echelons. Thus manners became not so much about consideration for others as an expression of subservience. 

So for the liberated generation of the 60s, the ‘Me’ generation of the 80s, millenials and the latest batch of ‘Gen-Z’s’, manners are expendable. An arbitrary set of do’s and don’ts, creating unnecesary social hierarchies and class boundaries. Manners are all about putting on a ‘face’, why not get ‘real’ and just drop the artificial formality?

The loss of manners has gone hand in glove with today’s hyper-competitive, narcissistic, neo-liberal world. So obsessed are we with ourselves, we have no time to consider the view of another person. People are so carried away with what’s happening to them and the pressure in their personal lives that manners go by the wayside. What’s in it for me to sit up straight, shake hands, and keep my mouth closed whilst chewing food?’ The heavy reliance on emails, texting and other impersonal modes of communication has exacerbated this trend. One doesn’t have to be all that polite when holed up with a cell phone or computer in a bedroom or home office.

But being rude is a stupid thing to do. As J. D. Sallinger put it in The Catcher in the Rye, ‘I am always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not glad at all to have met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff though’. The fact is that people demand to be treated with courtesy, honesty and consideration. And so do you and I. Do you appreciate being interrupted while speaking? Do you like to wake up early to meet someone, only to have them be 30 minutes late? Do you enjoy it when a friend throws a tantrum after losing a round of tennis? No.

This is the crux of manners, it’s ‘doing to others as you would have them do to you’ (Mat 7:12). Viewed in this light, manners have nothing to do with a dogmatic set of rules, which hand you hold your fork in, or which way to tilt your soup bowl. This stuff is bunk. ‘Manners’ is just another word for showing respect for others. For forgetting about yourself for just one moment.

Where the mannerless man creates enemies by his unnecessary and wilful incivility, the polite man exceeds in making friends and influencing people. How relevant for our age where ‘image’ reigns supreme, and where friend and follower tallies measure our worth? A man with good manners makes enjoyable company, a great partner, a welcome party guest, a referable contact, a trusted employee. Because he respects others, he is in turn respected. A rare sight amidst today’s vulgar herd.

By the same argument, nobody is going to employ, work with or date someone who forgets to say please or thank you. ‘A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait’, said Wolfgang von Goethe. Just as bad fruit bears from a rotten tree, so bad manners are the crop of a self absorbed soul. Poor manners let everyone see the sun really does shine out of your ass.

If there was ever advice to be taken, take it from James Bond. Bond knows how to behave in company. He outwits his foes just as well as he charms women. How so? He hasn’t forgotten his ps and qs, he’s polite and generous and he knows how to hold an engaging, two way conversation. This isn’t being old fashioned, he’s just learnt the art of making others feel comfortable, respected and seen - no matter the situation. It helps that he’s devilishly handsome, but the heart of the matter is that he’s not bloody rude. And let’s be honest, what man with more than two brain cells would not want to be James Bond?

Of course, we we all have the desire to be able to do whatever we want, where we want, how we want. We want to run that red light sometimes, and only eat Dominoes on the couch. So it is with manners. Sometimes we just want to forget about all these seemingly pointless rules for social interaction. Yet as Immanuel Kant noted, the subordination of our emotions to reason is an essential component of moral action. Manners, in other words, teach you self-control. Instead of interrupting someone in conversation, you wait your turn to speak; instead of dressing in sweat pants for a wedding, you put on your best suit; instead of demanding or grabbing food, you pause to say please.

But let’s not commodify manners so they become yet another tool for ‘getting ahead’. Why not do them for their own sake. As Roosovelt wrote to his son, ‘there’s a pleasant and unpleasant way to perform all the little duties of life. There is a fortunate and an unfortunate way of meeting folks, of rendering countless little services, of speaking, acting, thinking’. John Hopkins University Professor Dr Forni calls good manners ‘the traffic lights of human interaction. They make it so we don’t crash into one another in everyday behaviour’. Indeed, treating others civilly greases the wheels of social interaction and makes things run more smoothly and positively. Whether it’s saying hi to the postman, thanking your barista for your coffee or making small talk with the plumber. It sounds trite, but being courteous just makes life a whole lot more pleasant and the world a friendlier place.

Courtesy might also be the starting block for a more compassionate world. It is rude to kill 27,000 Iraqi civilians. It is rude for bankers to plunder away hard earned savings. It is rude for managers to work employees 12 hour days. These things are just bad manners, no respect for civilians, savers and workers. Behaving with courtesy, civility and grace rocks the very foundations of selfish worldviews.

Let us sail away from rudeness and towards a new era of propriety. This is a rebellious thing to do - an act of defiance against the self-obsessed, mean, ring-tone culture of today. It may just also be the right thing to do; for manners do make the man, they have for millennia and they do now, even if they seem to be increasingly out of fashion.