Why manners matter (2)
I receive much mail from correspondents who consider anything but blunt literalness to be dishonesty. They become indignant because people who ask them “how do you do?” don’t really want to hear about the malfunctioning of their bowels, and they demand an alternative to signing letters “yours truly” when writing to those whose trollies they don’t want to be, wholesale replica designer handbags. It is a little annoying to have to check the weather report before venturing to say “good morning.” Those who believe in blunt, literal truth also claim special license to be rube by giving honest answers to such careless questions as “do I look all right?”
The back of standardization of manners results in an often angry, chaotic society, where every trivial act is interpreted as a revelation of the moral philosophy of the individual actor, who is left standing naked in his mores. Today, each person claims the right not only to design his own etiquette but also to take offense if others if others do not observe it, wholesale designer handbags, even if he has not trouble to acquaint them with his preferences.
Indeed, it has never been easier to insult people unknowly. A gentleman opens a door for a lady because his mother taught him that ladies appreciate such courtesy, but this one turns around and spits in his eye because he has insulted her womanhood. A young lady offers her seet in a crowded bus to an elderly, frail gentleman, and he gives her a dirty look because she has insulte his manhood, mind you, those are just people trying to be nice; the only problem is that they are just people trying to be nice; the only problem is that they are operating on different systems of etiquette.
Curiously, it has never been harder to insult people intentionally. If you say, “you are horrid and I hate you,” the person is apt to reply, “on, you are feeling hostile; I’ll wait until you feel better.” The idea that explaining one’s motivation justifies any violation is perhaps essential in a world of flying insults, where the all-purpose excuse, “I’m depressed,” absolves one of any obligation or responsibility.
The idea that people can behave “naturally” without resorting to an artificial code tacitly agreed upon by their society is as silly as the idea that they can communicate by using a langue, a code of manners can be used with more or less skill, for good or evil purposes, wholesale coach handbags, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions. Like language, manners continually undergo slow changes and adaptations, but these changes have to be global, not atomic. For if everyone improvises his own manners, no one will understand the meaning of anyone else’s behavior, and the result will be social chaos and the end of civilization.
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