Why Manners Matter

I find that a great example of what manners are in society is told best by the author and writer for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, Henry Alford. He relates it to a German fairytale of three porcupines that live together in the cold. These porcupines have to huddle close together to maintain heat or else they will freeze to death, but the closer that they get, the deeper their spines poke each other. They eventually settle this problem by having each of them as close as possible so that the least discomfort is achieved while still staying alive. (Alford, 2012, pg. 28) As our society becomes more modern and technologically infused, we lose touch with our manners because we can hide behind a screen and think that no one can see you. We are on a path to being a hypothermic porcupine.
We can all agree that manners are needed, but some are needed more than others and too many manners over-complicate simple occasions. Manners can be described as a way of acting so that you are seemly the same as everyone else, but they can also be used to manipulate situations. You learn manners by seeing other people perform them, and when they should be used within certain boundaries. These examples can give you an expansive knowledge of when and how to use manners. These customs are vitally important in society and can cause people to be shunned or accepted based on how they are demonstrated.
A 2011 Rasmussen Reports poll was referenced recently in a NPR article that stated that 76% of the survey people thought that America was becoming increasingly rude. (Weeks, 2012) This might be true, but we are a long way from being without manners. As Henry Alford likes to point out, people in the distant past have been known to defecate, urinate, burp, spit and fart in public according to the sociologist, Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process. (Alford, 2012, pg. 35) So when people consider the United States to be an uncivilized, rude country, we are still with manners. The only thing that commentators have to remark about is that our manners are changing or are underdeveloped in certain types of conduct.
Richard Sennett, a sociologist and professor at London School of Economics and New York University, has a theory that the degradation of American manners is a result of how in our culture people need to express their intimate emotions with acquaintances and strangers. (1978) In an interview, Sennett asserts that, “The notion that you show other people without restraint your intimate feelings is to say that those feelings don’t matter to you.” (Alford, 2012) The problem with our perception of society is that we need to stop talking about ourselves so much. Instead, we should speak more of societal problems, technology, politics, ideas or just thoughts – things that matter.
Henry D. Schlinger, a behavioral-analysis professor at California State University, researched an experiment dealing with the development of “theory of mind” in children. Theory of mind is a process of thinking where a person rejects his or her preset ideas and tries to empathize with other people. In the experiment done by researchers for the development of theory of mind, children are told about a situation where a child named Maxi places a chocolate bar in a cabinet, and then someone else transfers the chocolate to a drawer, without Maxi knowing of it. Then the children are asked where Maxi will look for the chocolate when he gets back, in the cabinet where it is no longer at or the drawer where it is at now. Most children before they are four years old will guess in the cabinet. At around four years old, they are able to differentiate between their own minds and the minds of others, so they almost always say in the drawer. (2009, Schlinger, pgs. 438-9) This is when manners start to develop, because the children try to understand what their peers would want from them. They can at this point understand that people don’t know things that they know, so they become more careful and understanding in an effort not to offend anyone.
The “Golden Rule” justification of manners is that we should treat others with the manners that we would want them to treat us with. Alford says that it is not about what you would want, but what they would want to be done to them. This can be accomplished by just taking on the worldview of surrounding people. This is what drives us to act the way we do and these worldviews of others may be impolite or rude. He writes about how people in gruesome wars do what they are told. It is theorized, in any situation, humans will try to maintain their status quo with their peers. (2012, Alford, 229-30) Clearly this is good reasoning as to why people can be led to do things that they wouldn’t normally do, but it is just as confusing as clarifying. If we were to need to maintain status quo, then does that mean that people are rude because it’s the normal thing and if so, than is there pressure to be impolite? Or even more importantly, is this impoliteness a result of accumulated sources of stress and can this stress be eliminated?
Most people think of manners as just well-wished ways of buffering your convictions on other people with opposing views. People know what not to do in situations, but they should be wondering what to do. This would mean that in the eyes of soldiers, they should kill because they are led to believe that if they don’t kill, they will be killed and they are led to believe that dying is bad. If this is true, that we only do what others will do, then we should all agree that this is a depressing commentary on mankind. We try to “behave about as well as our neighbors,” puts Randy Cohen, a writer on moral situations. (2012, Alford, pg. 230)
Alford continues on in his book to talk about a form of manners called, “imaginative manners” where he tries to find the perfect thing to do to manipulate people. Whether these manners help a homeless man make money or make others treat someone with respect, this form of manners in a groundbreaking idea. This is creating your own rules and applying them to everything.
This thought of imaginative manners forces the reader to acknowledge every experience possibly imagined as a setting for performing etiquette. Even though extreme, this would solve a lot of the problems that social critics point out in the public today. Everyone that is in retail or the fast food business knows that every once in a while, someone decides to come into your store five minutes before closing and ends up making your departure fifteen minutes later than expected. Imaginative manners may help these situations. Most people know that they are not wanted in the store that late, but most of the time they don’t know the extremity. If you ask a person to leave with a well thought-out reason, they will likely leave. Most people are hot-wired to think for themselves, but the manners described by Alford may just be a new way of using theory of mind and applying them at large scale. People who lack this ability to empathize with others are likely not as socially adept as most people and as the research done by Schlinger tells us, people with autism who are known to have a hard time communicating with people lack a strong theory of mind ability. (2009, pg. 439)
Communication etiquette is a difficult thing to master and with technology, it becomes harder. What is difficult in today’s technological society is to determine proper protocol on the internet and through text. With the anonymity of the internet, most people don’t fear saying what they want. Even if this is clique and over-stated, the simple truth is that when we do try to be nice, the internet has no body language and tone is extinct. This also applies to text messages and sometimes calls. When the other person’s tone is indistinguishable from sarcasm and true enthusiasm, you could get very offended. The fact of the matter is that when no one can see you write, you write what you think and everyone can see it. This is why blogs can sometimes have compulsively written things on them, or why the website, 4chan.org can be so popular. On the internet, you need to over emphasize yourself to bring across your point; but the problem is that this, over emphasizing, can cause anger too. People need to look at their words and figure out how to write the same thing in a less accusing voice before they post their words for all to see. Today is different than the 1950s and manners sometimes need to be redefined, invented and re-envisioned. In the world of technology, each advance means new protocol and systems of courtesy need to be established. Nowadays, people don’t care which side of the plate the fork goes on, but they do care if you are texting while eating. New advances are always being made and some manners build on others, so truthfully, all books on manners are never finished and Alford’s book is just another example.




Works Cited:

Alford, H. (2012). Would it kill you to stop doing that?: A modern guide to manners.
New York: Twelve.

Schlinger, H. D. Jr. (2009). The psychological record. Los Angeles: California State
University.

Sennett, R. (1978). The fall of public man. New York: Vintage Books.

Weeks, L. (2012). Please read this story, thank you. NPR. Retrieved from
​http://www.npr.org/2012/03/09/148295675/please-read-this-story-thank-you

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