Manners maketh
It’s tempting to think of manners as something of a first-world problem: given all that’s happening on our immolating planet, worrying about the decline in people being nice(r) to each other seems somewhat irrelevant. But as a barometer of where society is trending—at least in the winners-take-all United States—how people behave suggests we’re accelerating toward the cliff edge.
Forget about shoplifting and rioting and all the rest of it, for which there are often much deeper and more intractable economic and societal issues at play. I’m talking about small stuff—the kind of little things that have traditionally greased the wheels of how we all manage to get along.
Exhibit A. Where I live has lots of roads that are strictly one lane each way, along with lots of big cars (it’s America!) with nowhere else to park. So, it’s usually a bit of a dodgem car experience to get anywhere, pulling into areas where no cars are parked to allow cars to pass from the other direction, and vice versa.
My totally unscientific study guesstimates maybe one-in-ten drivers waves thanks when another driver gives way to them. Maybe one-in-ten. It’s not as though this is exactly burdensome: no-one expects the full body, two handed flapping of my mum greeting me at the airport back in the day (wouldn’t be wise from the driver’s seat anyway). It doesn’t need to be anything more than a raised palm, maybe a nod, maybe just the minimalist extended index finger without even taking hands off the wheel. It takes a nanosecond.
I admit I’ve now taken to theatrically rolling my hand at the nine-in-ten who fail at this shockingly simple task. My hope is they’ll see me sarcastically signaling, “No, no - after you” and at least think about the fact they just barreled past as if they both owned the road and I owed them deference. I also know that’s not gonna happen. Like a lot of things in life, I suspect non-wavers don’t even think about it and would, in fact, vehemently defend their behavior as something to do with all sharing the road and it evens out in the end and I didn’t ask you to give way and why say thanks for something that’s common courtesy and blahedy blah.
Exhibit B. At my local Whole Foods, there’s maybe 10 yards between the rows of carts neatly lined up inside the entry and the exit. Maybe 10 yards—probably less. Yet every time I leave the store, discarded grocery carts are strewn around the exit by people who have decided to carry their groceries to their car. And every time I roll my cart the 10 yards to the neat rows, I wonder why the hell people can’t be bothered putting it back where they got it from.
Maybe it doesn’t even cross their minds. Maybe it does, but they think, “That’s someone else’s job.” Maybe it does, but they just can’t be bothered. I dunno. All I know is it drives me batty, both because it’s so utterly lazy and because even the carts strewn at the exit aren’t in any way organized: there’ll be four carts jammed against each other that could have easily been neatly nested together. The carts want to be together. They love being together. It’s how they feel safe and secure and useful. Don’t deny them that, Whole Foods shoppers.
These two pet peeves (among many, including people who message me at work with “Hey Luke” and await my reply before telling me what they’re messaging about. Just start with: “Hey Luke - wanted to ask about x”) came to mind today when listening to a podcast with happiness guru Arthur C. Brooks.
Brooks has a new book co-authored with Oprah, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. I generally like Brooks. He’s a social scientist and now teaches at Harvard, and his column for the Atlantic is thought provoking and interesting and has all but made me forget about his past life as a Republican political type heading the hilariously named American Enterprise Institute (the “enterprise” presumably being the business of funneling more and more money to corporations and the already wealthy).
But something stuck out to me in this latest interview. Brooks was running through his usual list of factors underpinning how people become happier and concluded the solution was for people to love each other more. Hokey but a nice sentiment, and it made me feel momentarily guilty about my car hand gesturing and irritation at the shopping cart abandoners.
Yet he then said this should extend to Trump-supporting family members, because love of family was vastly more important than holding a grudge about someone’s politics. My Spidey senses perked up: once president of the AEI, always president of the AEI (that middle initial he insists on using must stand for “Conservative”).
Why should anyone be expected to silently accept the repugnance of views undermining the very foundation of a person’s existence? That’s not just climate change denial and defending the sale of weapons of war for slaughtering kids, but the desire to control women’s bodies, dictate who can love whom, and roll back all manner of personal freedoms. I’d also toss in the fact anyone who objectively believes Donald Trump is fit to be president of the United States is obviously insane. I mean, this is the guy who refused to wear masks during COVID because the straps would get bronzer on them. He’s a grown man wearing bronzer. I’m an athiest, but my God. The prosecution rests.
So, while I had a momentary pang of guilt, Brooks quickly convinced me of the correctness of my ways. Say thanks when someone does a nice thing. Don’t create unnecessary work for others. And feel free to reject anyone supporting a man who at no point in his life was attractive yet allowed his vanity to model behavior that likely resulted in the unnecessary death of thousands of his fellow Americans. Easy peasy.