Do you think things like manners are dying away?

[Persephone]

Is it just me or were people more courteous in the past? Do you think maybe because life was at a slower pace? In our fast tracked world nowadays are things like manners just becoming insignificant?

I am from a more rural area in the South and people are still very polite here, open doors, say good morning to strangers, etc.

I find that to be very charming to say the least...and I enjoy holding doors open for people and smiling at strangers (that small gesture could just make their entire day.)

And I always, from day one, have ALWAYS answered people's questions with a "yes ma'am or yes sir"...that may seem old fashioned to some but I like to be seen as respectful and have that returned to me 🙂

So maybe it just depends on the area you are from? How you were raised? Or even age demographic? But what do YOU think? Are manners still important? Are they pointless in such a harsh, rude world? Please share

<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/manners" target="_blank"><img src="http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k161/cecandelas/manners.jpg" border="0" alt="manners Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>​

 

[Bothersome]

I'm courteous to people when the situation calls for it, however I think using terms like 'ma'am' and 'sir' is best when speaking to superiors. But that's just me.
I like being courteous and respectful when I know it's appreciated. I've held open doors for people and just gotten a spiteful glare or smirk in return, and that's why I dislike doing it.

I was raised under the belief that nobody gets a set amount of respect from the get-go. Respect is earned, not given. If I'm meeting someone on the street that I've never seen before, then I will smile and wave, but I won't necessarily stoop down and start shining his shoes for him. Conversely, I won't spit on his shoes either.

To be honest? I think heartfelt manners are about gone. Of course people act courteous to keep up appearances, but everyone is so focused on money these days. If getting more money means sucking up a little more to your boss, then people will do it. Even if they think their boss is pond scum.

 

[Skipadeedoodah]

I think that manners are definitely undervalued nowadays, and it's very sad. I really have a thing for manners - even the most basic ones like please and fucking thank you. I like when people show a little bit of thought and effort with their actions, and I think having manners does that.

 

[3xPIN]

Manners are a way of showing people you respect them. Common courtesy is looked at as weak and outmoded. Very sad but true. But when it comes down to it, I feel people show no manners cuz they just don't give a shit anymore. I am always courteous; I get no satisfaction or pleasure from it, I just feel it is the right thing to do. Same thing with grammar and spelling. The world won't stop turning if I behave poorly or spell incorrectly. But, I like to carry myself a certain way.

 

[Bothersome]

Well, I practice decent grammar because I like to give the impression that I graduated from middle school.

 

[Gothika]

yup for sure i see it all the time its sad to see as for me im always curtious to others

 

[jonny86]

I often wonder what it was like back in the day in regards to manners. My mother is from Texas and later moved to California. Despite all the problems you might associate with Texans, she will always tell you that they know their manners. My father even remarked, when he visited, that the one thing he will never ever forget about Texas was that when a funeral procession drove through, people on the street would stop what they're doing and watch it pass. People with a hat would take it off as well. I've had the unfortunate privilege of being in more than a couple funeral procession and what do people do here in California? Cut you off, join the line just to pass through a red light. Sickening.

There still are respectful people out there. I tend to make it part of the criteria for me to actually be friends with someone. Sometimes I wonder if it's due to the whole non-confrontational characteristic of society these days. How does one learn manners in the first place? They were probably confronted by or told by family as a kid how to be respectful and all that. When I've talked to people from past generations, I get the feeling people had no qualms about confronting people about their behavior back in the day in public. These days, if a father is beating a child in a store, you're "suppose to" look away because it's not your business (possibly a bit extreme of an example, but not by much). We live in a silly world.

 

[GQguy]

I've always found the nostalgia for days gone by very troubling. The good ol days weren't exactly that and depending on what class/race/gender the respect you speak of was non existent. While the standard for respect has dropped the standard of blatant disrespect has become better. Hope that made sense!

GQ

 

[MikefromPA]

I would say part of it has to do with the fact everyone is always busy or up and running about trying to hurry from one place to the other. And while this may not always be such a bad way to do things, it definitely makes it a little more difficult to stop and think about what is going on around you. One on one behind closed doors the standards as far as individual respect goes have not dipped too much, but like jonny said when you talk about something outside and general like a funeral procession people just don't think about what those folks are going through, only about their task at hand

 

[BellaRisa]

I've always found the nostalgia for days gone by very troubling. The good ol days weren't exactly that and depending on what class/race/gender the respect you speak of was non existent.

GQ

I agree with the above. Furthermore, I grew up in NYC, supposedly the rudest place on Earth, and I never found folks there to be any more or less courteous than anywhere else I've spent time, including the South and Vermont and now Ohio. I don't think that manners are undervalued these days; rather I see a change in just what "good manners" means. As a preschool teacher over the last two decades I can say teaching 'good manners' to kids is definitely just as important to young parents now as it was once upon a time, but those manners don't include the exact same things they once did, like automatically calling grownups "Ma'am" or "Sir" which frankly a lot of the Boomers and we Gen-Xers don't even like (I HATE being called ma'am and my husband doesn't care for 'Sir', it's just stuffy and old to us). We do still teach our children to say 'excuse me' to speak when others are already speaking, how to wait patiently for a turn, how to sit properly at the table, that kinda thing. I do think folks are more preoccupied because we're always plugged into something and just more oblivious, but I still see the majority of folks (when they're aware of their surroundings 🙄 ) holding doors for each other, saying please and thank you and teaching their kids to do the same, etc.

 

[Persephone]

Thanks for all the great responses guys 😀 Very insightful and enlightening!

 

[PiedPiper]

Manners have taken a hit, but I wouldn't care to try to express the difference in terms of holding doors and saying M'am and sir,.... those are just old rituals. The real deterioration has been in an overall slide in empathetic connectiveness between people,.... and that may be the result of what I see as a heightened state of self-absorption among the twenty-somethings I see in class. To be engaged in a serious business conversation one moment, and then to suddenly wave off the other person to answer a stupid text,... THAT pretty much sums up the change.

 

[maniactickler]

Yes they are dying. the youth of America is turning into shit.

 

[General Zod]

I know few people have manners/courtesy when driving anymore.

 

[GQguy]

Yes they are dying. the youth of America is turning into shit.

Nope. We are the "next great generation"...http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2089337,00.html

But I'm sure the last "great generation" said the same thing about your generation. And it's been said since the beginning of time.

"What is happening to our young
people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They
ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions.
Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"

Plato

'The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in lace of
exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.'

Socrates

What's funny is that Socrates would have been speaking of Plato's generation and Plato in turn would have been speaking of Aristotle's generation.


GQ

 

[Korastus]

I believe in manners and courtesy, and that all people deserve it until they prove otherwise. Respect is earned, not given.

 

[WorkInProgress]

I agree with GQ Guy. It's analogous to the claim of people like conservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb that society has declined in its sense of morality and virtue. (She makes much of the use of the word "values" as a replacement for the word "virtues," equating the word "values" with a kind of moral relativism in which nothing is sacred.) While she acknowledges that the decline of racism is a societal improvement, that doesn't entirely answer the fact that she's pointing to the years when racism was at its most brutal as a time when American morality had something to recommend it compared to now. Here's her book: http://books.google.com/books/about/The_de_moralization_of_society.html?id=mcRHAAAAYAAJ

I would also say, people have always considered their own era to be characterized by a decline in both manners and morals, in contrast with a romanticized yesteryear. And the worst part of it, in the present era, is when they attribute this decline to lack of physical punishment in child rearing. Conservatives are frequently saying that today's kids have no manners because their parents don't spank them enough.

In bottom line, though my answer to your question is, no, I don't think there's any fundamental decline in manners in the present era.

 

[mabus]

How are manners and racism related at all?

Because people had manners in the past, and people were more racist in the past, therefore, racism and manners are connected.

They didn't have iphones deades ago, and women wore pantyhose back then, therefore, iphones destroyed the pantyhose market. FUCK STEVE JOBS!!!!!! RARHRRRRR!!!!

Tomorrow when I go into work, and that old lady is struggling up the steps, I'm going to knock her aside and then slam the door in her face, and then stick my head back out and say "Deal with it you ole bat! At least I'm not racist!!!!!!! If I had manners, I'd be a goddamn racist!!!!"

GQ's second post hit it more on the head - people are WAY more narcissistic these days, this whole obsession with the self, celebrity, the "Me" generation, etc. They also have it good, so have become spoiled. Many of these occupy Wall Street people, and pundits, are comparing themselves to Vietnam protesters. This is rightly pissing people off - the Vietnam protesters were protesting a war that was going on forever, and the possibility that they could be drafted to fight in it, die horribly or be maimed for the rest of their lives.

One of the biggest issues the Occupiers are fighting for is......for the government to pay off their student loans.

uhhhh......that's much more selfish than a war. (And recent polls show that a huge majority are against student loan debt relief.)

So, that's a HUGE change in what people think is important.

Reality TV sends camera to follow the crudest people around. The media celebrates the trashy people, and ignores the truly important.

Hell, in the last People or some such magazine, there was an article about Gabby Giffords recovery from her gunshot wound.....you know, when the Tea Party and Sarah Palin shot her (that's just to tweak the Left, ha ha! 🙂) then fucking two pages later, the same amount of space to fucking Kim Kardashian........

 

[GQguy]

How are manners and racism related at all?

Because people had manners in the past, and people were more racist in the past, therefore, racism and manners are connected.

They didn't have iphones deades ago, and women wore pantyhose back then, therefore, iphones destroyed the pantyhose market. FUCK STEVE JOBS!!!!!! RARHRRRRR!!!!

Tomorrow when I go into work, and that old lady is struggling up the steps, I'm going to knock her aside and then slam the door in her face, and then stick my head back out and say "Deal with it you ole bat! At least I'm not racist!!!!!!! If I had manners, I'd be a goddamn racist!!!!"

GQ's second post hit it more on the head - people are WAY more narcissistic these days, this whole obsession with the self, celebrity, the "Me" generation, etc. They also have it good, so have become spoiled. Many of these occupy Wall Street people, and pundits, are comparing themselves to Vietnam protesters. This is rightly pissing people off - the Vietnam protesters were protesting a war that was going on forever, and the possibility that they could be drafted to fight in it, die horribly or be maimed for the rest of their lives.

One of the biggest issues the Occupiers are fighting for is......for the government to pay off their student loans.

uhhhh......that's much more selfish than a war. (And recent polls show that a huge majority are against student loan debt relief.)

So, that's a HUGE change in what people think is important.

Reality TV sends camera to follow the crudest people around. The media celebrates the trashy people, and ignores the truly important.

Hell, in the last People or some such magazine, there was an article about Gabby Giffords recovery from her gunshot wound.....you know, when the Tea Party and Sarah Palin shot her (that's just to tweak the Left, ha ha! 🙂) then fucking two pages later, the same amount of space to fucking Kim Kardashian........

I'm not equating racism with manners. I'm saying that the politeness that people speak of was only used towards certain people. If I were in the U.S. 50 years ago and in the South..no white person would be calling me sir or even polite to me. Black soldiers coming back from war were treated with less respect and politeness than German POW's. I'm not talking about getting a job but simple hospitality and courtesy. Being in the wrong place even could have the the violence you described above happen to me. So are people as a whole more polite now than then....I'd have to say yes! If I could get spit on by walking through the wrong neighborhood and that was acceptable behavior and that wouldn't happen now.....what conclusion can one draw?

As for me hitting a nail on the head....I think you misunderstood my second post. Those quotes were from Socrates and Plato. They said these things about the youth a several millennium ago. I was making the point that since the beginning of time the older generation has always been complaining about unruly youth. It's something I will do eventually and something my 7 year old nephew will do eventually too and 1000 years from now we'll still do it.

GQ

 

[Mitchell]

To me, "manners" is a lot more than the "sir or mam" thing. It's the idea of social graces, and not saying what one feels all the time, in an inappropriate situation.

For example: My way of "Showing manners",is defined by the fact that I mind my own business, and will only say certain things if a person or situation affects me directly. My ex best friend's mother, and my assistant, never showed/show any manners, in that they say anything they want about anyone, even if their comments are out of line, inappropriate, hurtful, or rude. That to me shows lack of common courtesy, manners, or social graces.

The last people I recall addressing as "Sir" or "Mam" were professors in college. In fact, one professor, who had a rather.. odd sense of humor, said "Mitch, dont call me sir, call me jerk". I didnt, of course.

If someone wants to address people as "Sir" or "Mam", then more power to them, but as I said before, to me, "Manners" is more a showing of social graces, and not necessarially how you address someone.

Mitch