I'm paraphrasing Robert A. Heinlein, who once said that a sure sign of a declining civilization is: "bad manners and dirty public rest rooms." I am concerned with what I consider to be an alarming trend in our country of bad manners and apathy. People don't seem to care to tend to the pleasantries that lubricate polite society.
Recently, my wife and I were shopping in a store where a father and his child were playing games in already crowded aisles, not even noticing that their antics were inappropriate to the situation, and when several patrons of the store gave him icy stares as they had to move aside to let him by, he said: "what?" Adults are setting dangerous examples for their children by acting as if they are not accountable to everyone else for their actions, as if selfishness and greed are more important than treating people with the same dignity and respect we ourselves demand from others.
Some speak of rights without responsibilities, they speak of race as if skin color means that one group is not as human as another, they believe that if pushing others down will some how elevate them to a higher place on the "social ladder" then that's ok. What's worse, many have become so selfish and thoughtless, that they don't seem to care to leave our public rest rooms in the same or better condition as we found them: Why should we clean up after ourselves? That's why people are paid to be janitors and garbagemen after all. Let them do it!
I suspect that our nation's legacy of thoughtlessness and selfishness is one that has led us to the point of being outright rude because to make an effort to be polite is such that nobody wants to bother. People for whom I hold doors for are often pleasantly surprised when I do so, because I am the exception rather than the norm. Whenever I take my wife out on a date, I take the time to dress up and make myself presentable. When we go out, I see men dressed in ball caps, tee-shirts, and ripped up jeans escorting ladies who obviously took the time to dress and look nice for their man, I am appalled at this sad state of affairs (of course I have also run into women who go out into public looking like slobs and have to wonder about them too). It is somehow selfish of us that we no longer feel we need to take the effort to look presentable when we seek leisure that is also a sure sign of decay. What's worse, the trend of men and women getting married and divorced in this country seems to be one where mutual respect and honoring the casually given vows to "...love, honor, and cherish," have been forgotten in our relentless pursuit of self.
Our country was founded on the principle that many can become one. We have such a diverse background of cultures, beliefs, and races living in this country that one can almost wonder if we can ever come to agree on anything. It is my belief that the one thing that could start to make this country a better place is if parents made a conscious effort to teach their children proper manners and civility through example and through correction. Things such as:
Of course I am living in a fantasy world to think that people will ever follow my simple advice. A return to good manners would indeed cure a lot of ills of our society, but we seem too far gone into our greedy little obsessions to remember that there are other people in this world who are silently seeking their own happiness.
As I've said, the places where society rubs together would be better lubricated by a return to good manners. Manners are such that you don't even have to really mean it to do it, it is a method of paying respect without really respecting anyone. It won't kill anyone to try and be polite.
Our country suffers from the ills of being so dangerously self-absorbed that it is actually shocked with something horrible like a senseless school shooting or some other random act of violence occurs. These things should have long ago become so normal that nobody notices them unless their loved ones were involved, (at least that appears to be where level of selfishness and rudeness in this society: "Didn't happen to me or anyone I know, so who cares?"). I state that while a return to good manners will not cure everything that ails us, it would be a definite step in the right direction.