Anyone who has recently endured the aggravations of airline travel will appreciate the tensions which erupted on last Monday’s JetBlue flight from Pittsburgh to New York. After arguing with a passenger who insisted on cramming a large bag into the overhead compartment, Steven Slater, an airline attendant with many years of experience chose to abandon the usual forms of courtesy. He was rude to passengers throughout the flight and then used the intercom, after the plane landed, to swear at a passenger who had insulted him. Slater then deployed the emergency slide and left the plane before it reached the terminal. Shortly afterwards he was arrested and charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing. After news of his flamboyant departure had been widely broadcast, social media networks began to take up his cause. One Facebook signed up almost 200,000 members and online contributions were being sought to start a legal defence fund.
As public reactions to the JetBlue drama unfolded, the story of 25-year-old Melodi Dushane was also making the news. Six months earlier, Dushane attacked a McDonald’s fast food outlet in Ohio after being told chicken nuggets weren’t on the breakfast menu. After Dushane was sentenced to 60 days for assault, police released CCTV footage of her offence and it quickly received hundreds of thousands of views online.
Similar notorieties, in almost every country, could be listed almost indefinitely, for rude and inappropriate conduct seems to be in vogue not just in aircraft and fast food restaurants, but in some of our most sacred public venues. During the recent World Cup, for example, German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer admitted to deceiving the match referee to deny England a crucial second goal; Argentina’s Carlos Tevez owned up to claiming a goal against Mexico that he knew was off-side; and, disgracefully, Uruguay’s Luis Suarez even boasted about using a handball to prevent Ghana reaching the tournament’s semi-finals. A different form of cheating pervaded the tournament, most noticeably in the final. Fearing that the Spanish team would outmanoeuvre them with a slick passing game, the Dutch adopted a strategy of physical confrontation which bordered on assault. They assumed, correctly, that the referee would be too intimidated by the prospect of spoiling the final to send players off. Their plan failed, but they ruined the final anyway. (Only after 109 minutes of brutal “gamesmanship” was the defender Johnny Heitinga sent off for a second yellow card.)
It is easy to put these lapses in judgement down to the stresses of modern life. It flatters us to believe that we are simply too busy to observe the niceties which earlier generations prized so highly. From this perspective good manners are helpful in little ways – they smooth our way through public experiences like airline travel – but they shouldn’t be allowed to trump private emotions when there is more at stake. Fairness and decency may be desirable but when they are impractical we shouldn’t shirk our duty to let our true feelings be known, or to seize the main chance. Certainly this view seems to be gaining ground. In 2002, the US research group Public Agenda published Aggravating Circumstances: A Status Report on Rudeness in America. This found that while “an overwhelming 73% believe that Americans actually used to treat each other with more respect in the past,” roughly the same number recalled watching their peers “yelling and screaming at coaches, referees or players” during the last year. While nearly everyone preferred the politeness of their parents’ generation, only a handful were concerned with setting a good example for their children.
Other examples of indifference to good manners abound. Last year, during a formal address to Congress, a Republican from South Carolina called President Obama a liar. More recently, the head of the Anti-Defamation League excused the hysterical xenophobia which has greeted proposals for a “Ground Zero” mosque by arguing that, for families who had lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks: “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”
This casual disregard for other people could not be more wrongheaded, precisely because the observance of good manners is most important when our reasons for civility seem least convincing. “Among well-bred people,” wrote the philosopher David Hume, “a mutual deference is affected; contempt of others disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.” It is worth noting that Hume does not suggest that we have to like other people, he simply points out that ‘well-bred people’ are always at pains to maintain this useful fiction.
More recently, the philosopher Julian Baggini has drawn a useful contrast between “pure etiquette, which is simply a matter of arbitrary social rules designed mainly to distinguish between insiders and outsiders” and “what might grandly be called quotidian ethics: the morality of our small, everyday interactions with other people.” These little civilities, “reinforce[d] a regard for others and concern for their welfare. But if you strip away all the small courtesies we should extend to others as part of our normal lives, you end up forgetting about others and retreating more into a concern with your own self-interest.”
Throughout the Caribbean the small courtesies which underwrite a civil society have begun to disappear. Not only have we stopped dressing up for special occasions – like airline travel – we have also learned to tolerate people who curse loudly in public places, who urinate and spit on sidewalks, who casually litter the city and generally behave with a total lack of respect for anyone else. If we do not safeguard these “quotidian ethics” we can hardly be surprised when we find ourselves in the middle of a culture that admires abusive and dishonest behaviour. After all, politeness lies at the heart of one of civil society’s most fruitful paradoxes, that the best way to protect our self-interest is to maintain a scrupulous respect for the interest of others.
