Rising Rudeness

                                          by Kenneth Bagnell

         I was coming home from the library and had crossed the intersection — at Toronto’s Yonge and Eglinton — when I noticed the man walking in front of me. His trousers were falling almost below his knees, his left hand trying to keep them from dropping to his ankles, his other hand flicking a still lit cigarette into the winds and other pedestrians. Yes, that’s my neighborhood, a place where the good manners of old Toronto are giving way to a rudeness that’s not just annoying but, as in this incident, ugly to witness. It almost makes me long for other places. Like Lindsay. Or Pincher Creek. Or back home in Glace Bay.

    What’s happened?  Some suggest that large cities provoke and then nurture bad manners:  too many people knowing too few people, thereby becoming callous toward strangers whom they don’t see as people with children, wives, parents, and bills to pay. They’re more like obstacles provoking rude feelings and ruder manners. We all feel ongoing sympathy for New York, given 9/11, but I can’t help recalling incidents of my visits years ago too typical of what is now happening in Toronto. Once, walking the sidewalk in a deep cavern of Manhattan, I casually glanced to the street with yet another bumper-to-bumper-to bumper lineup of cars at an intersection. Suddenly a man, third or fourth in line, jumped out of his car, went briskly to the first car in line, banged on the driver’s window, then, with his hands spaced two or three feet apart — shouted at the probably tense driver telling him to move closer to the red light. After all that two feet might save 3 seconds. And the loudmouthed man was –- get ready for this –wearing a clerical collar. So it’s everywhere.

     A Canadian academic study, done in response to the rising tide of rudeness, was released in 2013 by scholars at one of our leading law schools, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. In a section titled, Incivility’s Rise, the paper reported that in the view of its researchers “uncivil conduct has reached epidemic proportions.” It went on to take this not just seriously but ominously: “Whatever can or cannot be proved, it is widely assumed and believed that incivility endemically infects current government, business, media and social media processes. It is all around and must be curbed.” (It included as an example of rudeness, the exchanges in today’s House of Commons, an institution which though we try to deny it, is an affirmation of the weary cliché: “They are us.”)    

     Several days ago, The Globe & Mail ran a lengthy and serious piece by Erin Anderssen on the subject of rudeness, mentioning a forthcoming book on being well mannered, the title of which I’d like to place here but can’t because it’s so rude. Oh well. Here are the title’s first few words and a blank for its last one: “Good manners for Nice People who Sometimes say XXXX.” Anyway, the author, California broadcaster Amy Alkon, almost blames it all on our having to deal with so many people. As she puts it: “This is my theory about why we’re rude, and it’s based on work done by British evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar who figured out that our brains have a capacity for 150 relationships, and beyond that, things break down.” We should all take anthropologists seriously. But I have a question: I’ve known many people who grew up and lived their entire lives in small towns and villages where they’d deal closely, often daily, with 150 people, and there was rarely a problem of rudeness or incivility. I know such towns and villages because I came from them in Cape Breton. Many of the men, perhaps most, were coal miners, who were not degree holders or world travelers. But they and the families they raised were known widely and beyond Cape Breton for manners and affability. They were examples of the truth in Francis Bacon’s historic line: “If a man be gracious and courteous, he is a citizen of the world….”

    Moreover, the implicit essence of her theory suggests that rudeness is always the result of “others,” the 150, who, one way or another, make us uneasy, irascible, then impolite.  Hence, her proposed explanation for the rise in rudeness, useful though it is, and perceptive though it is, may well be a touch evasive. It points the finger at “others.” So you and I are not responsible — in any way whatsoever.  But maybe we are, since we inevitably make our own contribution to the broad culture out of which incivility tries. Do we, if we’re able, do at least one good turn a day, thereby helping someone or indeed ourselves to maintaining our own manners and goodwill. We are the better if we live with the poet Robert Frost’s famous line that stresses social improvement -–  which certainly includes civility  – only transpires if we help it. “I invite you,” he once wrote, “to a one man revolution, the only revolution that is coming.” That invitation is always standing. For both of us.

      So if you’re inclined, reflect on a few lines of a prayer said in unison by the congregation at my church, Eglinton-St. George’s United in Toronto, last Sunday:  “Too often we treat each other as objects, in order to meet our own needs and agendas. We would commit ourselves to the conviction that love is the dominating theme, the most important principle in our world, to which everything else must take second place.” We all, including the one now writing, might well look within.

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All my past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome here: www.kennethbagnell.com.