The Hindu Business Line : Six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door

THAT there is `utter bloody rudeness in everyday life' is no news. But that Lynne Truss has written a whole book on the topic, rather than coming up with `Presses, Pants & Flies' as a natural sequel to `Eats, Shoots & Leaves', definitely is. Because, "the era of the manners book has simply passed," as the author declares in the intro to "Talk to the Hand," from Viva (www.vivagroupindia.com) .

During the last two centuries, books on decorum "satisfied middle class anxieties and aspirations - and fuelled snobbery" because "as society became more fluid, people found themselves in unfamiliar situations, where there was a danger that they would embarrass themselves." It is no accident that `etiquette' derives from the same source as `ticket', points out Truss. "It is no accident, either, that adherence to `manners' has broken down just as money and celebrity have largely replaced birth as the measure of social status," she adds.

"This is an age of lazy moral relativism combined with aggressive social insolence," if you care to know. What, however, Truss finds interesting in the `Eff-off society' is that `perceived rudeness' irritates the rough and the insolent ones than it peeves the polite. "Rudeness is a universal flashpoint," therefore.

There are `six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door', you'd know about from Truss, as she analyses "six areas in which our dealings with strangers seem to be getting more unpleasant and inhuman, day by day." The first reads, `was that so hard to say?' delving into the death of `supportive interchange' rituals such as `thank you'. Thus, "You hold a door open for someone and he just walks through it. You let a car join traffic, and its driver fails to wave," rues Truss, missing the `unspoken courtesy words'.

According to the author, "Politeness is a signal of readiness to meet someone half-way." It makes society cohere, and also keeps people safely at arm's length, she explains. The fading away of politeness makes the world `both alien and threatening', she dreads. "The only context in which you can expect to hear a `please' or `thank you' nowadays is in recorded messages."

The second good reason is `why am I the one doing this?' Here is a philosophical snatch from the book: "Our brains have been pre-softened by our exposure to cyber-space. Our spirits are already half-broken. We have even started to believe that clicking `OK' is an act of free will." Asking `why' signals the end of all meaningful exchange, cautions Truss, because "armies of underpaid call-centre workers have now been recruited and trained not to help us, but to assure us, ever so politely, that the system does not allow us to have what we want." The `limitless self-absorption' we're now used to has made us "isolated, solipsistic, grandiose, exhausted, inconsiderate, and anti-social."

The next reason is, `My bubble, my rules.' Which is what makes "lovers lolling on the public grass on a sunny day glare at you if you look at them, as if you just walked into their living-room, people chat in the cinema during the film, air-travellers on long-haul flights change into pyjamas in the lavatories," and mobile users broadcast their conversations - as if "in some spooky virtual way", wherever we are, `it's home'!

F, for fourth reason, `the universal eff-off reflex.' Sadly, "the language of Shakespeare and Milton is dead." Instead, the TV "delights in accelerating the process of social change by normalising the entertainingly shocking." Truss hopes that through sheer constant over-use, "Effing is becoming a meaningless intensifier and will soon hardly be worth saying."

The fifth good reason is, `booing the judges', as the death-knell on deference. This is not just "the flattening of class distinctions," explains the author, listing twenty reasons "to show special politeness to other people that have nothing to do with class." Contempt, a.k.a. `attitude', is "the new behavioural default mode," laments Truss.

Last comes this reason: `Someone else will clean it up,' meaning `non-accountability'. Is there hope in this age of `social autism'? "Just as enough people going around correcting apostrophes may ultimately lead to some restoration of respect for the English language, so enough people demonstrating kindness and good manners may ultimately have an impact on social morality." That may sound too optimistic, on both counts.

Which is why I doubt you would have already shut yourself in.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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Six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door