Sunday, November 20, 2005
The center of the universe?
Every day I marvel at the extent to which some people can ignore the rest of the world. I guess many people think they really are the center of the universe. On the train, I often hear people talking on cellphones as if the entire car of the rest of us neither exists nor matters. Even at 6:30 in the morning, people talk loudly to others across aisles or in non-adjacent seats or on their phones, offering world-shattering information like "I'm on the train" or asking vital questions like "what's for dinner?". When asked to talk more quietly, one passenger famously become so enraged that she bit (yes, bit) the arm of a person who asked. It seems many people don't get it or don't care.
In Manners and virtue in a modern world, George Will refers to Lynn Truss's book Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door, which is, if nothing else, fabulously titled. She describes a new "age of social autism, in which people just can't see the value of imagining their impact on others". I actually think it's more serious than inability to see value in imagining their impact - I think they may literally not know what that means. Not without good cause, over the last decades we've trained ourselves to have less interest or concern for anything other than our own best interests. Previously we'd overdeveloped the ability to subvert personal best interests in order to support others' and thus often failed to nurture and develop our own needs and desires. When men held doors for women, it really could seem patronizing, and indeed that gesture is often used as a paradigm of what went wrong. It requires thought and effort to find and recognize a balance between treating people with habitual disregard versus being gracious. For example, if the first person through a door holds it for the next person, it can be simply a gracious thing to do. It all starts with understanding that it's important to value yourself but also know that you're not the actual, literal center of the universe and there are lots of other people here too.
In Manners and virtue in a modern world, George Will refers to Lynn Truss's book Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door, which is, if nothing else, fabulously titled. She describes a new "age of social autism, in which people just can't see the value of imagining their impact on others". I actually think it's more serious than inability to see value in imagining their impact - I think they may literally not know what that means. Not without good cause, over the last decades we've trained ourselves to have less interest or concern for anything other than our own best interests. Previously we'd overdeveloped the ability to subvert personal best interests in order to support others' and thus often failed to nurture and develop our own needs and desires. When men held doors for women, it really could seem patronizing, and indeed that gesture is often used as a paradigm of what went wrong. It requires thought and effort to find and recognize a balance between treating people with habitual disregard versus being gracious. For example, if the first person through a door holds it for the next person, it can be simply a gracious thing to do. It all starts with understanding that it's important to value yourself but also know that you're not the actual, literal center of the universe and there are lots of other people here too.
Labels: books, reflections
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