Finally, there may be a topic that both wings of the socio-political spectrum and all in between could engage in a fruitful dialogue – the place of manners and etiquette in everyday life. Theodore Dalrymple, an English physician, has raised some interesting and important questions about the function of manners in our society that just might shift the “can’t we all get along” conversation to “how can we all get along”.
This wonderfully brief treatise on the perils of epistemology, called Minding Our Manner, is in this month's edition of the American Conservative magazine. Here is an excerpt:
A passenger [on a train] who draws the attention of a young adult to the anti-social presence of his feet upon a seat will be met either by a torrent of abuse or, if the person doing it is better-educated, by moral self-justification. The last time I said anything about it, the young woman in question, by no means unpleasant, pointed out that her feet were clean, she having first removed her shoes, and that therefore she was within her rights. I was left searching for a Cartesian point from which to prove beyond all possible doubt that putting your feet up on seats in trains was wrong. It is a wearisome business trying to prove from first epistemological principles in every instance of minor public misconduct that it is morally wrong, especially when every failure to make the case is a justification for further such misconduct. It is strange how egalitarianism results in a rabid form of individualism, an angry individualism without worthwhile individuality.
It is trickier conversation in the political realm, however. I have noticed that, the more power someone has in the political sphere, the more able he or she is to speak in muted tones, be very polite and “mannerly” and then direct their subordinates to act in the most outrageous ways. As it happens, that trait also seems to be immune from any particular ideology, so it also may well be a useful part of a larger dialogue.