Whatever happened to civility? Kindness? Manners? British author Lynne Truss writes a spot-on account of the trend in our society of uncivilized, rude, and ill-mannered people in, "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World, or, Six Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door." While I was home on Tuesday, I read this book in one day. (You can order it from Amazon for as cheap as 1 cent plus shipping, or check it out of your local public library.) In this laugh out loud and enlightening treatise, she explores reasons why we are in such a state, not only in Britain, but in the USA as well.
I'll be talking about this in blog entries to come, so stay tuned for the six reasons she gives, good reasons I might add, of why we may often feel like staying home and bolting the door. For example, here's her thoughts about one possible cause of our unseeming behavior toward each other: "One hesitates to blame television for all this because that's such an obvious thing to do. But, come on. Just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's not true. People being vulgar and rude to each other...is TV's bread and butter." I agree. The TV show "Survivor" is a good example of betrayal and knife in the back stabbings, however, even it isn't as bad as some reality shows.
So let's discuss civility and human kindness. Whatever happened to please and thank you, to genuine customer service (where you call a number and actually get a human to talk to), where your bank knows your name and the guy you let get in front of you on Kellogg during rush hour waved his gratitude to you? Stay tuned.
1 comment:
You enjoy being tarred and feathered, don't you.
I agree. Television has to take its place amongst the perpetrators of this crap.
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