Rude awakening: What the #@!$%#@! is happening to us?
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BY ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
Remember the old “Saturday Night Live” Point-Counterpoint sketch in which Dan Aykroyd always started his debate with Jane Curtin with: “Jane, you ignorant slut”? We thought it was hysterical. It was so over the top. No one would ever really be that rude. Little did we know.
Who could have foreseen shock jock Howard Stern, television’s “South Park,” baseball’s Barry Bonds, or God-fearing Christians protesting outside of funerals for fallen soldiers with “God bless IEDs” posters and proclaiming that these people deserved to die?
Ask just about anyone, and the consensus is clear: Civilization is becoming less civilized.
We are inconsiderate. Rude. Obnoxious. Manner-deprived cravens who don't think twice before pounding out a scathing e-mail, turning a routine disagreement into a personal attack or flicking up our middle finger at complete strangers because they:
a) passed us
b) didn't pass us when they should have
c) merely exist
d) all of the above
Increasingly, we are consciously — and unconsciously — rude.
What the #@!$%#@! is happening to us?
Sociology professor Michael Kearl points an index finger at any number of things — capitalism, competition, haves versus have-nots, stress, resentment, the demise of the family dinner, lack of upper class role models, technology-induced isolation and insulation.
“Or maybe this whole rudeness thing is innate,” said Kearl, chairman of Trinity University's department of sociology and anthropology in San Antonio, Texas, in a telephone interview.
Hundreds of years before Columbus came to America and colonists fought the British for sovereignty, people across the globe were lamenting the decline in manners, said Kearl.
People didn't know their place. They engaged in uncouth behaviors. Courtesies were neglected and forgotten.
But things are getting worse — much worse.
Ask anyone: Are we becoming ruder?
“YES! Unfortunately,” said Lincoln’s Mary Beth Rice, who teaches a four-week course on manners and etiquette for adolescents.
Not only do we feel surrounded by rudeness, but we want to scream from the rooftops about the decline of humanity — especially if someone broaches the subject.
Lynne Truss, author of the best-selling punctuation book “Eats Shoots & Leaves,” wrote to her readers on the Amazon.com Web site about the impetus for her newest tome: “Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door.”
“The moment I start describing it (book) to people: ‘Basically it's about the rudeness of everyday life …’ they jump straight in with stories about all the rudeness they've encountered in the past 10 years,” Truss wrote. “The thing is: There is nothing original in being against rudeness. Everyone is against rudeness. In fact, very, very rude people object to it strongly. But why does it matter to us so much? Are we so scared of other people? Why do we spend so much of our time saying, ‘Oh, that's so RUDE’?”
Perhaps it’s because 70 percent to 80 percent of all Americans say lack of respect and common courtesy are a serious problem in this country, and six in 10 Americans say it is getting worse.
Those are the findings of the 2002 Public Agenda comprehensive study titled “Aggravating Circumstances: A Status Report of Rudeness in America,” which also found:
* 73 percent of Americans believe we treated each other with greater respect in the past.
* 62 percent say witnessing rude and disrespectful behavior bothers them a lot, and 52 percent of them said the residue from those rude episodes lingers with them for some time afterward.
In an Associated Press-Ipsos survey conducted in late August, 69 percent of Americans said we are ruder than we were 20 or 30 years ago.
And nearly half of us admit we are part of the problem. We are lax — or distracted — so we forget to hold open a door and say please and thank you. We’re so on edge we gun our engines to catch up with the dolt who just cut us off in traffic so we can one up them by waving that nasty middle finger and have little doubt about what they are reading on our lips.
Does it make us feel better?
Sometimes.
But it also reminds us of how low we have sunk.
People behaving badly
Sometimes bad behavior is only in the eyes of the recipients and the innocent bystanders — those who are ignored by store clerks, stand by helplessly as the bagger smashes the cupcakes or those who are honked at because they didn’t move fast enough.
Kearl suggests we need to distinguish between “intentional” and “unintentional” rudeness. There really are those who simply don’t know any better, Kearl said. Perhaps their parents didn’t teach them. Perhaps their parents’ parents didn’t teach their parents … and so on. According to Kearl, the onus, in part, falls on society’s elite to teach the lower class the proper social mores.
His theory may be a bit unpalatable for those of us who would like to think money and breeding should not distinguish mannered from mannerless, polite from impolite and kind from unkind.
The bigger issues may have less to do with caste and more to do with an ever-changing world where the right thing to do is a increasingly blurred line.
Do you answer your cell phone if it goes off in the middle of a conversation, or do you let it ring incessantly?
Do you take the call waiting or tolerate the continual onslaught of beeps and hiccups infiltrating an otherwise perfectly lovely and important phone conversation?
Do you respond to the idiot who in response to your opinion makes fun of your name, your heritage, your face and your IQ? If so, what do you say? “Thanks for your letter,” or “@&@%@$!-off you ever-loving %!$@##$@ and *!#%$ your mother too!”
(Probably not the latter.)
OK, there are social morons and then there are those who are genuinely confused, distracted or unaware.
What’s the big rude faux pas that really gets most people’s goats?
The #$@!& cell phone, according to nearly every rudeness poll. We dislike how we talk, where we talk, when we talk.
It drives Kearl nuts to pass a driver with a cell phone glued to his/her ear.
“When they’re in their car, they are in their own little bubble anyway. And when they are on that phone, no one knows where they are,” Kearl said.
And he’s consistently amazed that at the end of a class three-quarters of his students pop up and immediately put a cell phone to their ears.
“Who are they talking to and what are they talking about?” he asked. “Twenty years ago, we used to talk to our fellow students as they left. They will talk as if no one is around them, which also drives me nuts.”
The cell phone and the text messaging phenomenon have become such an issue that Douglas Theatres has posted “rules of theatre etiquette” in all of its theaters. And at SouthPointe Pavilions, where a few unruly, rowdy and texting-fanatic adolescents have ruined far too many movies for the general public — the theater manager now announces over the intercom at the start of every movie a warning that cell phone use, talking and misbehavior will result in the offenders and the rest of their party being removed from the theater. They will not receive a refund, and their parents (if the offenders are minors) will be called.
“It’s not only a Lincoln and Nebraska problem, it’s a nationwide problem,” said Doug Kinney, manager of Douglas Theatres in Lincoln.
“Cell phones have caused the biggest change in theater etiquette over the past 10 years,” he said.
And it’s not just the ringing and the talking. It’s also that darn blue glow that detracts from the big screen as users text message the person sitting beside them throughout the show.
However, as much as we tend to despise others’ cell phone use, increasingly we are accepting the device as a necessary nuisance — and, worse, we are joining the throng of offenders. Even Truss (“Talk to the Hand”) admits she has a cell phone and that she sends text messages.
“And sometimes while I’m talking to people I’ll say, ‘Hang on, I’ve just got to finish this text message,’” Truss said in an interview with Radar Online.
She admits it’s rude.
But it’s a practice, much like calling complete strangers by their first names, which is becoming more socially acceptable.
“I’m a complete cell phone user,” admits Monya DeBoer, marketing manager at Five Willows in Lincoln.
So while cells don’t bug her, bad table manners actually make her skin crawl.
Everyone has their pet peeves.
Rice, the Lincoln etiquette teacher, absolutely can’t stand it when people don’t hold the door for others — especially if the other person’s hands are full. She equates that poor behavior with slamming the door in someone’s face. It also drives her nuts when people (especially kids) don’t look an adult in the eye when talking to them.
Rudeness surveys find the top five goat getters are:
* Poor manners: please, thank you, you’re welcome; holding a door open; shaking hands; acknowledging a polite gesture.
* Bad language and near bad language, such as “freaking” and “b.s.”
* Disrespectful and inconsiderate behavior.
* Road rage, reckless and aggressive driving.
* Multi-tasking mid conversation — such as using an e-mail or cell phone when actually having a face-to-face conversation with another human being.
Today, the problem is more than being impolite, said Kearl.
“Rudeness is back with a new twist — violence.”
Why has it come to this?
Like so many of society’s woes, technology takes the brunt of the blame for rudeness. In an interview with several national news outlets, Peter Post, great-grandson of Emily Post and director of the Emily Post Institute, says, “Technology has allowed us to be busier today than we ever were and that’s created a disconnect between people.”
Said Kearl, “We’ve got the human critter at a different setting. We live largely in a world of strangers. If you interact under the assumption that you will never see them again, that doesn’t do a lot for being considerate.”
Jerry Bockoven, chairman of Nebraska Wesleyan University’s department of psychology, takes a broader view of manners and the human psyche.
“Rudeness is about anxiety,” Bockoven said. “When we are stressed and angry, we get short. We stop thinking about connection and emotion, and we get reactive.”
And humans have a lot to be anxious about, he said — the constant threats of war, terrorism and weather. The demands of family, work and life in general.
“If my life is filled with deadlines, if it’s filled with tension and if my anxiety is up, I don’t have time to hold the door for you. I am running from one pressure cooker to another,” he said.
Numerous polls and surveys place the rudeness blame squarely on parents.
Rice doesn’t think parents are intentionally shirking their duties or that all kids are purposely rude and disrespectful.
“The problem is, if we script our kids’ lives the way we script our lives and the way we act is the way we observed our parents … if we are always distracted and in a hurry, this is what we are teaching our kids,” Rice said.
We are so absorbed in all we have to get done in the next few hours that we fail to notice the person walking in the door behind us, or who has the right of way at a busy intersection or even notice that an acquaintance just said hello.
What has always buffered us from the anxiety, the stress, the out-of-control lives we lead is human contact, said Bockoven.
However, thanks to technology, our social, emotional and physical connections with human beings are fading. We communicate by computer, fax, cell phone. We can’t even talk to a real human when we call a business, thanks to the irksome, infuriating efficiency of automated phone systems. We shut out the madness with iPods and MP3s. We watch TV when we eat at home or in a restaurant and even when we go out to a bar with friends.
“We are disconnecting as a people,” Bockoven said. “The more we disconnect, the more we take away the buffer that helps us cope with stress and anxiety.”
Add to that technology’s instant gratification factor, and even a five-second wait to connect with a computer link, talk to a human or sit at a stoplight without chatting on our cells seems interminable.
“Computers are teaching us a fast-paced rhythm. We expect people to act like computers, and when they don’t we get short with them and we get rude with them.,” Bockoven said. “Technology’s hidden effect is that it is interrupting our relational connection. It feeds our anxiety. We are more anxious than ever and we end up rude as a result because we are walking around chronically anxious.”
What’s civilization to do?
“We have to recognize that technology is wonderful, but it cannot run us and cannot dominate us,” Bockoven said.
People need to recognize the value of connecting with others, he said.
“Take a stand that ‘I will humanize my life or my relationships,’” Bockoven said.
Rice says the answer is simple: “You just have to be kind.”
So what happens when you fall victim to an inconsiderate jerk?
“A lot of people get trapped into the idea that they need to punish people for their rudeness,” Bockoven said. “That’s silly. It isn’t going to do anything. And who made you God anyway?
“Life is too short to get upset by every rude person that comes into my world.”
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
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