The Lost Art of Civility

It seems like so many people are so busy multi-tasking with their various gadgets anymore that they are becoming increasingly ruder and less civil than before all these things became so commonplace. Add to that the electronic world of e-mail, message boards and such and it leaves people feeling freer to say things that they would never say to someone's face in public. Maybe I'm just getting older, maybe I'm just becoming a curmudgeon of sorts, but it seems to me that we are fast losing the fine art of civility. Even in public, people are less civil to one another than when I was growing up. They seem to feel free to say or do anything they please, regardless of who it offends. And I can't say that I understand this whole cultural change, either, unless it's been brought about by the electronic age in which we live and the increasing disconnectedness that it seems to create. I see people with those new attached-to-the-ear Bluetooth phones who seem to feel as if they need to be connected constantly and it just makes me wonder why. At least those ones don't ring in the middle of a church service or a concert or whatever, so I suppose those folks are being more considerate than those people who, despite being told to shut off their cell phones or put them on vibrate fail to do so and allow them to ring and interrupt a service or concert or whatever. Then they sit there and yack on them anyway in spite of what is going on around them, as if they are the only people in the world who matter or exist. Or they drive down a busy freeway while yacking, oblivious of traffic, either driving too slowly because they are too distracted by talking on their phones, or they drive erratically, weaving in and out of their lane, endangering other drivers in so doing. I don't know, call me old fashioned, but it just seems to me that the very notion of consideration for others has begun to vanish from our landscape. There is a very funny book about this topic called "Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door" by Lynne Truss, author of the equally funny "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference", a complaint about the sheer ignorance of grammar in our society and why it matters. The expression "Talk to the hand" is more common than you think. It implies, "I am ignoring you and what you're saying, so.....talk to the hand", accompanied by the gesture of holding your hand up, palm out. I tell you, working in an inner city library will teach you a great deal about social mores and how people behave. For some reason, if you work in customer service, people feel free to walk all over you and treat you like a piece of dirt, not realizing that you're there to make an honest buck, not to make their lives difficult. But again, this is just a part of a larger social problem of manners taking a back seat to people's feelings of self importance mattering more than their behavior. They're always right and the world is always wrong and that's that. Well, all I can say is that I doubt that this sort of thing will change very soon, if ever. So the best thing we who still remember civility can do is to try to set a good example of what it means to be a good and decent soul and teach by example and hope against all hope that it rubs off. Then again, that's the optimist in me. The pessimist knows better.