~Mary Wilson Little
Poilite behavior has been taught to us from a young age as the supreme virtue one should put above everything else when judging a person. As the long standing "golden rule", kindness, much like many other aspects of our changing society, has been compartmentalized into a few pharses of meaningless jibber-jabber in order to maximize efficiency. In a world where politeness is considered necessary to the point where lies and trivial statements pollute our dialogue, where does the deception finnaly give way to purposefull empathy?
When politeness becomes reduced to simple phrases, true intent or true feelings are hidden from the person recieving that politeness. Once when I recently met a friend of mine that had gone to college she immedietly entreated me that we "absolutely had to go to lunch sometime" and I enthusiastically agreed knowing well that the get together was never going to happen. So why do we continue to whole-heartedly put on displays of kindness when we in fact have no plan on actually living up to the promise? My theory is that all human beings are lazy, people-pleasing realists. Kindness can be shown in a variety of ways that doesn't include falsly promising to a future meal or asking without actually caring about how someone's day went but in terms of efficiency those ways "take too long". Fairytales like Cinderella, especially in the popular reboot spout the advice to "have courage and be kind" as if kindness is this monumentally important characteristic of a person that places them on a pedastel higher than others who don't wish to waste the time lying to others just to make them feel good. Throughout our history, kindness has been always been taught as a necessary trait, however the way to show kindness has been predominatly classified as by exchanging polite niceties. Kindness is a requirement that overall can do only good for a person's character, however, teaching a child that they shouldn't stand up for themselves or yell at another person just because it isn't "kind" is nonsense. There is a time and a place for politeness, it should not be regarded as an expectation for every single event.
Politeness can clutter up a situation to the the point where the actual point of conversation it almost completely bypassed in the whilwind of civility. Directness can sometimes be seen a turn-off trait in a person, however, it also shows determination and a drive to get things done without having to pander to society's expectation of conversational dialogue. Often those who are naturally more gifted than others at conversing using polite annecdotes or meaningless politeness tend to get favored more than those who do hard work but don't spend time playing politics. This behavior has a name in our society and that name is: suck-up. Of course, being a suck-up is an admonished thing to become right? But if we raise children to believe that politeness is more necessary than hard work and true kindness towards those they actually care about, we as a society are setting them up believing that the void between good and bad consists of a few missed, "how are you"s and "how was your day"s.
Concluding the end of a very unpopular opinion, the clarification that kindness is still important to teach children must be made. It is also necessary to tell them that in our society it is almost impossible to get forward without kissing a few butts, and that is simply the sad truth of the world we live in which is riddled with polite and meaningless discourse. Thomas Jefferson, one of the most skilled politeists (can that be a thing?) of all time who had to write a declaration of war while still being as polite as possible admitted that politeness is nothing more than artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
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| An example of a truly raw expression of emotion rather than meaningless, polite, niceties. (Sorry Miss Valentino, Ricky made me do it) |
