Thank You For Not Blackberrying
While Congress labors and sweats over health care reform, let us turn to larger matters, pertaining to the ways we live together. Pertaining, specifically, to the question of what you do when you notice someone Twittering or Blackberrying in your presence rather than according you the attention you rightly deserve.
Do you shout, stomp, throw a water glass, or just sigh and accept the implied insult to your humanity, sad in the knowledge that Progress has dealt another blow to civilization.
Probably the latter is what you do, according to a recent New York Times report.
Yes, probably so. Manners don't seem to matter much these days. The Times says more than a third of 5,300 workers polled recently by Yahoo "said they frequently checked e-mail in meetings." Meanwhile, "the etiquette debate seems to be tilting in favor of Smartphone use, many executives said." Because, well, you know, when someone needs you, he needs you right now—this instant.
Who was the correspondent at the presidential press conference a month or two ago who, after his cell phone rang—not vibrated, rang—left the room to take the call? A very "now" thing to do—thumb your nose, figuratively speaking, at everyone with a different impression of your importance to the future of humanity.
Some people don't know better. In some of the university classes I taught several years ago were nice kids who thought it was fine to bring hot food into the classroom, or even to fall into the embrace of Morpheus, with heads resting on folded arms, totally tuned out from the rest of us. Well, it wasn't fine, as I had to assure them for their own benefit as well as that of the class.
The laws of civility have ever changed as the calendar flipped from page to page, era to era. I don't see—alas!—many men opening car doors for ladies these days, or taking off their caps in the house, as society once rigorously schooled us to do. Call that, if you like, the natural consequence of the women's equality movement, which tended to see male manners as soft oppression. The larger point here is that generally, for hundreds of years, there seemed to be codes that differentiated personal needs from the needs of others, and accordingly put some kindly emphasis on observance of the latter.
A lout who Blackberries his way through a meeting, a class, or any other kind of public occasion, is saying essentially to others there, "Hey—I'll decide how much of my attention you need and deserve. What I give you, that's what you need, no more, no less. Get over it."
Yes, the older generation is forever decrying the decline of manners. It's only good manners to do so—manners construed as respect for others. We don't want that respect to go aglimmering, because when it does, life—hard enough now—gets impossible. Once the louts and Blackberryists and Bluetooth shouters who make their way down the department store aisle, disconnected from any reality around them—once these types take over the public arena, you can forget the little decencies that say, "Let me do something for you."
"You?! What's your claim on my time? Who are you, pal? Why should I even care?"
The lout doesn't have to articulate these rebukes verbally. Behavior says it all. A Blackberry crackdown would be a very wholesome thing for society, to the extent we've still got such a protective covering as "society," with its varied modes and codes. Who, in an environment of radical freedom, is going to lead the crackdown? Who's got the authority, or for that matter the nerve?
Civilization never has been easy. There's this human thing, first observed in the Garden of Eden. It scorns the need for submitting personal aims to outside judgments that can be stale and wrong but likelier will prove wise, sensible, downright unavoidable if we're all to live together. Thank you for not Blackberrying.
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It angers me to no end! If I had my way, many people who I have met would have had their phones taken from them and smashed before their very eyes. To these people the "virtual reality" IS their reality.
Your piece will go unheeded in spite of or because of its brilliance. I cannot decide which.
I completely agree with this piece.
It strikes me that the rudeness goes hand in hand with other uncivil things we are submitted to on the homefront and the workplace on a daily basis:
1. calling elders / bosses (or those newly acquainted) by their first names
2. dressing "down" at work or in public (think wrinkled chinos and "crocs")
3. mowing the lawn on Sunday mornings
4. owning "loud" toys (e.g., needlessly unmuffled motorcycles or go-karts)and using them - loudly
5. having loud parties outdoors, late at night, without regard for neighbors' wishes or needs for their young children
6. parents with children no longer having priority in a line to board an aircraft
7. there no longer existing lines for boarding aircraft, replaced by "blobs" and pushing
8. parents who (in public places or in peoples' homes) allowing their children to act wild
9. rude stewardesses who inform us that they are their for our "safety" and not for our "comfort"
10. automobile driving that is increasingly chaotic - unhelped by the breakdown of simple rules such as right of way and left lane passing
The list could go on. In every direction on almost every day is one uncivil encounter after another. It becomes maddening such that one wants to avoid other people.
The indiscriminate Blackberryists/Bluetoothists among us open the toothpaste tube of technology, take a flying leap and land on it with both feet. To those within range of them: prepare to be slimed. On the other end are the Luddites, who consider their anti-technological gingivitis a badge of honor. Those in range of them risk the occasional whiff of social halitosis.
In between these extremes are most people: who exercise varying degrees of good judgment and manners in the use of Blackberrys (berries?), Bluetooths (teeth?) and similar devices.
In any case, the abuse of these gizmos and its ill effects on bystanders (not all of them innocent) are symptoms of the decay of civilization and civility. The devices themselves are mere tools, lacking in any social or moral properties.
In each of my courses, I include a section in the syllabus discussing deportment and civility. I specifically ban the use of cell phones, pagers, and other entertainment and communications equipment in the class, with the possible exception of emergency response personnel. I make a point of turning off my own cell phone before commencing each class. It works well. The barbarians may be at the gates, but I work towards civilizing them in my class rooms. Most of them simply do not know any better and are clueless when they start out. In my graduate courses, I allow eating, if it is done tastefully. Normally my students have 10 minutes between the preceding 3 hour seminar and my course. They simply do not have time to dine otherwise, and as the students are a close knit bunch in our public administration graduate program, they band together to order and eat.
Mr. Murchison, thank you for the excellent essay.
Good manners not only should be taught at the home but also at the school. Sadly, teaching proper manners is not considered "progressive" in the radically individualistic society that we live. Anyone remember the old Sidney Poitier movie "To Sir, With Love" where he teaches good manners and self-respect to uncivilized London East End cockney brats? America needs tens of thousands just like him in the schools instead of the check cashing time-servers we now have posing as teachers.
@6 Mr Leaberry
The purpose of government schools is to catechize the young and turn them into non-thinking subjects of the Empire which poses as a democracy. Remember their scolding of home-schoolers; how will your children be socialized?