Temptations to Bad Manners

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines why ordinary forms of social rudeness can be appealing. Having ordinary good manners largely consists in developing good habits rather than deciding in individual cases to be polite. This chapter considers why we are resistant to developing such habits. It considers common and historical complaints against good manners, most especially the criticism that manners involve fakery and the sense that manners are dreary and joyless. These complaints represent useful forms of skepticism but can also, the chapter argues, seed self-deception. For we are far more likely to find joyful honesty in our own bad manners than in the bad manners of others. So too, the world of honesty and fun we associate with slack in manners is not the world we are likely to get. Instead, bad manners will fall hardest on those with the least.