Civility

So I was driving in my car, in Northern Virginia traffic, with a two year old in the backseat.  When the woman from Maryland cut me off I snapped, "Nice!  Thanks a lot!" to which the two year old responded "You're welcome, Mommy.".

Can we still function while practicing good manners?  Is it possible to ignore the woman with 50 items in the Express Lane at Safeway?  Are you capable of smiling when someone you have met 100 times introduces you by the wrong first name?  Is it beyond us to bless a stranger who has sneezed?

My paternal grandmother was a stickler for manners.  She stressed how to hold a soup spoon, how to answer the phone, in which direction the toilet paper should unroll.  It did not endear me to her.  I bristled under her tutelage.

Yet, today I find myself constantly questioning, "Was that appropriate?".  Much has been written about the death of civility in this country.  Pundits have expounded on how base the population has become.

I couldn't disagree more.

A short study of history should provide anyone with the clear prejudiced, misogynistic racist society which has flourished since the dawn of man.  The cruel workings of humanity rendered the great works of Dickens, Jouvenal, Harriet Tubman.  Reams have been written about the diabolical deeds of the Romans, Visigoths, Mongols, and Nazis.

It is not that we have denigrated.  It is that there is no longer a tolerance for these heinous behaviors; the media has routed evil and shown it to us ad nauseum.  We are no worse a species than a hundred years before; we simply know more... more about the twisted strings of the human heart and the soaring heights of compassion.

I believe in humanity.  Don't ever let anyone tell you that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket... the world has seen plenty of hell and it still manages to give rise to Mother Teresas and Dali Lamas and the hundreds of nameless souls who toil every day to leave the it a better place.  We are not worse; we simply know more and sometimes knowledge is damning.