Conversational Lubricants

For some people the writings of Theodore Dalrymple are an acquired taste. I do not count myself in that group. I find Dalrymple’s writings to be an unalloyed delight, for reasons that I shall try to make clear in this post.

After all, Dalrymple is a retired psychiatrist and man of letters whose tastes run toward the antiquated. This makes him my kind of guy.

In a recent column on “The Pleasures of Perfidy” Dalrymple explains that one day he chanced upon a rather old book about how best to word one’s epistolary productions. Link here.

The book in question is Robert Pelham’s: How Shall I Word It? – a Letter Writer for Men and Women on Domestic and Business Subjects.  It was first published in 1901.

I am grateful to Ari Mendelson for having brought the column to my attention.

One might say that the book, which I have not read, offers some lessons in how to sharpen your communication skills. I venture that in many quarters these lessons will be unwelcome.

Naturally, Pelham’s book is seriously out of date. Between twitter and texting we seem to have opted for brevity. No one writes florid missives in the style of Henry James any more, and very few people torment themselves over questions of how best to phrase a request or to deny an entreaty.

They are wrong to ignore this aspect of human communications, but such is modern life.

In Pelham’s world, people worked very, very hard to find the most tactful expression of their thoughts and feelings. They twisted their sentences into knots in order to void giving offense.

His was a world where people were very, very slow to take offense. When they did, they did not gripe, complain, or file grievances, but defended themselves with the kind of decorum that their world would have thought proper.

Evidently, Pelham's book met with considerable success, since Dalrymple came upon an edition dated 1943.

Speaking about the copy he found, he remarked: “This edition was published in August, 1943, at the height of the war, when extermination was under full swing. It is curious to think that, while people were being gassed at one end of Europe, other people were fretting about how to address a letter correctly to a Dowager Duchess. Since then, of course (and not unconnectedly), vulgarity, being democratically achievable by all, has become a virtue, and daintiness a kind of treason to the self.”

It might be hard for us to imagine since we live in a world where the least offense becomes a convenient excuse to dispense with propriety and give full voice to our outrage, but etiquette was serious business in England. So serious that even a major war was not considered to be sufficient reason to encourage vulgar behavior.

As Dalrymple suggests, we have long since taken our leave of such civilized niceties.

In our new world, we all believe that we should say what we have to say, straight from the heart or the gut, as you will, and should say it directly and honestly, regardless of the effect that it may have on the hapless recipient.

The notion that you might say the same thing politely or impolitely, and that you should aspire to the former, seems not to have penetrated the modern consciousness.

This means that what we call open, honest, and direct communication is also lazy communication. It requires the least effort, and, dare I say, the least feel for the feelings of others.

Dalrymple explains: “On the other hand, it [polite expression] requires effort, discipline and self-control in its fulfillment; it does not suggest that you should just do the easiest thing, take the line of least resistance, on all possible occasions. It is a stimulus to self-respect and is other-regarding; for to make a good impression, you have to put yourself in the position of others.”

Looking to say things in the right way, so as best to lubricate your conversations, to say nothing of your relationships, requires a number of character traits that have long since fallen into desuetude.

I do recognize the great challenge of lubricating without being unctuous, but I will leave that for another day.

By now I am sure you are looking forward to reading some of Pelham’s archaic expressions.

I would recommend that we look at them in the right spirit. We should ask ourselves why we do not even try to craft sentences that demonstrate a similar degree of civility, courtesy, and respect.

I would add that none of these expressions involves lying. They are alternative ways of expressing something that requires expression.

One example concerns the rather quaint notion of a man’s fiancee appearing to be too much of a flirt. The man does not confront her directly, to her face, with an accusation. He sends off a missive expressing his dismay.

Pelham’s formulation looks like this: “I feel sure that in your case it simply arose from a love of enjoyment, and the exuberance of our spirits, but if it gives you pleasure to amuse yourself by coquetting with other men at the expense of my feelings, I am deeply disappointed in you.”

Note that the letter does not contain any accusations. It does express his feelings. It is about the appearance of impropriety. There once was a time when people cared about such things. And he does not threaten the woman; it only seeks to bring to her attention what he had espied.

How should the lady respond? According to Pelham she should write: “Your words have stung me deeply, for, as you say, no self-respecting woman likes to be called a flirt, and I am not one.”

Most modern relationships are not shipwrecked on the rocks of excessive flirting. Can you imagine a modern couple worrying itself about an appearance of flirtatiousness?

In the interest of full disclosure, I did hear of a case a few years ago where a woman’s tendency to flirt openly with other men in front of her significant other did cause her relationship to disintegrate.She was, dare I say, seriously incommoded by the break up, but maintained that it was her constitutional right to flirt, and besides, she had not cheated.

The late Victorian lady denied the accusation and seems to have apologized for having given her fiance or anyone else the impression that she had been behaving improperly.

But then, she managed to assert her dignity and self-respect, by adding: “Having made my apology, I am desirous of making you withdraw your harsh words.”

Meaning: it’s time for you to eat your words!

As a picture of late Victorian mores, this exchange tells us that women were not expected to be weak and pliant, tools in the hands of the patriarchy. They were expected to assert and defend their dignity.

Dalrymple asks whether human relationships conducted in so polite a fashion will necessarily become tepid, lacking in passion.

At the least, they will be lacking in drama. Considering the effort these people made to prevent misunderstandings from escalating into wars, they must not have believed that friction was the royal road to intimacy.

Now, let’s look at another highly awkward human problem, the one where you might feel obliged to reject someone with whom you have been romantically involved, even engaged to.

I would guess that most people today do not know how to effect an elegant rejection, and perhaps for that reason they tend to hang on to relationships longer than they should.

The examples from Pelham’s book are too formal and too polite for anyone to adopt today, but they do show how you can deliver bad news while trying your best not to hurt the other person’s feelings or to act as the perfect clod.

A woman who is calling off her engagement might write as follows: “Week after week I have put off writing this letter to you partly because of the pain I know it will inflict on you, and partly in the hope that time might do away with the necessity for writing it, for it is to tell you that I do not and cannot feel for you that deep love which a woman should feel for the man she intends to marry.”

The information is clear and to the point. Yet, the woman is showing respect for herself and her fiance.

Her reputation will be somewhat damaged by her failure to go through with her marriage, but the wording of her response will at least attenuate some of the damage.

If you would like to measure how much we have lost, I would recommend a quick reading of a song by Sara Bareilles.

The song, entitled “King of Anything” is a self-righteous display of contempt and arrogance toward a man she is dismissing from her life. Puffed up on her own indignation, she treats him like an unwelcome piece of lint on her sweater.

Some people thrill to the girlpower that seems manifest in the song, but it is really a declaration of war. It does not assert power; it shows off her own emotional incontinence.

The verses:

"Keep drinking coffee, stare me down across the table
While I look outside
So many things I’d say if only I were able
But I just keep quiet and count the cars that pass by

"You’ve got opinions, man
We’re all entitled to ‘em, but I never asked
So let me thank you for your time, and try not to waste anymore of mine
And get out of here fast

"I hate to break it to you babe, but I’m not drowning
There’s no one here to save

"Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?"

Anyone who can dismiss a former lover with that kind of  contempt, all the while blaming it entirely on him, is someone you seriously do not want to get involved with.

Forewarned is forearmed.

The Chinese Way to Promote Civility

When we want to promote civility, we often resort of pompous exhortations to good behavior.

Respect your fellow citizens, maintain a civil tone, be courteous and polite… all of these are well and good. I support them wholeheartedly.

Unfortunately, telling people to improve their table manners or to put the trash in the waste basket is not enough to improve civility.

It takes something more. And the something more is often absent from all of the calls for civility.

That something more is a penalty for incivility. Cultures that value civility have strict sanctions for incivility. Behave badly and you are shamed, shunned, or publicly embarrassed.

Shaming promotes civility; guilt does not.

In a shame culture, a culture that values civility, you are not going to be indicted or prosecuted for spitting or jaywalking, but you are going to be held up to public ridicule. When your name or face appears in the local newspaper, your reputation as a good citizen, a model of civility, will suffer serious damage.

Nowadays, this is what has been happening in the city of Wuhan, China. There, the local newspaper, the Wuhan Daily News has been publishing the names and the faces of those whose behavior is egregiously uncivil. Link here.

Right now, the list is limited to those who run red lights, park haphazardly, jaywalk, or litter.

Why this new concern for civility?

The local authorities were so impressed by the outbreak of civil behavior in Japan after the recent earthquake and tsunami, that they felt ashamed of the bad behavior of their own citizens. So they decided that they would do something to tamp down incivility.

Of course, some consider that the government is misusing its power, by keeping too close a watch on public behavior.

But, public behavior is, by definition, public. The government is not putting hidden cameras into everyone’s dining room to find out who chews with his mouth open.

Surely, the issue is subject to debate. We Americans have laws against littering and jaywalking. I doubt that they are ever enforced.

Thus, they serve a  non-purpose. Since they do not stop littering and jaywalking, they teach people that there is no real price to be paid for breaches of decorum.

In smaller communities people are more likely to behave civilly in public. When everyone knows everyone else, people who litter and jaywalk cannot remain anonymous. When your good name and your public reputation are on the line, you are more likely to behave better.

The officials in Wuhan are applying the rules of a small community to a larger city.

They understood that people are more likely to behave civilly if there is a sanction for incivility. Telling people to do the right thing does not suffice.

What Is Civility?

For the past few weeks, everyone has been paying lip service to civility. If that were all we needed, we would now be awash in civility.

Of course, we do not feel more civil. We feel like we have been sprayed with the byproducts of excessive lip service: spittle and drool.

There’s no civility in that.

Nor is there any civility in lecturing people about the need for civility. If you want people to be more civil, set a good example. As John Podhoretz pointed out, when the crowd at the memorial service cheers raucously, it is not a civil moment.

Let’s start over, by trying to understand what civility is. Right now, most people think it’s just another word for nice. They think that civil is the opposite of angry.

On both counts, they are seriously mistaken. Which may explain why we are not very civil.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with anger. Sometimes anger is the only right emotion. And you don’t always need to keep it to yourself.

If a politician promises one thing and delivers another, he has defrauded you. If you do not feel even a twinge of anger, you are a clod.

Aristotle said that the right anger is found at the mean between too much and too little anger. If your anger is proportionate, you should express it civilly. That means, Aristotle says, expressing it: “to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way….”

If you lose control of the emotion and fail to express it within the confines of polite discourse, you are not being civil.

Kind and nice are not always civil and are not always right. If someone attacks you, physically or morally, responding with kindness is not civil; it is pusillanimous.

In truth, civility is not about how you feel. It is about how you act toward other people. Civility is as civility does.

As a code of conduct, civility entails politeness, courtesy, and good manners. It’s opposite is rude, crude, coarse, vulgar, and tactless.

Your soul can be awash in lovely sentiments, but if you don’t know how to chew with your mouth closed, you will not be behaving civilly.

You may feel all of the world’s gratitude, but if you fail to send a thank-you note, you are being rude.

Civility is not about how you feel, but about how you make others feel.

When people confuse civility with kindness they are recommending that you go out and get some therapy.

They are telling you to purge your negative emotions and to get in touch with your warm, fuzzy ones.

If you reject therapy, civility’s proponents will happily police your language, the better to cleanse it of any words that might give offense.

Neutering your language is not a sign of civility. It is a sign of oppression.

If you want to become more civil, you should not be rummaging around in the depths of your soul to conjure up some niceness. You should be logging on to Amazon to purchase a few volumes of Miss Manners.

Civility lies in formal gestures, in rituals and ceremonies. It does not lie in the full and open expression of feeling.

If you want to practice civility, you should do so in all of your behavior, whether in everyday etiquette or in political debates.

When it comes to political debate, civility lies in the formal gestures of respect that legislators seem always to use: “the distinguished gentleman,” “my esteemed colleague,” “my dear friend.”

These are not lip service. They are gestures of respect. They assert, openly and actively, that disagreements are not personal. They allow a full and open airing of each side of the argument.

We have been losing our civility for decades now. It was a casualty of the 1960s counterculture. Incivility became de rigueur when the antiwar movement declared war against the Vietnam war.

Rather than present their arguments civilly, young radicals believed that they could only advance their cause by being revolting.

Led by the Weathermen they organized a mock insurrection, called Days of Rage, at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Of course, they had to fight in the streets. Otherwise people would have thought that they were against the war because they were cowards.

Even for those who were not allied with William Ayers, the counterculture glorified rudeness and made it a way of life. It insisted on the virtue of spontaneous enthusiasm over the polite and respectful performance of social rituals.

With the election of George W. Bush and the Iraq War the antiwar movement was roused from its torpor. The armies of incivility awoke and ramped up the rhetoric and heaped vitriol on anyone who supported Bush and/or the war.

Compared to the violent rhetoric thrown at the Bush administration, Tea Party activists who showed up at Town Hall meetings and exercised their rights to free speech decorously, if somewhat loudly, were amateurs.

Toxic Rudeness

For many years now I, with others, have been alarmed at the level of rudeness that pervades our society. I have joined those who have favored a return to courtesy, decorum, and polite behavior.

If your life is filled with repeated insults, broken appointments, and failures to show respect, you will be traumatized and will suffer the consequences.

Most recently, I discussed the problem in a post entitled, “Frank Rich Misses the ‘50’s.” In it I argued that the 60s counterculture had inaugurated a wave of systematic rudeness that has damaged the American psyche.

I was happy to welcome Frank Rich to the fold and noted, with him, that the last time people truly practiced respect, courtesy, tact, and consideration was the 1950s.

Considering how much the ‘50s were maligned by the Vietnam era counterculture, it was a point well worth emphasizing.

Now, new studies confirm my and Rich’s opinion. It is not good news.

As Douglas Fields reports, recent neuroscientific research has shown that rudeness is a neurotoxin. Submit a developing human being to rudeness and offensive behavior, and you will be damaging its brain. Link here.

In Fields’ words: “A disrespectful, stressful social environment is a neurotoxin for the brain and psyche, and the scars are permanent.”

Given that I wrote about a similar comparison in my book on Saving Face, I was struck by the way Fields compared American culture and a Japanese culture that cares about “face.”

In his words: “The contrast between the brash, comparatively disrespectful behavior of Americans today and the courtesy, formal manners, civil discourse, polite behavior and respect for others regardless of social status that is evident in Japanese society is striking.”

Finally, Fields explains how formal, ritualized behavior reduces social stress and protects us from neurotoxins.

He writes: “As the size of the group increases, so do the number of interactions between individuals, thus raising the level of stress if not controlled by formal, stereotyped behavior, which in human society is called ‘manners.’ The formal ‘Yes, Sir, Yes, Ma'am,’ is not a showy embellishment in the military; strict respect and formal polite discourse are the hub of the wheel in any effective and cohesive social structure. True, many chafe under a system of behavior that is overly rigid, as do many young Japanese, but my point is that these polite and formalized behaviors reduce stress in a stressful situation that arises from being an individual in a complex society. Stress is a neurotoxin, especially during development of a child's brain.”

Point well taken.

The Civility Trap

We all favor civil discourse. We favor good manners, respect, courtesy, and rational deliberation. We all embrace the virtues of moderation, temperance, and adult behavior.

In fact, some of us are so enamored of civility that we routinely trash people who do not agree with us… for not being sufficiently civil.

Civility is easier to preach than to practice. Even the most fervent adepts of civility seem often to be prey to passionate enthusiasm, spontaneous outbursts, and emotional authenticity.

Civility involves discipline. If you can’t restrain yourself because you feel so strongly about something, at least have the good grace not to preach civility.

Now, in response to the success of the Tea Party, and rising from the rubble of what used to be called the Coffee Party, a new group called “No Labels” is about to go public with a manifesto in favor of civil discourse.

The group calls itself, “No Labels,” because it wants to say that people are people, not labels. Nice to see that they have mastered the art of tautology. If that’s the best concept they could come up with, I do not hold out too much hope for their future success.

Launched with the help of notably uncivil types like Joe Scarborough and Michael Bloomberg, the new group will pretend to bridge the partisan divide that apparently is destroying the nation.

For those of who thought that citizens expressed their political preferences civilly when they vote, the new group is here to tell them that their most recent vote fostered incivility.

Michael Bloomberg, when he was not out promoting civil discourse, recently traveled to Hong Kong to denounce the American electorate as a bunch of fools. How else could they have filled the Congress with a bunch of illiterates who do not even have passports.

Given the timing of Bloomberg’s remarks, one can only conclude that he is referring to Republicans.

Civility is easier preached than practiced.

But perhaps people like Bloomberg and his fellow civilists do not really quite understand what civility is.

After all, civility is as civility does. You can preach civility from the pulpit, but if you act like an intemperate autocrat everyone is going to think that you are using civility to advance a more personal and more devious agenda… like a presidential candidacy.

One suspects that this push for civility is an attempt to compromise the success of the Republican party. None of these proponents of civility were denouncing Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats for passing an agenda that they knew the American people did not want.

There is nothing civil about showing disrespect for the will of the American people.

Nor did the civility caucus call out Democrats for refusing to allow congressional Republicans to participate in the legislative process, only to blame them for saying No. 

During the first two years of the Obama presidency our president had exactly one private meeting with the leader of the Republican Senate minority.

Where’s the civility in that? And what did the civility mongers have to say about it?

And where was the civility caucus when those who disagreed with Barack Obama were routinely denounced as ignorant racists?

Do they think that people should seek out a civil middle ground, by compromising the point and accepting that they are half-witted semi-racists?

Again, civility is as civility does. If you are serious about civility, you need, above all else, to set an example of civil behavior.

Already, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has called out Joe Scarborough for a decidedly uncivil ad hominem (or ad feminam) attack on Sarah Palin. Attacking a person instead of an argument is the core of political incivility. Link here.

Here’s Scarborough’s version of civil discourse? “What man or mouse with a fully functioning human brain and a résumé as thin as Palin’s would flirt with a presidential run?”  Link here.

As it happens, Scarborough is peeved because Sarah Palin responded to former first lady Barbara Bush’s express wish that Palin stay in Alaska.

Barbara Bush has a right to her opinion. And she has a right to express it in piquant prose. But doesn’t Sarah Palin have a right to respond? If she chooses to respond, does that allow Joe Scarborough to fling rhetorical dirt at her, all the while thinking that he is a master of civility?

Perhaps Scarborough would have preferred that Palin take the path that George W. Bush took when he refused to respond to the attacks that were leveled at his presidency.

Even today, Bush insists that it would have been beneath the dignity of his office to respond to the slanders and slurs. Yet, behavior that might be beneath the dignity of the president himself would surely not be beneath the dignity of those who speak on his behalf.

If you do not respond to attacks, don’t you become a political pinata and don’t you risk leading your party to ignominious defeat?

Civility is well and good when both parties to a discussion refrain from personal attacks and behave with proper decorum and respect. Responding to attacks decorously is not the same as not responding at all. The latter promotes incivility because it lets it stand.

Civility does not tell you to submit to  calumny, to act as though it were true. It’s certainly civil to turn the other cheek, but after a while you run out of cheeks and you need to fight back, lest you appear to accept that uncivil discourse contains the truth.

If Scarborough is not the finest example of civil discourse, what about the man who seems to want to use “No Labels” as a means to launch an independent bid for the presidency: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Link here.

When last we saw Mayor Bloomberg exercising civility, he was defending the Ground Zero mosque by telling its detractors to shut up and go away.

He knew better; he understood the Constitution; he was right; no one else had a right to an opinion. If the people of New York and the people of America found the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero to be offensive, then they had merely to submit to the will of Michael Bloomberg and Imam Rauf and let it happen.

But, back to the basic question: Is this “No Label” group using civility to set a trap?

Considering that many of its proponents regularly engage in flagrant uncivil behavior, we must assume that it has another purpose in mind. It might want to create a political base from which Michael Bloomberg can run for president. Or it might want to lure the newly resurgent Republican party into giving back what it gained at the ballot box. For now we cannot know its ultimate goal.

One thing we do know: before jumping on the civility bandwagon, find out who is in the driver’s seat.

Has Shame Lost Its Sting?

It's one thing to ask why we are so interested in scandal. Following Laura Kipnis I did it two weeks ago. Link here.

It's quite a different thing to ask what happens to the culture when scandal becomes a staple of everyone's mental diet, and what we should do when it does.

Laura Kipnis addresses those questions today, as part of her abbreviated presentation of her book: How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior. Link to her new essay here.

Given the new media, and especially given the prevalence of social media, the chances for public exposure and humiliation have been multiplying.

Aspects of personal life that would never have been revealed have become subjects of everyday conversation. Images that were reserved for intimate moments are on public view on the internet.

We have, as a result, become desensitized to scandal. When a major public figure like Pres. Bill Clinton is caught with his pants down, we express appropriate horror and then quickly forgive him his indiscretion. Within two years of the Lewinsky scandal Bill Clinton was back on top of the world.

Kipnis argues that we are fast losing our sense of shame, and since shame is the emotion that regulates the distinction between what is fit for public consumption and what must always remain private, the boundary between public and private is disappearing.


I consider her point well taken, though there are also some counterexamples that are worthy of attention. Bill Clinton might have overcome his personal scandal, but, by all reports, Monica Lewinsky has not.

Kipnis does not seem to be concerned about it, but when you break down the barrier between public and private, when you allow private matters to seep over into public interactions, you are going to undermine decorum and propriety, making it more difficult, if not impossible, to function with a harmonious community.

How can people deal with the culture's loss of a sense of the importance of shame. Many people have tried to pretend that exposure is no big deal. The prevalence of confessional memoirs and high school sexting tells us that many people are trying to reduce the shame attendant on overexposure by inducing more people to expose more of their private life.

Shame isolates and ostracizes and rejects people. If everyone is doing the same thing, if everyone is equally exposed, then there will be less of a feeling of being a pariah.

Kipnis also recommends that we deal with this situation by becoming addicted to scandal. I suppose that this is a variant on the addiction to pornography, pornoholism.

I imagine that she is being provocative by using the word addiction, but my own observations of addicts would not lead me to recommend that anyone become addicted to anything.

We can revel in bad behavior, especially the bad behavior of others, and feel that we have just found a new and innocent diversion. And yet, the more we enjoy bad behavior, the more entertaining we find it, the more people will be induced and enticed to behave badly. The more people behave badly the more dysfunctional society will become.

You cannot run a business or a family if you are constantly distracted from the task at hand by the latest scandal. Such addictive preoccupations are anything but economical. They are, dare I say, decadent. And decadent cultures, as much fun as they must be, end being poorer for as much.

If shame has lost its sting, the reason must be that we have become numbed to it. For all the thrills we gain from each day's new scandal, it is not necessarily a good thing to dull the emotional barometer that tells you when you have been offended or demeaned, or when you have simply done wrong or failed.

If you are sensitized to insult you can address one the first time it happens. If you are desensitized, you will be absorbing a serious amount of abuse before you start feeling emotional pain. By then you will no longer be able to respond temperately, but will feel compelled to seek justice for a pattern of abuse.

And this same shame, when it is functioning correctly, will also  tell you when you have made a mistake, when you have gone astray, when you have failed yourself or others. No shame, no feelings of having failed. No feelings of having failed, an excessive confidence, even an arrogance, about your own abilities.

You may think that there is something good about overcoming shame, because shame is the most painful emotion, and we do want to protect people from pain. Yet, toying with human nature is usually a bad idea.

When people have lost their sense of shame they behave more rudely, they will insult you with impunity, will abuse you and invade your privacy, and will feel that they have a right to be offensive, vulgar, and generally disrespectful.

People will no longer get along; they will act out psychodramas. Their lives will be consumed in the passions that are provoked by bad behavior.

In a culture that extols bad behavior work does not get done, people do not have satisfying relationships-- either friendly or erotic-- and they do not know how to cooperate, collaborate, or live harmoniously in community.

If shame regulates behavior; if it promotes good behavior and shows how to deal with bad behavior to ensure that it be less likely to be repeated, what happens when we lose our sense of shame? How are we to know good from bad behavior, right from wrong, what we should do and what we shouldn't even think of doing?

If shame does not work, then a culture will fall back on guilt as a regulator. If it no longer makes sense to ostracize people-- that being the primary sanction in a shame culture-- then we will have to punish them when they misbehave.

Many people find the guilt/punishment model more liberating than the shaming model. As a culture we only punish the most grievous transgressions. A guilt culture will punish you for committing grand larceny; a shame culture will shame you for being rude and disrespectful, and sometimes, even for looking or acting strange.

Even though a guilt culture tolerates more bad behavior, it also produces a dysfunctional social environment.

But what happens in a guilt culture when people misbehave, insult and offend and abuse their neighbors? These are not crimes; they do not do not gain you a place in the local penitentiary.

The culture deals with them by filing lawsuits. Bad behavior is regulated through the system of tort law. When a simple apology will not do, when a pledge not to offend again does not cut it, people decide that they can only gain justice by suing, thus, punishing the offending party-- not by taking his time or his hand or his life-- but by taking his money or his property.

What's Wrong with New York?

Imagine yourself a cultural anthropologist a few centuries hence. You are studying New York City at the turn of the millennium, trying to figure out how it lost its global preeminence. How did New York lose its place as center of the world ?

You have been digging up shards of broken pottery, have examined scores of movies and television shows, and are hard at work on the print media. Still the question is hanging over you: What went wrong with New York?

Then, unexpectedly, you light on a passage by Naomi Wolf, a leading feminist of the time, describing a strange custom that had metastasized through a segment of New York's elite. Link here.

Would do you make of it?

In Wolf's words: "Consider this typical exchange among successful, affluent, educated women in Manhattan where I live. These are women who have everything that feminism, Western culture and consumer society define as highly valuable: income; choices; stylishness; fascinating, high-status work; rich and equitable, if demanding, family lives. Yet among themselves the question 'How are you?' is almost never followed by 'Great.'

"In fact, if someone in this realm asks me how I am and I smile and say, 'Everything's good, thank heavens! Kids are healthy, partner's great, work is going well,' people gaze at me blankly for a beat, as if I have just gotten off the bus from a small town in a forgotten agricultural region. For them, it is more socially acceptable to answer the question with a list of complaints: too busy, workload too heavy, contractors on the new addition taking forever. If you are closer friends, you can add teenagers acting out and college applications too demanding."

Some of you who do not live in New York might have found some of my posts about the culture of complaint to be a bit exaggerated, so perhaps Wolf's experience will show that I did not make it all up.

I hope you will not be disappointed if I do not take up Wolf's theoretical challenge and read her description of this strange and disconcerting custom as a reflection on feminism. I do tend to believe that feminism does promote incivility, but I also believe that it belongs to a larger countercultural movement that has been working long and hard to undermine civility, formality, respect, and common courtesy.

If you are a cultural anthropologist you will be most interested in the way the everyday ritual of greeting people, a ritual that connects people socially, was deformed into something that is, to Naomi Wolf, off-putting. You will be asking how the simple question, How are you?, became an invitation to pour out your heart about everything that is wrong in your life.

You might well conclude that this ritual deformity represents everything that was wrong with New York. Clearly, New Yorkers had purposefully abandoned the art of getting along.

Human connection, the affirmation of our belonging to a social group, occurs through formalities like the ritual exchange of greetings. How are you? is not, as Miss Manners has been at pains to point out, an invitation to assert your individuality.

Formal greetings require that you share good news, that you put a positive spin on things. You want to lift up your friend's spirit, make him happy to see you, and make him look forward to seeing you again. You do not, off the top, want to burden him with your problems.

When you smile and greet a friend with the news that your life is going well, you are making yourself more likeable. If you were wondering why I have been emphasizing the importance of being likeable, you can see from Naomi Wolf's experience that far too many sophisticated New Yorkers are anything but.

In a social world saturated by narcissism no one seems to care about how anyone else feels. Everyone seems to believe that the only authentic communication involves complaining about everything that is going wrong.

I should mention that these women are also engaging in ritualized bragging. They are asserting that they have full lives, with the complicated problems that torment the well-healed. They are certainly being rude, but they are also asserting their positions on a social hierarchy.

Of course, bragging is just another form of narcissism. More importantly, these people find it so important to complain that they have incorporated it into the most innocent social ritual... the gesture of greeting a friend.

Wherever did they get such an idea? However did they learn such a habit?

It is clear to me, as a denizen of this world, that they learned it in therapy. Some of you have suggested that I have in these posts been offering something of a caricature of therapy and the therapy culture. Now you see, via Naomi Wolf, that I may have a point.

I do not want to suggest that all therapists teach their patients to be chronic complainers. But, as I said a few days ago, if a Harvard psychiatrist has to put up a sign in his office saying: Thou Shalt Not Whine, there must be quite a bit of it around.

Whatever happens in the offices of individual therapists, we do know that the culture creates expectations about therapy and the culture defines the right and wrong ways to meet and greet other people in the course of a day. We all know by now that therapists who establish a good human connection with their patients provide better and more effective treatment.

If so, they must be spending a large part of their time countering the noxious influences that persist in the therapy culture, and the bad habits that this culture has made into common discourtesy.

Even if a therapist has learned from cognitive theory to teach his patients to balance the good with the bad, the fact remains that far too many people, influenced either by personal experiences of therapy or the therapy culture at large, have come to believe that they should reject formality in favor of authenticity. And they have come to believe that complaining about everything that is wrong is the most authentic communication.

Hopefully, future cultural anthropologists will be able to sort it all out.

Coaching Lessons: The Rule of Three

How do you deal with rudeness? What is the right response to impoliteness, insults, and impudence? What do you do when someone treats you with disrespect, whether intentional or accidental?

The question often comes up in discussions of rudeness, but we rarely have anything like a rule, a guideline, that tells us when to ignore it and when to respond.

Dare I say, there's rudeness and there's rudeness. No rule applies to every different kind of rudeness. But Peter Bregman's rule, which he calls the rule of three, feels as good as any that I have seen. Link here.

Bregman applies this rule, or better, he shows how it can be applied to workplace situations, especially those where an employee or a colleague commits minor infractions against corporate decorum.

It matters that we sensitize ourselves to these minor breaches, because it is much better to clarify a relationship when the problems are less emotionally charged and less costly.

If you want to judge someone's character, it is best to look for the small things. In that way you will not be too shocked when you discover that the person's character is wanting in relation to more vital issues.

Bregman offers the case of Anne, who was, on one occasion, ten minutes late to a client meeting. Bregman noticed her tardiness and said nothing. Anyone can be late for reasons beyond her control.

Second, Anne handed in a report two hours later than she had promised. Bregman started thinking that he was seeing a pattern of bad behavior emerge. Still, she might have been interrupted. His judgment was taking form, but it was not clear enough to merit an intervention.

Third, Anne bowed out of a conference call with a colleague, in an email, without offering an explanation. At that point Bregman decided that he had to address the pattern.

I will emphasize, as does Bregman, that none of these faults were costly for the company. Were it not for their indication of a certain carelessness toward professional duties, he could easily have overlooked them.

But, as I said, it is better to help Anne to correct her behavior and improve her character before she commits a fault that costs the company an account.

If Bregman had intervened after the first lapse, he would have looked overly sensitive, as though he were taking a random occurrence personally. It might have appeared that he was overcome with personal pique, and this would have drawn attention away from Anne's behavior.

If he had intervened after the second lapse, he might have looked overly critical, as though he were jumping on her for situations that were out of her control. Anne might have been late to the meeting because of an unavoidable traffic tie-up, and she might have had to hand in the report late because some she was unexpectedly forced to run out to pick up a child from school. Twice forms a pattern, but it the presumption of good character is sufficient to override two errors.

After the third lapse, Bregman says that he had to confront her. For my part I would not avoid the notion of confrontation. Many people will read the word confrontation and think that they should, under such circumstances, adopt a confrontational tone.

Bregman wants simply to bring the issue to Anne's attention. He does not want to attack her; he does not want to accuse her of anything; he wants to give her the opportunity to recognize that she has been developing a reputation for being unreliable and untrustworthy, and that, if it continues, the behavior will compromise her prospects for career advancement.

So, the rule is: when someone offends you the first time, notice it, and let it go. When he offends you the second time, register it as evidence of a developing pattern, and do not say anything. When he offends you the third time, you are within your rights to bring it to his attention. After the third time there can be little question of your overreacting, of being overly sensitive, or of looking for a fight.

Of course, the larger issue is whether or not there is something magical about the number three? I mean that semi-seriously.

For example, I have long advocated written thank-you notes. Everyone who has anything to say about etiquette and decorum says the same. I have made something like an original contribution in saying that a sincere and thoughtful thank-you note should contain three, and exactly three, sentences.

Strangers Acting Rudely

I've blogged about this before, but the question is worth more reflection: What should you do when strangers have bad manners? How far can you go to ensure that everyone demonstrates proper decorum in public?

A previous post of mine is here. Grotts' post is here.

Do you have the right or the duty to correct ill mannered strangers? If you do so, will you be striking a blow for civility or will you be aggravating the problem.

My answer, and that of Lisa Grotts and several other authoritative voices on etiquette, is: You do not have the right and you should not do it. As one writer so aptly put it: two rudes don't make a polite.

Of course, your best approach is almost always to ignore the behavior and refuse to engage with the person who is evincing it.

Unless, of course, their behavior is sufficiently obnoxious to be interfering with your ability to enjoy the concert. Then you are obliged to make a remark that allows them to become aware of the effect their antics are having on the rest of the concert-going public. Making them aware means assuming that once they are aware they will naturally stop what they are doing.

In that case you are not criticizing or correcting, but holding up a mirror to their bad behavior.

According to experts, the larger rule seems to be that you should mind your own business.

Surely, when you are eating lunch with a group of people and one of them has bad table manners, you should not correct him. The same applies to bad grammar.

I am inclined to believe that an adult should never correct another adult's table manners.

Why so? Among other reasons the gesture is demeaning and infantilizing. You are asserting a degree of social superiority that is normally not welcome among friends.

But what happens when your friend's fly is open. Isn't it correct to point it out, discretely? Or if your friend has a piece of spinach caught in his teeth? Isn't it helpful to say something? If you were in his position you would surely want to know before you had embarrassed yourself more.

Here, the answer is: yes and no. If you are a very, very close friend, you should make a gesture that alerts your friend to the problem. If you are not, you would do best to avert your gaze.

Correcting someone else's bad manners is, as Grotts puts it, a willful intrusion into a zone of personal privacy. Most such intrusions will feel like aggressive acts and will often be treated as such.

In the old days of psychoanalysis, analysts assumed that patients were resisting their interpretations because their fragile egos could not bear to think that they harbored incestuous wishes toward their mothers.

By now no one would even think of taking offense at such an accusation. Everyone will pretty much take it in stride. At best, it is an unconscious motivation, so, why worry?

Most people save real resistance and overt hostility for comments about their personal appearance and table manners.

Perhaps they know better than Freud what really matters in life.

The Rudeness of Strangers

Rudeness is busting out all over. I am not thinking of your rude friends who cancel appointments at the last minute or do not return your emails. Here I want to focus on the way many of us feel assaulted and assailed by strangers acting rudely.

I suspect that this is most prevalent in large cities where people feel that they are shielded by the cloak of anonymity. When you do not feel like an identifiable member of a community, you do not care whether your behavior irritates other people. Yet,if anyone does interfere with your embarrassing breach of public decorum, you are likely to react with hostility.

We Americans may not be very good at being polite, but we excel at taking offense.

You are patiently waiting to place your order for a Vente Latte at Starbucks and the guy standing next to you is shouting into his cell phone. It doesn't matter whether he is barking at his secretary, fighting with his wife, or arguing about the World Series. You just want him to shut the blank up. He is violating your peace of mind, and preventing you from meditating or ruminating.

And you do not know what to do about it. You are too polite to fling a glass of water at his cell phone, but you are feeling that this man deserves some serious punishment.

You can blame it on technology. Without the vast array of telephonic gadgets that saturate our world, a lot of this rudeness would not be happening. But you do not want to be a total Luddite. You start wondering why there isn't an app for loutish behavior.

Of else, you can blame it on the culture. People have become convinced that they have an inalienable right to free and open self-expression. If you dare criticize the creative genius that is being displayed to a store-full of Starbucks customers you will be treated as though you were undermining his mental health.

Thanks to the therapy culture, when we interrupt someone who is egregiously violating our privacy we are immediately attacked for violating his privacy.

It's a great world, isn't it.

The question remains: how should you deal with the rudeness of strangers?

According to Amy Alkon's book, "I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society," the best approach is to answer rudeness with rudeness. As New York Times writer Douglas Quenqua so aptly put it, Alkon seems to believe that "two rudes make a polite." Link here.

Alkon recommends that you fight back, that you out-rude the person who is offending you. Teach the boor a lesson, get in his face, call him out on his rudeness.

It may or may not stop him from being rude, but revenge is sweet, and, aside from creating a potentially dangerous scene, you would gain the satisfaction of making him pay, of getting revenge.

Alkon seems to believe that this tactic involves shaming. Actually, it involves guilt and punishment, and feels more like vigilante justice than shaming.

Surely, shaming is a good idea, and people are often shamed into improving their manners and decorum. But the notion that you can guilt-trip someone into better manners is shortsighted.

I was first made aware of Alkon's book on Dr. Helen Smith's blog. Among the interesting remarks offered by her commenters one stood out: Alkon's approach might work for her because she is a woman. If you are a man and you try to get in another man's face over bad behavior in the subway, you will risk more than an unpleasant verbal rejoinder.

On these issues I am happy to propose shaming as a good solution to this problem. In so doing I place myself on the side of the etiquette mavens Quenqua consulted for his article.

They insist that confrontation is not the way to go. They prefer, as I do, "withering glances and artfully worded comments."

Miss Manners believes that answering rudeness with rudeness simply increases the amount of rudeness in the world. You cannot shame someone into adopting good manners if your own manners have descended to his level.

But unless you are feeling especially saintly, the opposite tactic, turning the other cheek, is not a solution either. It might make you feel like a patsy.

So, how do you find a middle ground between lowering yourself to the same level as the rude stranger and allowing your sensibility to be assaulted with impunity?

The answer must involve offering a response that allows the other person to become aware of his own obnoxious behavior without behaving badly yourself.

The only way to do this is to avoid the tendency to punish the person, but to try out more polite and old-fashioned ways of shaming. At the least, they are polite and set a good example.

AS the etiquette mavens say, it is difficult to promote good behavior when you are behaving badly.

Begin with the withering gaze. Staring at someone who is misbehaving is a not-so-subtle reminder that he should take cognizance of the existence of other people and their feelings. Shaming does not involve getting revenge; its purpose is to allow the rude stranger to become aware of how he looks to others. If he has forgotten himself, your gaze should act as a gentle reminder.

I also favor artfully-worded comments. Again, they should allow the rude stranger to become aware of how he looks to others. Among the more common examples are: "Get a room;" "Would you mind speaking a little louder; I missed the last sentence;" "Perhaps you would feel more comfortable if you discussed it outside;" "Where is my iPod now that I really need it."

All of these are polite and pointed. If the rude stranger does not respond, it is probably best to let the matter drop.

In other circumstances it is usually best to walk away. If you are sitting in a restaurant and the couple next to you has very bad table manners, you can ask the waiter to change your table. You need not address the offending couple.

But if you are riding the New York subway system and someone is playing music loudly, it is probably a bad idea to intervene. At best, you can change cars at the next stop. At worst, grin and bear it. Unless you are stronger and armed, you should not to try to shame someone who is acting obnoxiously on a subway car.

One other alternative might be to inquire about the music. Then, the offending person would have to turn it down to answer your question.

As it happened, I was once seated on an airplane next to someone who was drinking too much and giving every appearance of being ready to keep drinking and becoming more obnoxious.

Clearly, I could not say anything about his drinking. So I tried to start up a conversation. We were flying from Paris, so I asked how he had liked Paris. Perhaps he was simply anxious about flying across the ocean, but we had a good conversation, after which he simply fell asleep.

Civility and Its Enemies

Free is not short for free-for-all. You cannot have a free and open debate without decorum and civility.

While we tolerate boorish behavior, it would be foolish to say that it contributes to the debate. Everyone has a constitutional right to throw tantrums, but democratic deliberation is not advanced when someone simply lets fly.

Ever since David Brooks attacked the current wave of incivility a few days ago, some of its lovers have stepped forth to defend it. To my surprise. See my previous post here.

Someone named Kerry Howley finds nothing very wrong with Kanye West's violation of Taylor Swift's moment or with Joe Wilson's outburst. Link here.

Howley is more worried that Brooks and others of his ilk are trying to lead us back to the bad old days when people showed "deference to authority." (Would you say that Kanye West was rebelling against authority?)

According to Howley, those who are rude and crude are simply expressing their individuality. She stopped short of calling it "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," but she clearly does not understand the difference between freedom and anarchy.

To Howley's mind we should just suck it up. If we do not, she declares, in a poorly disguised appeal to our inner machismo, we are demonstrating: "a pathetic inability to tolerate the meekest of incivilities."

But, was Kanye West merely engaging a meek incivility? Was his invasion of Taylor Swift's space, his hijacking of her moment the same as arriving late for a meeting, forgetting to send a thank-you note, or using the wrong fork?

Compare West to Rick Lazio. While debating Hillary Clinton during their Senate campaign in 2000 Lazio walked across the stage and invaded Clinton's space to hand her a sheaf of papers. His was not the meekest of incivilities; it was a threatening gesture. Everyone with any sense understood that Lazio had thereby sunk his campaign.

Beyond that, is calling someone a liar just another meek incivility? Is attacking someone's integrity and reputation merely an impolite gesture, roughly equivalent to being late for a meeting?

As Kathleen Parker reminds us, such an attack on a person's character used to be, literally, fighting words. In the early days of the Republic, such insults were often resolved through duels. Link here.

Thankfully, we have gotten beyond dueling, but we should not have gotten beyond the duty to defend our reputations.

By labeling this a meek incivility Howley is failing to recognize the importance of reputation. For someone who identifies himself as a member of a community, loss of reputation is a grievous harm.

Those who identify themselves as autonomous human units, pure individuals, do not very much care very much what other people think. Rather than glorify such an attitude, we should understand it as a symptom.

Being a perfectly autonomous individual, being perfectly disconnected from others, not caring at all about your place in a group... these will make you feel like an outcast and a pariah. Such feelings are bad for your health.

To keep things in perspective, we must note that many of those who have taken the greatest umbrage over Rep. Wilson's slur spent the better part of the last few years calling George Bush a liar. Some of those accusations were made on the floor of the House of Representatives.

In fact, the phrase "Bush lies" became a mantra for the Democratic party, to the point where everyone assumes that it expresses a basic truth.

Wasn't all the name-calling and defamation rather uncivil. It was politically effective, but it was not dissent and it did not involve anything resembling civil discourse.

So, while I consider it quite proper that Joe Wilson apologize for his outburst, I would add that those who have worked themselves into a lather because he has not apologized with sufficient sincerity should understand that a forced apology can never really be sincere.

Besides, the Democrats who think that Wilson should apologize might well look within their own ranks and consider apologizing for their own violent and vitriolic attacks on George Bush.

If they did, they would be setting a good example of civil behavior, and we would all be better for it.

Managing a Friendship

All friendships have their difficult and awkward moments. Anyone who wants to have many and good friendships should know how to deal with such moments constructively.

Dr. Irene Levine reminds us of this point on the Huffington Post today. Link here.

Let us look at a couple of the situations that Dr. Levine asked friendship expert Frances Isaacs to address.

First, what do you do when your friend talks too much about herself and is boring you to tears?

Isaacs suggests, correctly, that the first response should be to control the amount of time you spend listening to your friend's monologues.

Her next recommendation is less felicitous. She says that you should address the issue openly and honestly, by calling your friend out. She would have you declare: "...I feel that our conversations are never about me and my life. I miss the back and forth we used to have."

Here I must demur. Complaining about how you do not express yourself sufficiently sounds whiny. Your friend might very well come back at you by saying that, after all, it is up to you to talk about you and your life.

For all we know, she may be filling gaps left by a new-found reticence on your part.

If that is not the problem, perhaps something else is going on. Someone who feels compelled to talk about herself all the time is likely to be in some distress.

She may be using a smokescreen of excessive verbiage to avoid addressing an important issue. On the chance that that is true, then you should try something that is quite opposite to what Isaacs has recommended.

You might start asking some probing questions of your own, even suggesting that you sense that something is wrong, and that you will be happy to hear her out or even to try to help her if she wants to tell you what it is. You should add that if she does not want to do so, you understand.

Isaacs then addresses another problem that should be recognizable. It is a variation on the first issue, because it involves another way that reciprocity breaks down.

It is worth emphasizing that friendships involve reciprocal exchanges, whether of information and feeling, or even of gifts. Once a friendship becomes too one-sided, on any level, it is headed for trouble.

So, now you are dealing with a friend who asks too many probing and personal questions. To the point where you feel like you are being interrogated on a witness stand.

Isaacs first recommends trying to defuse the tension by using humor: "Asked and answered, counselor." Some other possibilities would include: "I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may incriminate myself," or "May I consult my attorney before responding."

These ironic comments should allow your friend to gain some awareness about what she is doing. That is surely better than a direct confrontation.

For my part I would not try to solve the problem by being open and honest. I would not take up Isaacs' other suggestion: "Hey, you're asking a lot of questions. I don't like it. Back off."

To me this feels excessive; it borders on rudeness. It sounds like you are closing the door on the friendship.

A better approach would be to maintain decorum and civility.

When you are being interrogated you can certainly try to change the subject. You might ignore the probing questions and introduce a topic from politics or television or celebrity gossip.

You might also say that you would rather not discuss the situation she is asking about, but that if there is any news she will be the first to know.

If we want to analyze the situation, it might have happened that your friend is asking a lot of personal questions because you have ceased contributing to the conversation as you normally do. Perhaps you have given the impression that you have pulled away from her.

If that is the case, you can offer that you have been preoccupied with a very difficult situation at work, but that, unfortunately, it is confidential and you cannot discuss it with anyone, even with your closest friends.

Sometimes the situation is more difficult. Perhaps your friend is asking more probing questions because she wants to get closer to you than you want to get to her.

These situations are always awkward. They should not be greeted with: "Back off." But if you do not see any chance of reciprocating her attentions, you will probably need to pull back yourself. Politely, of course.

To Friend Or Not To Friend?

Regardless of whether or not that is the question, Facebook has accomplished one thing: it made "friend" into a verb. Now, friend is not merely something you are; it is something you can do to someone. Sometimes, whether they like it or not.

As Facebook grows and proliferates we now friend people we do not even know, or, do not know very well.

As was to be expected, some people have been horrified that the honorific "friend" is being conferred on people we do not know. Worse yet, when people have hundreds or thousands of Facebook friends, they cannot really be friends with all of them.

Does this spell the end of intimacy as we know it? Does this create a false sense of intimacy that will spell the end of civilization?

Of course, not.

Frankly, I cannot get too worked up over the loss of intimacy, or even the cheapening of the label friend, because Facebook is not really about intimacy.

Facebook connects people, sometimes superficially, and allows them to keep in touch through something that resembles a community. At a time when people are hypermobile it is good to be able to keep in touch with people you have met in the past, even if only superficially. There is no great virtue in losing contact.

As for the horror of friending people you have never met, the same happens in any community. You feel connected for belonging to a community, even if you are not ever acquainted with everyone in the community.

Besides, as several people have noted, friendship is not always about intimacy. Rumor has it that friendship among women involves sharing confidences, while friendship among men involves doing things together.

And we all know that there are different levels of friendship. Some people are close friends; some are acquaintances. You confide in some of your friends; you would trust some with your life.

Others you know more superficially; you exchange niceties with them, you smile when you see them on the street, you know their names and not much more about them.

For many people it is more difficult to engage in superficial small talk with people they barely know than to pour out their souls to their intimates.

I will confess that I have an inordinate fondness for the wise words of one Rodney King. In the midst of the Los Angeles riots nearly two decades ago, King said: "Why can't we all just get along?"

Note that King did not say that we all have to like each other; he did not recommend that we all becomes intimates. He aspired to a world where we knew how to get along, where we could be cordial, courteous, and civil with each other. He knew that getting along, not over-sharing, is the basis for community.

To my mind, just getting along represents a more advanced social skill than over-sharing. I think that people should generally place more value on the ability to exchange a few kind words with the dry cleaner than to confess to their best friends.

Among the more salient characteristics of friendship is that it is voluntary. You get to choose your friends; you do not get to choose your parents.

And since friends are not kin, you are more likely to be on good behavior around your friends than around your family. It was for this reason that Aristotle privileged friendship as the most important social relationship in his Nichomachean Ethics.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, friendship is something of an outlier to classical psychological theorizing.

Psychology has traditionally tracked human development from birth onwards. It has granted pride of place to the infant's first relationships with his or her parents, and has assumed-- based on what, I am not so sure-- that whatever happens in one's early years will become the basis for everything that happens for the rest of one's life.

If all of your formative experiences happen before you are 5, as Freud imagined, then friendship is not very important. It might replicate sibling relationships but it has no moral weight of its own.

And this is unfortunate. Because children under the age of five do not really have friends. They require the protection their nuclear family because they are not sufficiently developed emotionally to distinguish friend from foe.

So when therapy tries to teach people to understand all human interactions as a function of a family romance or of an Oedipus complex or of the mother-infant dyad it does us all a disservice.

It does a gross injustice to friendship, and thus, to the basis for community and connection.

Is Life a Journey of Self-Discovery?

The first time you hear it, it sounds like a good idea. According to the therapy culture life is a voyage of self-discovery leading to self-actualization.

But then, if you start asking what would motivate you to make your life into a search for the real You, things become a bit murky.

We become most inquisitive about who we really are when things go wrong. When we make mistakes, when our routines are disrupted, when we experience traumas... those are the times when we cease to recognize our old familiar selves and start asking whether we really know who we are.

We ask: How could I have done such a thing? How could such a thing have happened to me?

At that point, we are propelled into a voyage of self-discovery.

To put it another way, we search for the meaning of defeat, not of victory.

Beyond that, when we perform our everyday rituals and routines we do not wonder what it all means. When things happen as they always happen, we do not ask why.

When things go awry, however, we always ask why, and we usually come up with a story, with a drama.

Everyday courtesy is never worth a story. Rudeness always lends itself to drama.

If you believe that life is a journey of self-discovery you will find something redeeming about things going wrong and will turn away in disdain when things go right.

The therapy culture has no real use for simple gestures of kindness, congeniality, or conviviality.

When Gretchen Rubin recommends that you say "Good Morning" to everyone in your office when you arrive in the morning, the therapy culture will have trained you to ignore, disparage, and disdain the advice. You are likely to think that it is meaningless, mindless, and superficial. Link to Rubin's post here.

However much your "Good Morning" contributes to good feeling and cooperation in the office, it teaches you nothing about your deepest unconscious stirrings.

If you are curt and rude, you are likely to provoke meaningful dramatic exchanges and waves of stress that will send you scurrying to discover who you really are.

Take another piece of advice that Rubin offered on her blog: "Each week walk around the office and talk to a few people you don't know well. You'll feel more comfortable, plus knowing more people facilitates work flow. Remember the exposure effect as well: repeated exposure makes people like music, faces, even nonsense syllables, better. That means that the more often you see someone the more intelligent and attractive that person will seem."

This might seem like a prescription for repeated meaningless encounters. In fact, it promotes social harmony and connection; thus it produces team cohesion.

Familiarity breeds comfort, not contempt. The same applies to everyday rituals and routines. Surprise and disruption are strange. They feel threatening. They make us want to unpack their meaning.

People feel at home with the familiar; they invent stories to make sense of the strange.

They open up when faced with the familiar; they close down when confronting the strange.

If your goal is to have a happy and productive work day, you would do well to take Rubin's advice. If, however, you want to pursue a voyage of personal self-discovery and self-actualization you would do better to be rude, disruptive, and bizarre.

Yours to choose.

Obama Offers Some Bad Advice

Perhaps he was fatigued from having expended so much energy ingratiating himself with the world's tyrants and autocrats, but President Obama did not have enough good feeling left to accept a dinner invitation offered by the president of France.

In diplomatic talk, that is considered a snub. It downgrades a relationship. Much in the same way that Obama has assuredly downgraded the American relationship with Israel. And much in the same way that he insulted the Prime Minister of England with his clumsy attempt at gift-giving.

When the press asked the president to explain the snub, he responded with these words: "I think it's very important to understand that good friends don't worry about the symbols and the conventions and the protocol."

This is wrong in fundamental ways.

First, Obama and Sarkozy are not good friends; they barely know each other. Theirs is a developing relationship.

Second, friends do not remain friends if they do not respect the conventions and the symbols and the protocol. When you publicly insult a friend by snubbing him, you are seriously undermining that friendship.

In fact, friendship can only thrive on constant shows of formal and ritual respect.

Third, when a head of state snubs another head of state it damages the relationship between the nations. Obama and Sarkozy are not just two guys developing a friendship.

Worse yet, a snub normally elicits a diplomatic counterattack. It launches a cycle of recrimination and payback. The minimum we should expect of our president is that he does not travel around the world insulting heads of state.

When you are dealing with your own friends, or when you are trying to cultivate a new friendship, pay close and special attention to the conventions, the symbols, and the protocol. Otherwise, you will very quickly find yourself friendless.

Laugh Out Loud

As we all know, human beings tend to make rational decisions based on their self-interest. Using this assumption, professional economists have been able to calculate aspects of human behavior that had previously been considered mysterious.

While no one is going to question the calculations, some thinkers have been questioning the basic assumption. As Prof. Lawrence Mead puts it in a recent review, if human beings are not making decisions based on a rational calculation of self-interest, that would imply that economists have made a fundamental mistake. Is that the reason, Mead states, why, in the current crisis, economists seem to have failed us? Link here.

Is there more to human motivation than individual self-interest? Is the figure of the self-interested rational calculator more mythic than real? If so, then what is the alternative?

According to Mead, among others, people are not merely motivated by self-interest. Beyond our self-interest each of us has a vested interest in the orderly functioning of the markets and of society. The economists' mythic being distorts humanity because it lacks an ethical dimension.

The current crisis has been produced by people seeking to craft their lives according to the this theory. Too many people were lulled into believing that if they each followed their self-interest, while ignoring the larger consequences, then the markets would take care of themselves.

In one sense the markets always do take care of themselves. They correct. Sometimes they correct violently. If this costs you your savings or your house, the markets really do not care. Markets are not in the business of taking care of us.

The current crisis has revealed a seriously frayed social fabric, an absence of meaningful human connections, and a group of seriously self-absorbed individuals.

Our financial system was undermined by a culture that taught us all to value Me over We.

As Mead put it: "Morals, not just calculation, have broken down in today's crisis. Borrowers and lenders no longer trust each other enough to do business. To establish or restore trust requires civic virtue, something that today's economics, based as it is on egoistic calculation, cannot explain or produce."

And Mead warns that a breakdown of the social ethos is moving us closer to the underdeveloped world. "A lack of trust and civility is one reason markets fail to make people rich in the less developed world."

Do you believe that human beings are rational calculators, and that they will always act in a way that serves their self-interest? Here is a way to test yourself.

We have all heard sage economists say that the Chinese government will never do anything to sink the bond market because it owns so many American bonds. We would never expect a rationally self-interested party like a government to cause itself to lose money, would we?

But consider this. It may not be a good idea for China to devalue its holdings of American bonds or to crash the bond market or to cause a run on the American dollar. Fair enough. But why would it sit idly by and allow the U. S. government to inflate the dollar to the point where its investments will inevitably lose value?

This week's most important speech was not Obama's oration in Egypt. It was Treasury Secretary Geithner speech to college students at the University of Beijing.

When Geithner asserted that he still supports a strong American dollar and that Chinese assets invested in U.S. government debt were safe, the students in Beijing laughed out loud.

Anyone who is looking for the next black swan, the next improbable event that will cause a calamity, would do well to pay heed to those laughing Chinese students.