On gentility

[First published in 2008]

Perhaps there is a gene for gentility. No matter how hard we try, we always end up being admonished by prigs about how offensive we are. These days some of the prigs go to the trouble of murdering the offensive people.

We are thinking, of course, of the murderous rampages some Muslims went on following the publication of cartoons of their prophet. These rampages were justified as responses to the offence that the cartoons constituted. This position amounts to a claim that Muslims have the right to determine what cartoons should be published while non-Muslims do not.

Any standard of conduct is an attempt to expand the power of one group at the expense of another. Often the expansion of power is intended to benefit society as a whole. Polite prohibitions of coughing or sneezing without covering your mouth, or against spitting on the public footpaths, are ultimately intended to reduce the spread of disease by increasing the power of the healthy at the expense of the unhealthy. Laws against theft increase the power of the propertied and law-abiding at the expense of the thieving.

However, religious believers’ assertions that codes of conduct or of law should require that non-believers respect them do not produce benefits for society, but only for the believers who want respect. In the Western world the status of religious organizations as arbiters of mores is declining as the number of believers in their mythologies declines. Finding that their threats of eternal damnation have lost the power to persuade people, the religious try instead to appeal to worldly standards of gentility. Why, disagreeing with the Archbishop of Canterbury is too, too vulgar.

The religious, however, feel no obligation to refrain from offending the non-religious, or indeed from offending each other. That is why we can conclude that the real goal of their demands for respect is not conformity to standards of gentility but rather an attempt to shore up their collapsing social status.

Different from the demands of the religious are the demands of various underprivileged groups for respect. These differ in that they are rather reminders to us that they should have as much power as other groups do. While these demands are laudable in intent, they seem to us to have got the relationship the wrong way round.

People do not have power because they are respected, they are respected because they are powerful. To paraphrase Barbara Ehrenreich, legislators are quick to announce their respect for family values, but slower to announce legislation which will promote the formation and expansion of families. Professions of respect do not equal respect.

Of course, the powerful are happy to dish out the respect. These days people in positions of influence are punctilious about the names they give to other groups. In fact, they have managed to transform the struggle for equality into a struggle for polite terminology. They still call the less privileged late for dinner, but they care about what they call them.

In a democratic society, you will not promote important social change by appealing to standards of gentility. The fundamental idea of gentility is always that some people are better than others. Calling for others to respect you encourages them only to be polite. It does not encourage them to share their surplus power with you. For that you need to appeal to universal values, such as justice.

On Gentility ©John FitzGerald, 2008