April 2025
Manners do count – Conversations in taxis, and the things that are witnessed from taxis, are a fertile source of information for the novelist – or for the amateur student of social trends. A few weeks ago, while travelling in a taxi between the east end of Edinburgh’s Princes Street and the top of Leith Walk – a journey that, in slow traffic, can take about ten minutes – I witnessed four infractions – one every two-and-a-half minutes or every couple of hundred yards. These were not major crimes – nobody was robbed at machete-point – but they were symptomatic of something troubling. One was a straightforward ignoring of a red light; another was the riding of an electric scooter on the pavement, requiring pedestrians to take evasive action; yet another was the taxi being sailed past by a delivery driver on an electric bike illegally doctored to become an electric motorcycle; and finally there was a cyclist riding with complete impunity, again on the pavement area that has become so hazardous a zone for those still on foot.
By the standards of what happens in cities today, this is small stuff. Yet it gives cause for thought on whether we are currently facing a fundamental challenge to the notion of public order that lies at the heart of life in society. We have become wary of using the term civilization, because it’s thought to be old-fashioned and elitist. Yet we do not need to look far to see what happens when the idea of civilization, and all that it entails in terms of restraint and respect for others, is abandoned. Ukraine, Gaza, and other egregious sites of conflict-related misery and suffering are clear instances of what happens when civilized values are abandoned.
Those are extreme instances, but they are useful examples of what happens when bad manners are writ large. It may seem absurd to talk about bad manners in the same breath as infringements of the laws of war – such as they are – and the discourtesy of invading or dispossessing other people, but there is a clear connection. Courteous people do not throw their weight around whether they are at home, or whether they are on the world stage. Small scale morality lies beneath large public acts. A person who is respectful of others in the little things of life, does not usually become a tyrant.
And that leads to the issue of manners, and the importance of inculcating children with good manners. If we relax our efforts in that area, we risk serious consequences to the whole edifice of respectfulness and thoughtfulness in human society. It may take time to filter through – decades, probably – but it will eventually show in our public life. Badly-behaved children become badly-behaved public figures. People who get away with telling childish fibs when they are six are likely to tell some real whoppers when they are sixty.
Philosophers have been reluctant to take manners seriously. There has been a tendency in the past to say that this is an issue of etiquette, and etiquette has no real philosophical ramifications. How you address people and whether or not you talk with your mouth open, or burp in public, are seen as being irrelevant from the point of view of moral philosophy. For people who make that point, the goal is likely to be that of authenticity: to act naturally, and without artifice, is the goal, they say, and reserve your moral energy for the grand issues of human life, such as respect for the autonomy of others.
Some contemporary philosophers have resisted this, and have pointed out that teaching manners is central to the development of the morally sensitive person. Good manners are the building blocks of any moral system: they are all about consideration of others and acceptance of shared expectations of behaviour. So, if a society says that it is bad manners to behave in a particular way, the stressing of that is a way of developing moral “habits of the heart” that will duly become instinctive virtues. A civilized society requires virtues to be acknowledged and cultivated: if we don’t try to become better, one thing is certain – we’ll become worse. Schools should celebrate good manners. Many do, of course, and go to some lengths to ensure that pupils know what is expected of them. But are they doing enough? Are parents doing enough, or have we all taken the relaxed approach and stopped bothering too much. As a parent you can become tired of insisting on formal courtesies.
Over the last trying year, the lack of courtesy in public exchanges has become quite shocking. Public figures trade abuse openly. They jeer and denigrate, and their followers egg them on. Where are their manners? Careful: the children are watching.
