Friday, November 21, 2008
Have u ever...? Part II
Reading the "Have u ever...?" reminded me of this article posted in Straits Times some time ago:
I had a few moments of free time to myself this week, so I thought – what the heck – I’ll take a stab at solving this niggling gracious society problem.
As you know, we have been facing this problem for a long time now, where we can’t get the hang of simple social graces.
Oh sure, we’ve got all the major ones under control – such as not stabbing people, shooting them and running them over with our cars – but we seem to fail over and over again when it comes to the more basic ones.
For example, we seem to have trouble standing on the left side of escalators, not blocking the doors of the MRT, not cutting queues, not using our mobile phones in cinemas, not letting our laundry drip on the neighbour’s clothes below, not sweeping our house dirt into common corridors, not to mention returning trays at food courts, signalling before we change lanes and giving up seats in the train or bus, just to name a few. Also we don’t smile enough, we charge our electrical devices in cafes and pick our feet/noses in public libraries before proceeding to use those same fingers to turn pages in the books.
At the same time, we are a society that will recognise a lone tissue packet with maybe two tissues in it as a legally-binding, indisputable sign that a coffeeshop table is taken.What is going on here? How can this be? After some back-breaking brainstorming by yours truly in the past 20 or 30 seconds, I believe I have come up with a brilliant half-baked theory on this.Singapore’s society is not rude or ungracious, we are simply – think about this – too polite.
You know how, when you play certain video games, once the score gets to 99999 it rolls back down to zero? I think that’s what is happening here with our social graces. We are so courteous, we’ve actually gone beyond the upper limit so much so that some people consider it rude.It’s not rude; it’s more like anti-courteous.Consider the example of people who have, fortunately enough, secured seats on a crowded train. Now when an elderly woman or man steps onto the same carriage, a less polite person may just stand up and offer the elderly person his seat. But this is not how an overly polite individual (OPI) works.
One of these courtesy extremists will need to consider the feelings and pride of the person standing up.Let’s say the elderly person is a woman in her 70s with mild osteoporosis carrying three bags of heavy groceries while at the same time trying to keep track of her hyper-active five-year-old grandson. An OPI would see this and think: “If I were to offer this woman my seat, it would mean that I think she is old and weak and needs to sit down. “How insulting and embarrassing would that be to her dignity. I mean, I have no real way of knowing how old she is. She looks good to me. She could jolly well be 50, even 40. Maybe that boy is her son. It’s rude to make assumptions.“Also, that other elderly man over there will wonder why I didn’t offer it to him. Maybe everyone will think I’m sexist. I’d better not get involved in this. I’ll just pretend to sleep.”An overly polite person can conduct this entire analysis in two seconds without having to look up. An OPI would not give up a seat to any person without a clear and obvious need like, say, missing limbs. Pretending to sleep is a potent weapon in a very polite person’s arsenal. But it’s not just those seated who are polite.
Those standing in the train clustered near the door, while leaving enough space in the middle of the carriage for two young children to play badminton, are similarly putting others first. Their concern is that if they were to move deeper into the carriage and allow more people on the train, they would have to inconvenience a lot more people when they are trying to get out.By standing near the door, they are able to keep the number of people who have to inconveniently make room for them to walk out to a minimum.
A different, albeit no less important, consideration is in play when it comes to returning trays. To a normal, only moderately polite person, cleaning up after yourself seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Not so for the overly polite.Though they are more than happy to return trays, they can’t. It’s not that they are lazy or rude, they are creating employment. An overly polite person feels a strong moral obligation to leave his tray, a spilt drink and bits of semi-chewed food on the table, so that cleaners – some of them having already benefited from the OPI’s consideration on the train – can continue to have jobs.
People who litter are thinking the same way. Once I saw a man in a lorry throw a durian husk out of his window while speeding down the expressway. That guy was trying to create a heck of a lot of employment.
No wonder all the campaigns to get us to be more polite have failed. What we need are actually campaigns to get us to be less polite.“To hell with their feelings, offer them a seat anyway!” would be a good slogan. Also “Ignore the jobless, return your trays!”So there you go, the whole social graciousness problem solved. You can thank me later, that is, if you are not too polite.
So, u are not alone in facing this kind of dilemma...
Btw, who wrote the "Have u ever...?" article?
-BX-
-- posted by Another IMHopian @ 10:31 AM --
