For most of human history, the idea of
being polite has been central to our
sense of what is required to count as a
good and civilized person. But more
recently, politeness has come under suspicion.
It can sound a bit fake and
insincere and in its own way really rather rude.
We often tend to prefer the idea of
being frank and speaking our own minds.
The rise in our collective suspicion of
politeness has a history. Politeness used to be central
to our education. Etiquette,
books and guides to manners were all
deemed essential. Yet in the late 18th
century, the approach was thrown into
distribute. An alternative romantic idea
emerged, in large part driven forward by the Swiss philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who powerfully re-described
politeness as an indication of servility and deceit,
and argued in favor of always remaining true to yourself.
The romantic suspicion of politeness, was
given a further boost by the increasing role of the United States.
being direct and open came to be seen by Americans
themselves as one of their national
virtues and attitude encapsulated in a
climactic line from "Gone with the Wind".
When Rhett Butler turns the scholar to
her and tells her exactly how he sees it
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn". And
because America has been the world's
most influential culture for around a
century and a half, its attitude towards
politeness has been widely and
pervasively disseminated around the
planet ever since. Would ultimately
separates the polite from the Frank
person isn't really a knowledge of etiquette.
It's not really about what knife to use
at a formal dinner, when to say please or
thank you, or how to word a wedding
invitation. It comes down to a
contrasting set of beliefs about human
nature. The polite and the frank person
behave differently, chiefly because they
see the world in highly divergent ways.
These are some of the key ideological
issues that separate them.
Frank people believe in the importance
of expressing themselves honestly.
Principally because they trust that what
they happen to think and feel will
always proved to be fundamentally
acceptable to the world. They're true
sentiments and opinions may when voiced
be bracing of course – but no worse. These
Frank types assume that what is honestly
avowed cannot really ever be vindictive,
disgusting, tedious or cruel. in this
sense, the polite person sees themselves
a little in the way we typically see
small children: as blessed by an original innate goodness.
Even the most etiquette-conscious among
us don't usually think that the
strictures of politeness will apply to
the very young. We remain interested to
hear about whatever may be passing
through these diminutive creatures’ minds
and we stay unalarmed by their awkward
moments or negative statements. if they
say that the pasta is yuck
or that the taxi driver is a head like a
weird goldfish, it sounds funny rather
than wounding. The Frank persons trust in
their basic purity erodes the rationale
for editing or self-censorship. They can
believe that everything about them will
more or less prove fine, whatever they
happen to say or do. The Polite Person, by contrast,
proceed under a fervent suspicion of themselves and their impulses.
They sense that a great deal of what they feel and want really isn't
very nice. They're closely in touch with
their darkest desires and consents
they're fleeting wishes to hurt or
humiliate people. They know they're
sometimes a bit revolting and cannot
forget the extent to which they may be
offensive or frightening to others. they
therefore set out on a deliberate
strategy to protect others from what
they know is within them.
It isn't lying as such. they merely
understand that being themselves is a treat
they should take enormous pains to spare
everyone else from experiencing-
especially anyone they claim to care
about. the Frank person operates with a
charming unconscious assumption that
other people are at heart pretty much like them.
this can make them very clubbable and
allows them to create some astonishing
intimacy's across social barriers at high speed.
When they like listening to a particular
piece of music and high-volume, they'll
take it is obvious that you probably do
as well. Because they're very
enthusiastic about spicy food, or never
want to add salt to a dish, it doesn't
cross their mind to ask if you actually
like this restaurant or would favor a
salt cellar on the table. For their part,
the polite person starts from the
assumption that others are highly likely
to be in quite different places
internally, whatever the outward signs.
their behavior is therefore tentative,
weary and filled with inquiries. they
will explicitly checkup with others to
take a measure of their experiences and outlook;
if they feel cold, they're very alive to the possibility
that you may be feeling perfectly warm
and so will take trouble to ask if you'd
mind if they went over and close the window.
they're aware that you might be annoyed
by a joke that they find funny or that
you might very sincerely hold political
opinions quite at odds with their own.
Their manners are grounded in an acute
sense of the gulf that can separate one
human being from another.
The Frank person works with an
underlying sense that other people are
internally for the most part extremely
robust. Those around them are not felt to be
forever on the verge of self-doubt and
self-hatred. their egos are not assumed
to be gossamer thin and at perpetual risk
of deflating. There is therefore
understood to be no need to let out
constant small signals of reassurance
and affirmation. when you go to someone's
house the fact that the meal was tasty,
will be obvious to everyone, not least
the person who spent four and a half
hours cooking it. so there's no need to
keep stressing the point in a variety of
discrete ways. the office junior must
have a pretty clear sense that they're
making the grade without a need to stop
and spell it out. The Frank person assumes
that everyone's ego is already at least
as big and strong as it should be. the
polite person however starts from a
contrary assumption that all of us are
permanently only millimeters away from
inner collapse, despair and self-hatred.
However confident we may look, we are
painfully vulnerable to a sense of being
disliked and taken for granted. all of us
are walking around without a skin.
accordingly, the polite person will be
drawn to spend a lot of time noticing
and commenting positively on the most
apparently minor details.
they'll say that the watercress soup was
the best they've had for years. they'll
mention that work on the Mexico deal was
really helpful too, and was noticed by the
whole compan. they'll know that everyone
we come across, has a huge capacity to
hurt us with what we foolishly and
unfairly referred to as 'small things'.
There will be an associated difference in
how the Frank and polite person behaves
and service context. Frank people don't
feel any great need to express gratitude.
the waiter or the person at the car
car-hire has (they feel) no special need of
kindness on top of the money they'll
already be getting from the transaction.
Yet the Polite person knows that we need
to find respect and a form of love from
our work as much as we need cash. so
they'll be conscious of an additional
need to contribute smiles and a pleasant word or two.
these people are doing their jobs for
the money of course, but payment never
invalidates an equally strong emotional hunger
for a sense of having been useful
noticed and appreciated by another person.
the Frank person is often very kind, but
in a big way. they're interested in
enormous acts of generosity and kindness
towards major sections of humanity:
perhaps the rescue of the whole
continent of Africa or a plan to give
every child in the country an equally
good start in life. But a consequence of
their enthusiasm can be a certain in
patients with smaller moves and gestures.
There's really no point, they may feel, in
spending time and money sending people
flowers, writing notes after a dinner or
remembering birthdays – when a fundamental
transformation of the human condition is
at hand. The Polite also
passionately cares about spreading
kindness, love and goodness on a mass
scale, but they're cautious about the
chances of doing so on any realistic
time horizon. yet their belief that you
perhaps can't make things a lot better
for a huge number of people in the
coming decades< makes them feel that it
is still very much a worthy goal to try
and make a modest, minor improvement in
the lives of the few humans you do have
direct contact with in the here and now.
they may never be able to transform
another person's prospects entirely or
rescue the whole species from its
agonies, but they can smile and stop for 5
minutes to chat to a neighbor about the
weather. their modesty around what's
possible makes them acutely sensitive to
the worth of the little things that can
be done before today is over. the Frank
person has a high degree of confidence
as to their ability to judge relatively
quickly and for the very long-term
what's right and wrong about a given
situation. they feel they can tell who's
behaved well or badly and what the
appropriate course of action should be
around any dilemma.
this is what gives them the confidence
to get angry with whatever strikes them
as stupid and to blow up bridges with
people they become vexed with. the polite
person is much more unsure. They're
conscious that what they feel strongly
about today might not be what they end
up thinking next week. they know how
easily they can get it all wrong.
so they're drawn to deploy softening,
tentative language and holding
back on criticism whenever possible.
they'll suggest that an idea might not
be quite right.
they'll say that a project is attractive
but that it could be interesting to look
at alternatives as well, they'll consider
that an intellectual opponent may well
have a point. They aren’t just lying or
dodging tough decisions.
their behavior is symptomatic of a new
asked belief that few ideas are totally without merit.
no proposals are 100-percent wrong and
almost no one is entirely foolish. they
know good and bad are deviously
entangled. their politeness is a logical
careful response to the complexity that
they identify in the world. both the
Frank and the polite person of course have
important lessons to teach us, but it may
be that at this point in history,
it's the distinctive wisdom of the
polite person that is actually the one
most right for rediscovery and that may
have the most effective power to take
the edge off some of the more brutal,
aggressive and in the end
counterproductive consequences of the
reigning Frank ideology.