Thursday, July 09, 2009
Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
As David Books notes in a New York Times Op-Ed, there is a correlation between the rules by which one lives and one's moral behavior, as exemplified by George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. Indeed, the best way for one to learn ethical behavior is by first learning etiquette. This culture has certainly dropped the ball on that one. Virtue and liberty are two sides of the same coin. We too often forget that.
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2 comments:
I lost interest in that Op-Ed piece when he blamed capitalism as the #1 cause of the demise of dignity.
Nobody said it was perfect, but then, social changes such as capitalism do affect how people act, and not always in good ways. It is the combination with the other three that leads us to the place we are now. Any system, whether natural, like capitalism, or unnatural, like socialism, have their positives and negatives when it comes to influencing human behavior -- though certainly socialism has far, far, far more negatives than positives, and capitalism far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far more positives than negatives. Still, I think the author doesn't realize that self-promotion existed far before capitalism. Many of the ancient poets, for example, are famously self-promoting. That doesn't mean, though, that capitalism doesn't encourage such behavior, as it probably does. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Give it another read, and consider the fact that many of the things he mentions aren't necessarily bad, just bad in combination. I think that's what he's getting at.
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