by Bridget Webber

Created on: September 04, 2008

The way in which people behave in a society is a direct reflection of the sign of the times. We put value on that which is of importance to us as a whole and encourage its growth. At the same time we may inadvertently devalue other aspects of life, which were once given prominence, in favor of what we wish to promote.

Our world is now a fast paced one where rudeness often comes hand in hand with moving fast. This constant urge to get ahead and better ourselves financially is what most members of society push towards.

As people rush to get to work through throngs of other people doing the same the last thing on their minds is how all of the other people are feeling and how they can be polite to them. Likewise traffic jams are often a major source of the act of rudeness as people are frustrated by a lack of movement and are stressed thinking of all that they need to cram into their day that they already have little time for.

As we dash to and fro the moral education of our children is often left to others who may not care as much as we would had we had the time to carry out the task ourselves. We suffer from guilt, knowing that we don't give our children as much time as we would like, which makes us angry with how we feel forced to live our lives. An angry society is not generally prone to the niceties of manners.

Meanwhile children either have no role models, or imprint themselves on poor ones who show them that its just fine to be rude. As they see each other behaving this way they are subconsciously given the message that rudeness in today's society is normal, and heaven forbid even cool.

There are also now a great many of us as individuals in a huge population. To get a job or promotion and to achieve success we need to be heard from amongst the crowd. To be heard we learn to be louder than the next man. This leaves little room for mild mannered, polite individuals to move up the social ladder.

Because society is so large and fast we have learned to dehumanise each other. We are capable of walking through the city through masses of people traffic and have no contact with any other being as we carry on to our destination. The other people that travel by our sides are invisible as personalities and become bodies of movement, rather than other real people to us.

This lack of personal connectedness with others means that we don't view our behaviour towards them in the same way that we would if we respected them as individuals. The man with the brief case who we bump into running for a taxi becomes an obstacle. The woman who drops her shopping bag as we inadvertently put up our umbrella too close to her is just a another difficulty to surpass as we rush on by in the rain.

It is not until we slow down our lifestyles that we have time to stop and recognise others as individuals. Until then, as we have so little spare time on our hands, we tend to reserve all of our connectedness with others for those who we are closest too.

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