Manners no longer matter, I regret to admit

They were there to help us remain bearable, writes

Since this column is going to make painfully plain how old I am, let's confront that now: I'm 67 … and counting. Invisible to anyone under 40 and irrelevant to the wider world except during elections.

Nonetheless, I'd like to use this chance to discuss something else that appears to no longer matter: manners. Go ahead and groan.

During my lifetime, manners have, ahem, evolved. That's a euphemism among people my age for worsened. Of course, that's what you'd expect someone 67 to say. However, I'm willing to acknowledge that because manners are not an absolute, it doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means I don't like the way they exist … currently.

Take the cellphone. As we all know, people don't talk anymore; they text. Even I'm increasingly guilty of that. I've learned from friends much younger than I that if I wish to speak to them on said phones, I should text them first. Am I really so ferocious that they need to gird themselves? Apparently — and ridiculously, I think — I am.

Modern manners also don't require texts or emails to be answered. Or it's acceptable for the answer to be days, even weeks, later. This is true even in business, where speed supposedly matters. Now it depends on the context and where you place in the pecking order. As someone who attempts to write books now and then, I speak from the experience of being excrement on the publishing world's shoe. On occasion, I've literally had to wait years for someone to deign to reply to me.

Of course, this decline in — pardon me, evolution of — manners has taken place in the face-to-face world too. The Canadian reputation for saying “sorry” is now a national relic. The same goes for “excuse me” and “I was wrong.” When was the last time you heard anyone say that? Cue raucous laughter.

Even more ludicrous is the notion of saying it on social media, an innominate netherworld that makes the UFC look like a paradigm of civil society.

Speaking of civility, the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “politeness and acts of politeness” — acts now unknown in all branches of contemporary American politics and increasingly rare in Canadian government too. Moreover, politeness is such an old-fashioned word that it's become a target for modern mockery. Can you imagine people today speaking of the “polite” thing to do? It's risible.

And regrettable, I think. Manners, even table manners — something that's really going out of style — are meant, in their most benign form, to act as a guide to good behaviour, something to ensure we're all on the same page. Yes, manners can and do get out of hand — are you watching Season 3 of Bridgerton? — but at their most basic, they're there to ensure that regardless of feelings, we do our best to remain bearable.

And yes, of course it's natural for them to evolve. Like language. It's just that I think they're evolving for the worse. But as I said, at

67, no one cares what I think anyway.