thanking-for-thanking, long buildups to requests, apologising for things which are clearly not the other persons’ fault
I find it utterly mystifying when people apologise to me for things that are not only clearly not their fault, but probably mine. I have no idea if this sort of thing is expected in polite company but people seem to do it all the same. I assume it’s probably involved with status signalling of some sort, but that doesn’t make it make sense to me.
I guess this is why I prefer to be in a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness. Politeness brings status into everything, introducing complicated rules that seem to just make it easier to cause unintentional offence.
Actually I’m reminded of the rather extreme example of the culture of elves in Eragon. Because of various factors including low fertility and their expertise in killing, they decided they couldn’t afford to have elves fighting amongst themselves. Apparently they then decided to introduce a complicated system of honorifics and greetings depending on the status levels, genders and occupations of the people involved.
Our hero perceives, of course, that this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The existence of a right greeting for a particular situation out of 30 implies the existence of 29 wrong ones: 29 new ways to give offence.
I think I’ve broken the habit, but I used to apologize for things which were clearly the other person’s fault and as far as I can tell, my motivation was a strong feeling that an apology was supposed to happen, and if the other person didn’t supply it, I would.
This was a fairly strong and very fast reflex.
It seems plausible that it was the result of niceness training done a little too young or unthinkingly.
You make it sound like the alternative, where everyone has idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and there’s no way to generalize from one person to another, leads to less offense being taken.
I guess that would be true if everyone treated every possible utterance as inoffensive. Which, OK, if you can get a community to actually do that, great… but it’s far from easy to pull off.
Otherwise, not so much.
The point of etiquette is to avoid giving offense unintentionally.
When everyone knows the rules, we don’t think of it as following rules of etiquette, we think of it as not being a jerk.
The point is that in a culture where one is expected to greet someone by saying X if the other is male and above you in status, Y if they are female and above, Z if they’re a blacksmith… etc. it is much easier to give offence by accidentally using the wrong greeting than in one where you greet people with X regardless of the situation.
How does having simpler rules lead to “idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable”? We seem to do fine without a rule on how to greet a one-legged chess player on a tuesday.
Sure, if what you mean by “a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness” is one in which there is one standard greeting, X, with which you greet people “regardless of the situation,” then you’re absolutely correct: that is not at all idiosyncratic.
I guess I misunderstood you: I thought you were proposing an approach where people just greet one another however they wish and they don’t worry about etiquette at all, rather than an approach where there is a single approved way of greeting everyone.
The former I think does lead to idiosyncratic standards; the latter I agree does not.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification.
I find it utterly mystifying when people apologise to me for things that are not only clearly not their fault, but probably mine. I have no idea if this sort of thing is expected in polite company but people seem to do it all the same. I assume it’s probably involved with status signalling of some sort, but that doesn’t make it make sense to me.
I guess this is why I prefer to be in a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness. Politeness brings status into everything, introducing complicated rules that seem to just make it easier to cause unintentional offence.
Actually I’m reminded of the rather extreme example of the culture of elves in Eragon. Because of various factors including low fertility and their expertise in killing, they decided they couldn’t afford to have elves fighting amongst themselves. Apparently they then decided to introduce a complicated system of honorifics and greetings depending on the status levels, genders and occupations of the people involved.
Our hero perceives, of course, that this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The existence of a right greeting for a particular situation out of 30 implies the existence of 29 wrong ones: 29 new ways to give offence.
So uh, make of that what you will.
I think I’ve broken the habit, but I used to apologize for things which were clearly the other person’s fault and as far as I can tell, my motivation was a strong feeling that an apology was supposed to happen, and if the other person didn’t supply it, I would.
This was a fairly strong and very fast reflex.
It seems plausible that it was the result of niceness training done a little too young or unthinkingly.
You make it sound like the alternative, where everyone has idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and there’s no way to generalize from one person to another, leads to less offense being taken.
I guess that would be true if everyone treated every possible utterance as inoffensive. Which, OK, if you can get a community to actually do that, great… but it’s far from easy to pull off.
Otherwise, not so much.
The point of etiquette is to avoid giving offense unintentionally.
When everyone knows the rules, we don’t think of it as following rules of etiquette, we think of it as not being a jerk.
I don’t follow at all.
The point is that in a culture where one is expected to greet someone by saying X if the other is male and above you in status, Y if they are female and above, Z if they’re a blacksmith… etc. it is much easier to give offence by accidentally using the wrong greeting than in one where you greet people with X regardless of the situation.
How does having simpler rules lead to “idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable”? We seem to do fine without a rule on how to greet a one-legged chess player on a tuesday.
Sure, if what you mean by “a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness” is one in which there is one standard greeting, X, with which you greet people “regardless of the situation,” then you’re absolutely correct: that is not at all idiosyncratic.
I guess I misunderstood you: I thought you were proposing an approach where people just greet one another however they wish and they don’t worry about etiquette at all, rather than an approach where there is a single approved way of greeting everyone.
The former I think does lead to idiosyncratic standards; the latter I agree does not.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification.