On 2012-11-12 2:33 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote:
My experience is that all so-called "primitive" societies have an excellent grasp of this thing called manners - it's the oil that lubricates social interaction.
Interestingly enough this is most likely due to the principle of 'an armed society is a polite society'.
In primitive societies most people are armed (with the arms of the day, ie spears, bows/arrows, knives, etc), and there is no concept of suing someone over something as silly as punching some obnoxious jerk in the face for being an obnoxious jerk. The jerk gets punched, everyone knows he deserved it, 'nuff said.
So, people in primitive societies tend to not be obnoxious jerks - unless they are really big and mean and ornery, in which case they may get away with it for a while - until he ends up dead, everyone knows he deserved it, 'nuff said.
By contrast, Western culture by and large is not only mostly ignorant of manners and proprietary, but we made a conscious decision to discard all of it entirely. I too have come into contact with many cultures other than my own. The only one that goes out of it's way to be rude as a matter of course is the Caucasian. Food for thought.
Due mostly to the litigious nature of modern society. No one wants to risk having their kids stolen from them by kidnappers and child molesters (aka 'Child Protective Services' or some other similar named 'service'), so they neglect their parental responsibilities of *disciplining* their children, and voila - those undisciplined kids grow up to be men who are afraid to be and/or don't know *how* to be men, women who are afraid to be thought of as different from men - and no one wants to be the one to get sued by the arrogant jerk for punching them in the face.
Sorry, having a weird day today...
