Do unto others...

Tumie Modise | Monday August 15, 2016 17:06

We may live in the 21st century, but as it turns out our brains are still programmed to live in the Stone Age.

In the olden days, everyone knew everybody else. If you got out of line, you got ostracised. And when you’re talking about living by yourself in a wilderness full of saber-tooth tigers and other human devouring creatures, living in isolation generally meant death.

Now we live in large societies that are simply too large for our cave man brains. Frequent interaction with people who do not know you and cannot exile you means that you can pretty much be as rude as you want without any consequence. But why are some people so rude?

Not a day goes by that I don’t witness someone being rude. Sometimes it is directed at me, other times I see it being done to others. It happens in many different ways. There are rude drivers, rude pedestrians, rude callers on talk shows, rude hosts on talk shows, rude debt collectors, rude customers in stores, rude salespeople in stores, rude co-workers, rude bosses, rude sport and music stars, the list goes on and on.

 

Why Are They Rude?

People will give you plenty of excuses. The most common one is that someone made them mad, so they take it out on someone else. Maybe they’re under a lot of pressure and you just happen to be the unfortunate person that crosses their path. Sometimes people are in pain.

I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. Am I the only one who feels that whatever is happening to you does not give you the right to be rude to me or anyone else? I think one of the reasons people are so rude is because it is so easy to be rude now. Social media and texting have made it easy. You can send someone a text or comment on their Facebook page instead of speaking to them face-to-face. How convenient! Just look at anyone who makes a comment about or shares a story about the President and at least half of those comments will be rude!

We don’t respect each other anymore. We see celebrities being rude and it’s all over the news. In other countries sports stars are rude yet still get the big contracts and the interviews. Sometimes their rudeness even escalates to violence and some have even served time or paid fines for such misdemeanours. Politicians are even worse, it’s like they get an allowance for being rude to each other if what transpired at our parliament a few weeks ago is anything to go by!

 

Does Anybody Still Remember

The Rule “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You.”?

The fight against rudeness is very serious. It is the fight for your well being and the well being of others. To be treated rudely is to be denigrated, and when done regularly it can destroy people, or worse, escalate into something really tragic.

When I first thought of doing a column on rudeness, my motivation was to approach the subject from the point of view of the modified individual confronted with rude actions and reactions on the part of the individual. I should know better.

I took my time and actually researched on this. I wanted a ring side seat on the mind of a rude person. According to experts, in identifying rudeness, especially in the case of modification, it is important to try and gauge the rude person’s motivations.

Sudden exclamations may not be motivated by malice or prejudice but rather the shock and amazement of seeing something incredible and probably incredibly foreign to that person. They may very well actually be excited and find what they are seeing to be positive. When in doubt, you may wish to first discern the motivations behind the words or actions through observation or conversation to determine if it was a rudely motivated gesture or simply a misunderstanding before escalating to confrontation. I bet a rude person won’t this, too complicated especially for rude minds.

Rude behaviour, like all behaviour, is habitual and an expression of that person’s thoughts and opinions and mediated by what they believe is appropriate or what they can get away with. And while the shock of seeing an incredible or foreign (to them) modification may distort the boundaries for them, they are not going to act horribly inconsistent with their usual behaviour.

So what to do when confronted with rude behaviour? Most sane people suggest walking away as a solution. Apparently being rude, like all bad habits,  is also a bad habit. What a terrible dark small world that must be!