Listen, you are rude

Tumie Modise | Monday September 18, 2017 16:25

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. I am even starting to think that some babies were born rude, you know the ones that make funny faces at you or sticking out their tongues at you when you are sitting next to them in church or at clinics. Sometimes you just get that urge to slap their little faces then you remember it would be violence. 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 celebrities, the list is endless.

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 behavior.

Then there are rude Batswana. If you don’t believe it just ask this year’s Miss Botswana top 12 contestants! Why are we rude to people who have not wronged us? Rude people always give plenty of excuses. The most common one being that someone made them mad so they want to ‘defend their honour’ or whatever silly excuse they usually come up with. Most blame pressure and pain and you wonder why they don’t do everyone a favour and punch the wall hard instead! I have come across hurtful comments directed at these year’s contestants and 80% of the rude comments were ironically from other women! Girls who would never, in a million years, make the cut for a village “Miss Sunday Soccer” pageant, where first and second prize is a live chicken and eggs are leading the onslaught! 

We don’t respect each other anymore. We don’t respect ourselves either and we take delight in bringing each other down and tearing up the weak. We see celebrities being rude and it’s all over the news being celebrated and we think it is cool and acceptable. Politicians are the worst culprits. They have graduated from labelling each other as ’insects’ and now pelt each other with stones or set dogs on each other.

 “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you’ is still relevant even today. The tragedy with rudeness is that it is the fight for your wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of others. To be treated rudely is to be denigrated and it has destroyed lives, and in worse case scenarios, escalated to tragic endings.

So what to do when confronted with rude behaviour? Most sane people suggest walking away as a solution. Being rude is a bad habit. What a terrible dark small world that must be?