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POLITENESS


Politeness can sound very boring, a trivial social convention connected up with hypocrisy and perhaps snobbery. Under its dictates, we are urged to say that we’ve had a nice evening when we haven’t really or to tell someone we’re delighted by news of their success, when in truth we’d like them dead. Shouldn’t we just be frank? There are some deeply serious reasons why politeness matters. Proceeding politely through the world is founded on a recognition of how easy it is to get things wrong and therefore how important it is not to be quick to anger, not to burn bridges and not to make statements it will be hard to row back from. The polite recognise that their minds have great capacities for error and are subject to moods that will mislead them – and so are keen not to make statements that can’t be taken back or to make enemies of people they might decide are in fact worthy of respect down the line. Sceptical about themselves, the polite person will suggest that an idea might be not quite right. They will say that a project is attractive but that it could be interesting to look at alternatives as well. They will consider that an intellectual opponent may well have a point. They aren’t just lying or dodging tough decisions. Their behaviour is symptomatic of a nuanced and intelligent belief that few ideas are totally without merit, no proposals are one hundred per cent wrong and almost no one is entirely foolish. They work with a conception of the world in which good and bad are deviously entangled and in which bits of the truth are always showing up in unfamiliar guises in unexpected people. Their politeness is a logical, careful response to the complexity they identify in themselves and in the world. The polite person also starts with a sense of the vulnerability of others. They know that many they encounter will be only millimetres away from inner collapse, despair and self-hatred. Every piece of neglect, every silence or slightly harsh or off-the-cuff word can have a profound capacity to hurt. So the polite person will be drawn to spend a lot of time noticing and commenting positively on apparently minor facets of others’ achievements: they will say that the watercress soup was the best they’ve had for years and that they’d forgotten how much they liked it; they’ll mention that the ending of the writer’s new novel made them cry, and that work on the Mexico deal was particularly helpful to, and noticed by, the whole company. Politeness is not an unnecessary cloak thrown over our innocent natural selves or a minor detail for a metropolitan dinner party: it is the bedrock of civilisation.

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