Warning and disclaimer: This post is likely to end up as some sort of angry rant. I've been meaning to mention this for a while now, so it may become messier than I would like. Caveat lector.
Anyway, the subject currently on my mind is something that ought to be, and was, in the distant days of my youth, a trivial act of common courtesy. I normally hold open doors for other people.
I used not to think more of it. I would hold a door open, the person for whom I held it would look at me, say, or even mouth, a brief 'thank you', then pass through the door.
Three actions, so, of course, there are three basic ways that this can go wrong:
It occasionally happens that the other chap (or chap-ess, but even more rarely) also wants to be polite, so they pause, either to offer to let me go first, or to make sure that I am holding the door for them. This momentary delay is elegantly and wordlessly polite. So much so, in fcat, that it hardly counts as going wrong.
Secondly, the other person may hold my gaze briefly, and then not say 'thank you'. I find this sort of behaviour unintelligible and quintessentially inhumane. To look into another human's eyes is to form some sort of brief connection with them, at the very least to acknowledge that they are, in fact, also human and real. So I genuinely fail to understand how person A can acknowledge person B, holding a door for person A, and not still fail to say thank you. Years ago, this used to annoy me so much that I made it a habit to say 'You're welcome' whenever this happened. Unfortunately, whenever I met someone who actually thanked me, the sheer shock induced me to blurt out something like 'You're more than welcome', which was normally too strange to pass unnoticed. For this reason, and the fact that it is needlessly rude in itself, I broke that habit.
Thirdly, there are those who fail to make eye contact, instead choosing to barge through the door without giving any of acknowledgment. These people rude, but in a more understandable way than the second sort; merely isolated, by habit, choice, or conditioning, from social interaction with those whom they do not know. Ad this is fine - understandable and even forgivable - especially in cities and busy people. (Sorry for the zeugma.)
This list is complete, but to use a mathematical analogy (a mathaphor), it is complete and also bounded. Outside of the thought process required to create that list, which I probably first picked up ten years ago, lies a more important question. Ad if, to my embarrassment, it never occurred to me to ask it, I would claim in my defence that the domain of thought which led to the list above is, mathaphorically, complete.
The really important question is: 'Why on Earth should I expect anyone to say 'thank you'? Unless they asked e to open the door, or they couldn't easily do so for themselves, why should they care whether or not I saved them an insignificant amount of effort? The only answer is that it corresponds to a social or cultural norm with which I am familiar ad happy, but by what right can I foist it on anyone else?
I do claim to be beyond that stage of boy-scout-gone-wrong pettiness during which I would feel virtuous for having 'better' manners than the other person in the sketch. And yet I have to admit that, in the final analysis, I hold open doors for others for reasons which are entirely my own.
Showing posts with label angry rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label angry rant. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 August 2007
Friday, 20 July 2007
Newsworthy?
For those of you who have recently returned from a prolonged period of meditation in a very secluded cave, let me mention that hte final 'Harry Potter' book is being released this week. It is worth noting that no other books, to my knowledge, are 'released' in this manner. They are written; then they are published; and then, as and when individual booksellers see fit, they are sold. Or rather, they are offered for sale, and many, of course, do not sell.
In the case of the 'Harry Potter' books, of course, these steps are often put out of sequence. The books are writtend, then sold, then printed, and then distributed. That's somehwat odd, to begin with. But now, thanks to the New York Times, they have become just like other books in one way: the book being relased tomorrow was reviewed before it appeared in bookstores.
Let us consider this story for a moment.
The New York Times, one of the most highly respected papers on the planet, increased its readership, and made headlines around the world, by reviewing a children's book.
All bookshops that wanted to sell the book were asked by the publisher to sign contracts saying that they wouldn't sell it before tomorrow. So the shop that sold a copy to the Times was not doing anything illegal, but it was breaking a contract. Similarly, the Times itself broke no laws, but did knowingly purchase a book from a shop which was not contractually allowed to sell it. Whatever one's view one such morally grey areas, one must surely be surprised that the Times would be seen to act so seedily. This sort of behaviour is more becoming of a tabloid or a less reputable news source eager for mor exposure. Of course, we can dismiss the claims made by many that this somehow spoils a surprise for readers, since no one is at all compelled to read the Times.
No, the real issue here is why on earth this is news-worthy. Why did a prestigious paper involve itself in a transaction of dubious morality simply to bring a book review to the public's notice?
Some of you may remember the debacle over a series of inflamatory, supposedly anti-Muslim, cartoons that appeared in a Danish paper in the autumn of 2005. They were prominently discussed for many weeks. But the amazing thing is that almost no major western news media ever re-printed the cartoons.
So for months people discussed cartoons that were called offensive, without knowing how offensive they were, or why. At the time, many newspapers excused their bizzare, to put it mildly, behaviour by conflating it with sensitivity. Most said that, oh yes, they were all in favour of people knowing what all the fuss was about, but unfortunately it would not be just too mean to re-publish the cartoons. The Times, however, showed no such hesitation. It proudly announced that they were not newsworthy, and that they had been found to be offensive by the editorial staff of the Times.
Curiouser and curiouser.
This is something of a new twist in the old debate about the place of the media in an increasingly internet-ised world. It is, of course, necssary for the editors of media to deicde which stories to discuss each day by some selective proccess. This will inevitably involve a degree of subjectivity. And this will, in its turn, lead to some people being happy with the selection, and others unhappy. But the ommission of some news is incontrovertibly necessary because of the finiteness of the space or time available. One man's meat is another man's dead animal tissue, and so on. Conflicting points of view, don't you know.
But during the debate about the cartoons, so many thousands of words were spent discussing the issues that it simply seems ludicrous and inexplicably that the cartoons themselves were never shown. They were made to seem so important that it would have been reasonable to cut anything else, even the Times' banner and masthead, to fit them in.
In the case of the 'Harry Potter' books, of course, these steps are often put out of sequence. The books are writtend, then sold, then printed, and then distributed. That's somehwat odd, to begin with. But now, thanks to the New York Times, they have become just like other books in one way: the book being relased tomorrow was reviewed before it appeared in bookstores.
Let us consider this story for a moment.
The New York Times, one of the most highly respected papers on the planet, increased its readership, and made headlines around the world, by reviewing a children's book.
All bookshops that wanted to sell the book were asked by the publisher to sign contracts saying that they wouldn't sell it before tomorrow. So the shop that sold a copy to the Times was not doing anything illegal, but it was breaking a contract. Similarly, the Times itself broke no laws, but did knowingly purchase a book from a shop which was not contractually allowed to sell it. Whatever one's view one such morally grey areas, one must surely be surprised that the Times would be seen to act so seedily. This sort of behaviour is more becoming of a tabloid or a less reputable news source eager for mor exposure. Of course, we can dismiss the claims made by many that this somehow spoils a surprise for readers, since no one is at all compelled to read the Times.
No, the real issue here is why on earth this is news-worthy. Why did a prestigious paper involve itself in a transaction of dubious morality simply to bring a book review to the public's notice?
Some of you may remember the debacle over a series of inflamatory, supposedly anti-Muslim, cartoons that appeared in a Danish paper in the autumn of 2005. They were prominently discussed for many weeks. But the amazing thing is that almost no major western news media ever re-printed the cartoons.
So for months people discussed cartoons that were called offensive, without knowing how offensive they were, or why. At the time, many newspapers excused their bizzare, to put it mildly, behaviour by conflating it with sensitivity. Most said that, oh yes, they were all in favour of people knowing what all the fuss was about, but unfortunately it would not be just too mean to re-publish the cartoons. The Times, however, showed no such hesitation. It proudly announced that they were not newsworthy, and that they had been found to be offensive by the editorial staff of the Times.
Curiouser and curiouser.
This is something of a new twist in the old debate about the place of the media in an increasingly internet-ised world. It is, of course, necssary for the editors of media to deicde which stories to discuss each day by some selective proccess. This will inevitably involve a degree of subjectivity. And this will, in its turn, lead to some people being happy with the selection, and others unhappy. But the ommission of some news is incontrovertibly necessary because of the finiteness of the space or time available. One man's meat is another man's dead animal tissue, and so on. Conflicting points of view, don't you know.
But during the debate about the cartoons, so many thousands of words were spent discussing the issues that it simply seems ludicrous and inexplicably that the cartoons themselves were never shown. They were made to seem so important that it would have been reasonable to cut anything else, even the Times' banner and masthead, to fit them in.
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