Politeness

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Politeness is the application of good manners or etiquette as defined in a particular culture. The goal of politeness is to avoid offending the feelings of other people, it may degenerate into a form of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy

Sincerity is true wisdom, it appears, only to the mind of the moral philosopher. It is rudeness and insult to him who regards dissimulation and deceit as culture and politeness, and holds that the shortest, easiest, and safest way to success is to let sleeping dogs and old customs alone.

Mutual exchange of compliments.—Expressions of delight and other acting in cultured society are the fig-leaves of the civilised Adams and Eves. These “aprons” to conceal truth are fabricated incessantly in social Edens, and their name is—politeness.

To obtain a glance into the future cycle we have thus but to examine the situation around us in the present day. What do we find? Instead of truth and sincerity, we have propriety and cold, cultured politeness; in one plain word, dissembling. Falsification on every plane; falsification of moral food and the same falsification of eatable food. Margarine butter for the soul, and margarine butter for the stomach; beauty and fresh colours without, and rottenness and corruption within. . . . Who, in this century, would presume to say what he thinks? It takes a brave man, nowadays, to speak the truth fearlessly, and even that at personal risk and cost. For the law forbids one saying the truth, except under compulsion, in its courts and under threat of perjury. Have lies told about you publicly and in print, and, unless you are wealthy, you are powerless to shut your calumniator’s mouth; state facts, and you become a defamer; hold your tongue on some iniquity perpetrated in your presence, and your friends will hold you as a participator therein—a confederate. The expression of one’s honest opinion has become impossible in this, our cycle.

Oh, the unspeakable hypocrisy of our age! The age when everything under the Sun and Moon is for sale and bought. The age when all that is honest, is just, noble-minded, is held up to the derision of the public, sneered at, and deprecated; when every truth-loving and fearlessly truth-speaking man is hooted out of polite Society, as a transgressor of cultured traditions which demand that every member of it should accept that in which he does not believe, say what he does not think, and lie to his own soul!

Selfishness is the chief prompter of our age; Chacun pour soi, Dieu pour tout le monde, its watchword. Where then is the truth, and what practical good has done that light brought to mankind by the “Light of the World,” as claimed by every Christian? . . . In our days the latter Light has only succeeded in raising the pride of Christian nations to its acme, in developing their self-adulation, and fostering hard-heartedness under the name of all-binding law. The “personality” of both nation and individual has thrown deep roots into the soil of selfish motives; and of all the flowers of modern culture those that blossom the most luxuriously are the flowers of polite Falsehood, Vanity, and Self-exaltation.

[look for whitened sepulcher]

In on of his letters

I prefer to attribute Mrs. Kingsford's desire to her ignorance of the real feeling of some of her colleagues, the nature of which is perhaps disguised now under the polished insincerities of civilized Western life

you have to remember that our Eastern ideas about “motives” and “truthfulness” and “honesty” differ considerably from your ideas in the West. We both believe that it is moral to tell the truth and immoral to lie; but here every analogy stops and our notions diverge in a very remarkable degree. For instance it would be a most difficult thing for you to tell me, how it is that your civilized Western Society, Church and State, politics and commerce have ever come to assume a virtue that it is quite impossible for either a man of education, a statesman, a trader, or anyone else living in the world — to practice in an unrestricted sense? Can any one of the above mentioned classes — the flower of England’s chivalry, her proudest peers and most distinguished commoners, her most virtuous and truth speaking ladies — can any of them speak the truth, I ask, whether at home, or in Society, during their public functions or in the family circle? What would you think of a gentleman, or a lady, whose affable politeness of manner and suavity of language would cover no falsehood; who, in meeting you would tell you plainly and abruptly what he thinks of you, or of anyone else? And where can you find that pearl of honest tradesmen or that god-fearing patriot, or politician, or a simple casual visitor of yours, but conceals his thoughts the whole while, and is obliged under the penalty of being regarded as a brute, a madman — to lie deliberately, and with a bold face, no sooner he is forced to tell you what he thinks of you; unless for a wonder his real feelings demand no concealment? All is lie, all falsehood, around and in us, my brother; and that is why you seem so surprised, if not affected, whenever you find a person who will tell you bluntly truth to your face; and also why it seems impossible for you to realize that a man may have no ill feelings against you, nay even like and respect you for some things, and yet tell you to your face what he honestly and sincerely thinks of you.

Now, that “way” is simply the bare truth, which he is ready to write to yourself, or even say and repeat to your face, without the least concealment or change — (unless he has purposely allowed the expressions to be exaggerated for the same purposes as mentioned above); and he is — of all the men I know just the one to do it without the least hesitation! And for this, you call him “an imperious sort of chap very angry if he is opposed,” but add, that you “bear him for it no malice, and like him none the less for that.” NOW THIS IS NOT SO, my brother, and YOU KNOW IT. However, I am prepared to concede the definition in a limited sense, and to admit and repeat with you (and himself at my elbow) that he is a very imperious sort of chap, and certainly very apt sometimes to become angry, especially if he is opposed in what he knows to be right. Would you think more of him, were he to conceal his anger; to lie to himself and the outsiders, and so permit them to credit him with a virtue he has not? If it is a meritorious act to extirpate with the roots all feelings of anger, so as to never feel the slightest paroxysm of a passion we all consider sinful, it is a still greater sin with us to pretend that it is so extirpated.

I have a letter from Colonel Chesney — very polite and quite diplomatic. Several such messages may do for an excellent refrigerator.