Letters to Ukraine – 1

Via technology? Economic growth? I’ve a better gauge: manners. I don’t mean etiquette, that training of human monkeys for polite society. Manners aren’t about knowing which knife to pick up during supper, or standing when a lady enters the room; they’re a profound sensitivity to the situation and feelings of all those we encounter. If people barge past us without even a grunt of apology, it’s because we’ve become little more than an extension of the material background to their lives. Rush hour, bad weather, Christmas shopping, all seem able to sink us into a mindless collective drive. We grow horns, hooves, tails; lose all sense of the “other” in others. Take that mindset to its extreme and even making love can become, essentially, a solitary act. What use is state funding for culture, then, or outreach programmes for dis­enchanted youth, if (as Fred Astaire put it): “The hardest job kids face… is learning good manners without seeing any”? When any one of us treats strangers on the street like animated lumps of matter, we all step closer to chaos. For Horace Mann, “Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.” And the ripe fruit of mora­lity is civilisation.