I'm giving up being polite.

I’m giving up being polite – where will it take me?

 

Excuse me, if you will. Might I trouble you for some attention? Why thank you: I think that I have had enough of being polite.

A slavery to politeness may be at the heart of what has been most rotten in my life and, therefore, I am tempted to extrapolate, in society at large.

I have recently read some of the great Russian writers in a book written by George Saunders. Mr Saunders is a professor at Syracuse University. His book uses a selection of short stories written by the likes of Tolstoy, Chekov, Turgenev and Gogol to analyse the act of reading – and therefore good writing (I am reading it for the purpose of improving my skill). It is a great book in and of itself, but especially because it provides enlightenment as to the meaning behind the Russian classics, something that isn’t that easy to achieve - I’ve started but not finished Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’, seven years on and have never read any of the others. Until, now.

I admit, I hadn’t even heard of Gogol and his short story ‘The Nose’ which is a particularly obtuse and absurd story, but worth the effort to read. Not least, for its lessons on politeness and how we can use it to distance ourselves, prevent others (and ourselves) from speaking important truths, use it to deny and ignore uncomfortable realities.

As I gather more days-past than may lie in front, I have a growing impatience with politeness. When I have been a particular stickler for the politeness of an acceptable way of being, I have lost out. I have lost myself.

I am speaking of the superficial aspect of politeness. Politeness that is actually a brush-off, an avoidance of more difficult truths and realities. Of politeness that squashes, with a tight smile, life’s high emotions that threaten and disrupt. I’m talking of politeness that is directly attached to a person’s desire to maintain their status in the eyes of others. Politeness that shrugs, indifferent. Politeness that pats another on their shoulder, simpering ‘yes, friend. I don’t understand it either, but it is what those in charge have ordered so, what am I to do?’

I am speaking of my own slavery to politeness; I remained in situations where I was caused to suffer, to become less than I was capable of, because to speak up meant I was judged ‘difficult’, making others uncomfortable. I understood that to be impolite, by their definition, would mean rejection. So, I stayed in a failing and unhappy – but outwardly civil – marriage for years longer than I probably should have. I definitely did that because of my training to be polite, to not cause unpleasant scenes.

I have sat in business meetings and put up with overt ridicule and unfairness, suffered oblique sexism and the like, smiling politely because I thought anything else risked being thought of as difficult, over-emotional or unsophisticated.

Those years, and those examples, when I look back at them now - when a story, such as Gogol’s ‘The Nose’ supplies a character whose experience, bizarre though it is, seems familiar – I see how compellingly easy it is to be swallowed up and lessened by this form of politeness.

Because, if you reach out in your suffering to others but they refuse to react, if they remain locked behind a polite, neutral compassion, nil-response kind of civility, then it can be really difficult to keep believing that your perspective – the pain or fear you are feeling – is valid.

Everyone of importance around me, back then, was passive. I ended up thinking that I was wrong to complain about my marriage. I had come to accept my lack of joy and happiness within that relationship as ‘normal’. I had accepted my lot, given up on the notion of rebellion even before it had time to catch light. I snuffed it out with a dullness I believed was all I was meant for. I was of course sad, often peevish. I indulged in passive aggressive behaviour. Ironically, because I was so hushed-up I sometimes became distinctly impolite in the privacy of my own home – I was snide, bitchy and unnecessarily sharp. These short-lived, flaccid uprisings were performed in the context of a long-learned habit of obedience to avoid being difficult. I see now how foolish I was.

So yeah, I think politeness (or if you like, toeing the line, or doing the ‘right’ thing, or buying into the lie of the ‘mainstream’, or listening to conversations that begin with ‘everyone else is doing…’) can lead you deeply astray.

“For evil to succeed, good men may merely do nothing.” The doing nothing part isn’t always down to laziness or even ignorance. It is often due to the curse of politeness. People who, in tiny instants of time, didn’t want to appear impolite, didn’t want to stand out from the crowd and be tutted at. Deborah Eisenberg, writing about Gregor von Rezzori’s ‘Memoirs of an Anti-Semite’ uses the phrase ‘Passive People’ and lists their sins as ‘carelessness, poor logic, casual snobbery (social or intellectual) and inattentiveness’.  

I have committed all of these crimes against myself, and others. I have also allowed myself to be surrounded by others who acted in such a manner. It is very common. Evil does not wear a vile-mask and gleefully rub its hands in a vaudevillian manner. Nastiness and unpleasantness more often occur in the hearts of people who believe they are acting for the greater good, by people who believe it is important to accommodate unquestioningly those who appear to be in positions of authority, by people who are blind to certain perspectives or angles, by people who have decided, for whatever reason, to stop seeking further knowledge, consider alternative perspectives. People like me. People like you.

We all construct our sense of reality through the filter of our thoughts and beliefs. It is why stories are important – they validate our beliefs. They challenge too. They provide safe ways in which we may test how brave we are, how ready we may be to take a stance, to change some of those thoughts and habits.

What to make of this? Nothing really, I suppose. What do you make of it? What do you think?

For me? Well, I hear the voice of a new character – a woman who appears to be a paragon of politeness to the outside world but who indulges in disturbing acts of ‘correction’ of those she believes to be wrong, driven by a particular reason to be angry. I am curious to follow her, see what consequences await.

I’ll be sure to let you know where we end up.

Rachel x