On Rudeness

If you've been following my posts, you may have noticed this recurring gestalt of a need for more respect between people.  (I'm writing a paper on it for English 202 presenting Ethical Literacy Education in middle and high schools as an effective solution).  So in doing research on this, I'm usually a little surprised by what I find.  But not this surprised.

Enter video 1:



Mike Huckabee urging conservatives to treat Obama with respect?  Does he need to do that?  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's urging people to respect a candidate they were often so angily against during this past year's presidential race.  But is the cultural climate really so bad as to require a notable program's acknowledgement and solution?

Don't laugh, liberals.  You're not out of the woods yet.

Oprah.com has an article featured on CNN.com about how 80% of Americans believe rudeness is an issue.  Woah.  I didn't think that many people were conscious of it.  On her website there are even more articles about ethical dilemmas and civil behavior.  And I stand alongside her.  It is.  But I'm still surprised at the sudden emergence of wide-reaching news centers pushing this idea.

Granted, civil behavior has been written about for years, long before settlers discovered America.  However, 'civil behavior' had always been synonymous with behavior within certain realms of a class system, and was therefore aimed at a specific group of elite.  Now, however, and possibly for the first time in history, we have a secular presentation of a call for all people to treat each other with civility.  If this continues, we could see something socially huge, like an Ethical Manifesto.  However, as we approach a change of this kind, we need to remember that each of us are part of the problem.

So while I'm glad the need for some form of social ethics is beginning to be noticed more, it's a call to ourselves individually, too.  Everybody, even Huckabee and Oprah, and even myself, needs to be on the same page.