Here’s another sign of impending doom, the death of manners. It may be trivial at first sight, but Theodore Dalrymple is correct in arguing that the quest for egalitarianism has spawned a form of aggressive individualism:

A problem arises, however, when all such rules, arbitrary as some of them might be, are eroded to the point of total informality. The culture of any society becomes graceless in the absence of all formality, a development that is peculiarly evident in my own country, Great Britain. Here, gracelessness has become, by a peculiar ideological inversion that has occurred in my lifetime, a manifestation of political virtue.

Dalrymple discounts the upward mobility of lower classes as a reason for the death of manners and lays the blame at equality’s door. There is probably a bit of both in it and unmannered and excessive individualism was no doubt given a lot of help by the advent of popular culture and the quest for instant gratification. At least, that is what I experienced in Europe where taste and manners went hand in hand and were often narrowly defined by class. For my generation it was a test, at primary school I was ‘forced’ to address my teacher by her name (this was the early 70s) and we were led to believe that the breakdown of authority and paternal structures was a virtue that provided endless freedom. Of course it did, but only a fraction of that very same generation came to realize that such unbounded excess wasn’t exactly contributing to a stable social framework. And so some of us gravitated back to be well-mannered citizens, barely scarred by the indiscriminate power of egalitarian education.

NOTE: Found the Dalrymple piece via Ed Driscoll. If you're in the middle of raising your kids or if you're behind in the manners department, I can absolutely recommend The Manners Club. The CD has some very catchy tunes, notably the theme song Everybody Needs Good Manners!