Whatever happened to good manners?

Take care of yourself. Mind your manners. Watch your surroundings. It’s the advice we all receive growing up and pass on to our children. So why does it now seem that no one is listening?

A recent report in the Financial Times has revealed a troubling decline in conscientiousness, especially among the young. While all age groups declined in conscientiousness over the past decade, the data show young adults aged 16 to 39 have experienced a nearly 20 per cent dip in the trait.

‘Conscientiousness’ is a somewhat vague term, but it boils down to a willingness to accept personal responsibility. Or the ‘quality of being dependable and disciplined’, as the Financial Times analyst defines it. Academic research has found that it breeds greater professional success and personal fulfillment. So it should come as no surprise that young people, now severely lacking in conscientiousness, are experiencing loneliness, depression and anxiety all at record levels.

It’s tempting to blame a world too distracted by technology, but that lets our cultural arbiters off a bit too easily. Western culture has disdained the very idea of conscientiousness long before smartphones took over the classrooms. In seeking to craft a society, in which our failures are always down to ‘systemic’ discrimination of some sort, and stem from anyone and anything but ourselves, we’ve all but declared conscientiousness a vice.

As anyone who’s been through a Western school system in the past decade will tell you, identity is all determining. Systemic discrimination along the lines of race, gender and sexuality shapes the life of every individual. Fighting for more equality means changing the system, not simply ensuring that everyone has the same individual opportunities and receives the same treatment. We’ve now taught multiple generations that their actions and behaviours don’t really matter. If they’re ‘privileged’, they will succeed due to no effort of their own, and if they’re not, well, they never stood a chance anyway.

To truly committed proponents of DEI, conscientious behaviour like ‘dress code, speech, work style and timeliness’ is even deemed part of ‘white-supremacy culture’ – as the Duke Medical School infamously put it in 2021. Practising it, let alone expecting it from others, is frowned upon. And no one is better off because of it, apparently, especially those starting from tougher circumstances.

A society that values conscientious behaviour encourages everyone to make the most of the hand they’re given. And even if there’s some truth to systemic hurdles, conscientiously trying is still better than languishing – both for the individual and society at large.

Blaming technology becomes a convenient excuse for anyone invested in the cultural status quo, those who remain ideologically committed to woke and refuse to acknowledge its failure. ‘[S]martphones and streaming services seem likely culprits’, writes the Financial Times. Solutions thus lie in further regulation (and demonisation) of tech – another systemic foe – and blame falls on easy-to-hate targets like Facebook and Apple, rather than our leaders. The root issue remains untouched.

It’s far more likely that our compulsive dependence on technology is a symptom, rather than a cause, of our declining conscientiousness. We no longer value self-discipline, and make ample excuses for our lack of dependability. If languishing in perpetuity is seen as just fine, then what else is there to do but to lose one’s mind endlessly doomscrolling through TikTok?

There’s no easy answer to a deep-rooted cultural problem that’s been festering for decades. Cutting back on screen time may scratch the surface. But it won’t answer the deeper questions that are begging to be asked about our steep decline in manners and work ethic.

Gage Klipper is a writer based in New York. Previously, he was the culture critic at the Daily Caller and an editor at Pirate Wires.