Boorishness costs society far too much - Time to relearn our manners

Today’s report, that Gaelic football referee Patrick Nelis has described how aggressive, personalised online abuse directed at him after last year’s Tyrone county final pushed him to try to commit suicide, is the latest in a long — and lengthening — list of examples of how the principle of manners, of self-control, of respect for others, or even basic restraint, have been swept aside by the remoteness and anonymity afforded by social media.

Access to instant and unfettered communications has changed our world for the better but, as always, there is a price to pay. The toxic boorishness, more often than not unleashed by faceless, usually spineless critics, is often so virulent that ordinary, civilised people withdraw from online conversations leaving the field free to the most aggressive and often the least rational participants who, in time, set the new norms. Some, like Patrick Nelis, try to withdraw completely from the world where such abuse is commonplace, incomprehensible and just too hard to take.

The digital revolution has, according to extensive research, destroyed the idea manners and is leaving a generation of young people barely able to communicate. A growing dependency on text messaging, email and social networking sites is stunting the development of fundamental, face-to-face communication skills among young people. This inability to communicate effectively damages individuals’ career prospects and their ability to be convincing at job interviews or in delivering business presentations.

If this argument was no more than a curmudgeonly longing for fountain pens, starched collars, high teas (creamed) and the bizarre notion that when you phone a bank that you might actually be able to talk to a human being then it might be as easily forgotten as the once rigid social veto on pre-marital sex has been, but it is not.

Manners are timeless, irreplaceable social constructs that support the idea of a civilised and decent, in the earthiest meaning of the word, society. They are — or were — the mutual assurance that we all understand that it is sometimes necessary to modify our behaviour to recognise the rights and feeling of others; that we are prepared to impose some self-discipline to show that we understand that we live in a community rather than on a stage set for a monologue.

Could it be this is a crisis of confidence rather than a collapse of manners? Could it be that in a world where one belief system is reluctant to challenge what it sees as the weaknesses in another belief system that, to use a term applied to describe another kind of social degradation, the race to the bottom? Could it be that in a world where we hope egalitarian values prevail that we have come to think it is acceptable to pretend to our children that learning table manners is as important, or as unimportant, as learning how to plough a field with a team of Clydesdales? What a wonderful Christmas gift it would be for a child if they were taught manners that made them better, more likeable people — and the kind of person who would never post the kind of insensitive tirade online that would make anyone consider suicide.