A few weeks ago, I had a dinner guest who, though kind-hearted, launched into a 30-minute explanation of laissez-faire capitalism and why the government needs to get off his back. He's a medium-sized business owner, and has done rather well for himself, but feels he could do a whole lot better (and hire more employees) if the government imposed fewer regulations and taxes on his enterprise.
Don't we all.
My conclusion after his explanation wasn't that socialism is bad, and I didn't feel so imposed upon by the man that I became capricious. I decided the man was just terrible at conversation and left the whole thing at that.
Below are a few more rules in the mold of my previous post about things not to do on Facebook. I've extended the reach of these rules to include the outside world, but many of them apply to the Internet as well. I will make no claim to them being exhaustive. They're here for your edification and amusement––not to be complete in and of themselves.
Breaking one or more of these rules doesn't make you a bad person: Bad people are chronic offenders and malicious haters. In my experience, bad people allow their personal flaws to infect their entire lives. A man frustrated with himself will kick his disobedient dog, but a man who hates himself will beat his kids and lie about it to the cops. A man cornered will lie, but a liar will look for ways to profit from his lack of moral inhibition.
These are rules for good people who go astray. If a reader of this post catches him or herself about to violate one (or more) of them and thinks twice, I'll consider my good deed done for the day.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
This is the Golden Rule, and, naturally, it's the first and most important. It's the parent of all good rules of behavior.
When I was a kid, I thought the "unto" meant that I shouldn't do things to other people that I wouldn't want done to me––that it was a proscriptive rule. Upon further reflection, and seeing the rule written before me, I realize its meaning is quite the opposite.
The Golden Rule isn't a rule at all: It's a philosophy. If we do good things for people, even small things, other people will do good things for us. Thou Shalt not be Mean suddenly turns into Thou Shalt Consider doing Someone a Small Service, making the rule at once simpler and more life embracing.
Don't drag religion into it.
Reading the New York Times online this morning, I noticed a story about a young atheist in Rhode Island who has successfully petitioned to have a semi-official school prayer banner removed from the halls of her public high school. Her hometown of Cranston is predominantly Catholic, and the prayer has been displayed for 49 years. This young woman's objection to the prayer banner has made her one of the town's most reviled residents.
Honestly I don't know who's more to blame. Sure, Cranston's a Catholic town, but I don't see why it's so hard to keep the your religion in your pants for eight hours a day while public school is in session. And little atheist, are you really so butt-hurt over a piece of paper that you feel unwelcome among the people you've known since kindergarden? Or is this one of those atheist things where anything that even smells like God is so odiously stupid that you just have to tear it down?
My point is, if you're going to drag your religious baggage into a conversation, be prepared to have a fight over it, because people take that stuff seriously––not to mention that it's annoying.
Don't be sanctimonious.
Sanctimony is one of my most obvious character flaws. I once berated dinner guests for their love of Milan Kundera, whom I think is a mediocre writer at best, and at worst one of those authors whose lack of talent hides safely behind the common misconception that writers who experienced communist oppression are simply better than their Western counterparts. He's no Czeslaw Milosz or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, that's for damn sure.
I felt really bad immediately following my tirade, even though my friends were pretty cool about it. The thing about sanctimony is that it's a label imposed upon you from outside: I was just stating my (strong, draconian) opinion and supporting it with facts and assessments, but my guests must have seen things differently. They were probably thinking, "here's a guy who really hates Milan Kundera, and he's not being very nice."
A college housemate once interrupted an argument between myself and a third housemate with one of the most insightful observations I've ever heard. He said, "you're both so obsessed with being right." And it was true. Neither my opponent or myself were cool with just letting the argument be over with. Being sanctimonious isn't about having the better argument or true moral superiority. It's about being righter than the other guy, and that's kind of an ugly thing to want to be.
Use your indoor voice.
Even at a very young age, I understood how ridiculous it was that my teachers referred to "indoor voices," as opposed to "playground voices." We were kids, after all, and "indoor voices" seemed so full of artifice that it had to be one of those jargon terms a textbook writer made up.
But it wasn't.
Kids will be kids, but I've noticed that some people––one of whom is my sister––simply haven't figured out how to speak softly. As a person who has surrounded himself with more-or-less softly-spoken people, there's nothing more jarring than walking into a room where people are talking at full blast. It's like suddenly finding yourself on the tarmac at JFK or walking through the doors of a KISS concert.
Loud people are, one and all, shouters. My parents were shouters, and were always barking commands from the top of the stairs or across the street, as though somehow it was too much work to walk down the stairs and speak their piece. As I made friends and visited other families, I learned that a lot of other families (the cool ones, it turned out) would extend all kinds of courtesies to their kids, including using indoor voices, knocking on doors and requesting permission to enter, etc.
Their kids learned to do the same, and I can only assume it was all a devious parental ploy to get kids to be polite in society.
Cite your sources.
At least once a night I hear my mom say words to this effect: "They say that antioxidants prevent cancer." Who the f@#k are "they?" A much better way of putting this is, "I read in the newspaper that antioxidants prevent cancer."
Failing to cite one's sources is the surest sign that one is about to apply some common bit of information to one's own internal logic. In my mom's case, it's usually to justify her purchase of a new and expensive bottle of pills her own mother claims promotes brain function. Or whatever. My mom loves pretending to be a medical expert, when I know (and often have to explain to others) that my mom doesn't know shit about anything, let alone medicine.
The Internet is one of those fascinating tools that allows us to do research and make up our own minds. Citing your sources allows those of us who are interested to do independent evaluations and possibly pass on your information.
Think about it this way: If you don't tell people where you got your information, you're a charlatan; and if you do, you're doing everybody a favor. The choice is clear.
Observe the three subjects not to be discussed in mixed company.
We've already covered religion. Now it's time to talk about sex and politics.
I have a friend who, in the early stages of her courtship with "the boy," couldn't help but tweet endlessly about all the cunnilingus and dirty sex she was getting. The reason I tell you this is so you'll understand how off-putting it is when people do this.
Sure, there are delicate, conversation-friendly ways of making these subjects palatable, but only for a short time. Sensitive topics tend to spiral out of control and decency.
Case in point: my dinner guest who wouldn't stop talking about laissez-faire economics. The "conversation" didn't become a fight––since there's certainly more to taxation, regulation and governance than encouraging economic growth––because I let the man say his half-hour piece, and not because we were having a thoughtful conversation that challenged our assumptions about business and the role of government.
Be honest.
My uncommonly wise college housemate once asked me if I wanted to go to an orchestra recital with him. Cornered, I gave some bullshit excuse about how I'd love to, but I had something else going on that night. "You could have just said you didn't want to go," he said, because being dishonest isn't just rude: It's stupid.
Notice how the rule isn't "Don't lie." That's because we tell little lies all the time. I once met a mother who cried the first time her child lied to her because it was the first time her child had information worth concealing. Now, I'm not saying lies are good things, but the truth isn't nearly as valuable as honesty.
Being honest is a lot easier when you surround yourself with honest and forthright people. There's something hip about being able to say (without being mean), "no, I don't want to do that," or "sorry, your haircut makes you look like a dweeb." Losers are always equivocating and trying to make people feel good to be likable. Cool people will be honest when pressed for an opinion.
…
I'm going to keep writing rules. Really, this post is about all I have time for today, and I'll probably return to this theme at a later time. But until then, I'm always on the lookout for new rules, so world: Keep being stupid.
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