Posted on 09/15/2025 9:56:31 AM PDT by CIB-173RDABN
Manners are often dismissed as superficial — just a list of rules about saying “please” or chewing with your mouth closed. But at their core, manners are much more than that. They are the quiet architecture that holds a civilized society together. They are the social grease that allows people to live near one another, work together, share space, and not come to blows over every disagreement.
It’s my belief that societies create manners not just to promote politeness, but to control human emotions — especially the more destructive ones: anger, resentment, jealousy, and cruelty. Manners teach restraint. They teach deference to others, not because we are weaker or less important, but because we recognize that other people matter, too. And they evolve with time, adjusting to the needs and pace of the society that creates them.
But what happens to a society when manners disappear?
Over the past 20 or 30 years — and especially with the rise of the internet and social media — something strange has happened. It seems that younger generations are no longer being taught the manners that once helped shape decent behavior. And online, where there's little direct human interaction and even less accountability, the unwritten rules of courtesy have been thrown out completely.
People now post things — casually and publicly — that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. There’s no eye contact. No discomfort. No peer pressure. No family watching. No teacher correcting. No elder raising an eyebrow. And without those subtle social reinforcements, the filter is gone.
Why bring this up now? Because something happened after the murder of Charlie Kirk that offers a striking case study in what happens when people have grown up without any meaningful concept of manners — or moral restraint.
In the hours and days following his death, tens of thousands of people posted videos and comments online celebrating it. Laughing. Mocking. Making memes. Singing. Dancing. Calling for more deaths of people like him. These weren't private conversations or edgy jokes among close friends. These were public broadcasts, shared proudly with the world.
But what happened next surprised them.
They were fired. Not all of them, of course — but many were. Employers, coworkers, and communities responded with outrage. For the first time, these individuals were told, in no uncertain terms, that they had crossed a line. They had gone too far. And here's what’s most telling:
They didn’t understand what they had done wrong.
Not one of them — at least in the videos they later posted — seemed to grasp why people were angry. They didn’t understand the disrespect they had shown for the dead. They didn’t grasp the pain they had caused the family. They didn’t recognize that celebrating a killing — even of someone you dislike — shakes the moral foundation of any civilized society.
They had done this sort of thing before, and no one seemed to care. But this time, the reaction was loud, clear, and swift.
What we’re witnessing here is a crack in the social order that comes from generations not being taught manners — and not learning that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
When manners are gone:
People forget that manners aren’t just about being “nice” — they are a form of mutual disarmament. They allow people to coexist even when they disagree. They keep the social temperature low. They remind us that behind every name is a person, behind every screen is a life.
Take that away, and the results are what we’re seeing now: public celebration of violence, and genuine surprise when the rest of society recoils in horror.
Perhaps this moment can be a wake-up call. Perhaps these firings and the outrage that followed can serve as a long-overdue civics lesson — that even in a digital world, real-world values still apply. That cruelty is not courageous. That shouting into a camera doesn’t make you wise. That just because you can say something doesn’t mean you should.
And perhaps — just perhaps — we can begin again to talk about manners. About restraint. About decency. Not as old-fashioned ideas, but as essential skills for living in a world full of other people.
Because when manners disappear, civilization doesn’t just weaken — it begins to rot from the inside out.
I think you both displayed very nice manners and courtesy to each other while discussing the use of the word “vanity” within the title. What could have been heated or given offense was instead discussed calmly.
Well done illustration in real time of the point of the essay.
How kind of you to say!
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