politeness
jstemwedel | January 21, 2010In a comment on a post at Henry Gee's blog (I'd link the comment itself, but for the life of me I cannot figure out where the permalink is), Ed Yong offers his view on the relation between politeness and civility. Quoth Ed:
My objection comes when people mistake politeness for virtue rather than what it actually is - artifice masquerading as virtue. Politeness is what you teach children to tell them when and how to speak and behave before they are fully rational and capable of thinking through the moral consequences of their words and actions.
Adults, being (technically) able to do this…