Decorum and Manners

Or lack thereof.

This isn't a screed about the youth of today, or the pushiness of our neighbors.  This isn't even a piece that will give many answers.

I am not sure if it started with people talking through speeches, dressing inappropriately casually for various occasions, or a lack of respect for leadership (when leaders actually choose to, you know, lead).  I am not sure if a dismissal of all thing decorous started in the secular realm and has bled into our religious life, or if it's the other way around.

There's one thing I am pretty sure of, and it's the cause. The self centered, self focused, "I only do what feels good to me, there is no topic, event or person that I cannot be cynical and satirical about" attitude that has pervaded society as a whole. And unfortunately the Orthodox community has not been spared. Yes, yes, we live in an age of unprecedented chesed. That's all well and good, but we do not respect the institutions and people who are part of the make up of those we help.

What does that mean? If someone posts somewhere that they need a ride, say to a graduation at Lincoln Center, probably 30 people will respond, and help that person out. But once there, the graduates will not dress for the momentous occasion, and the family members will turn a ceremony that is the epitome of pomp and circumstance into complete bedlam well before the festivities have ended.

It just sounds cranky, I know, but the insidious way it has sprouted its tentacles through all parts of our lives is frightening. I wonder if the talking through a speech has spawned the automatic reaction, in which someone gets up to speak, and people immediately become transfixed by the device in their hands, or because people never listened anyway this was just a quieter way to be disrespectful and rude. I am perplexed as to how institutions, social mores, and general community attitudes have been so perverted.

I am rambling, so let me put it succinctly:
The narcissistic attitude of our society has made it so rules don't matter, nothing is important, nothing is sacred, and our desire to be comfortable and entertained at all times is really what drives everything that happens.

There, you can ignore the five paragraphs that preceded that.