From childhood we have been taught that it is not good to deceive. And then they add that you need to be polite. It seems that one does not fit with the other at all, though? However, the unusual point of view of the writer Alexander Genis seems to help put everything in place.
I know how to save the world. Only he is unlikely to agree with me. But I still insist on my own and think that the secret of survival is in hypocrisy. His escalation can serve as a measure of civilization. The less often
we say what we think, the easier it is for everyone to get along with each other.
Tolerance begins with lies and ends in politeness, which becomes an automatic reaction to any contact with an outsider. So the British, forgetting to think, apologize when they step on their foot.
In Japan, they simply do not step on the leg, but they apologize anyway. It is understandable: on the islands they are used to living in cramped. But even in spacious America, they are rude only driving.
Many times I was amazed at how the person who had just overtook me with the risk for our both lives, getting out of the car, hides my eyes. Also because if it does not hide, they can shoot.
On the American road fight more often than in bars. Perhaps because, fenced off from others with glass and metal, it is easier to be yourself, and this is not always a delicious sight.
Politeness just prevents us from opening this way – dumping ourselves out. Sometimes they are offended by politeness, rightly considering it a hypocritical deception. I know by myself, because in Moscow they reproaches me with an accent.
Of course, I have it, and what, but not in my own language, in which I speak radio half my life. I was perplexed for a long time until I realized that the habit of always greeting everything was to blame, even by phone.
Meanwhile, courtesy with strangers to many seems to be someone else’s quirk, from which not far to political correctness.
And I can also understand this, because the antithesis of politeness is not rudeness, but sincerity. Frankness makes communication meaningful, politeness is possible. After all, we often talk with people, in no way with us agree. Dovlatov said: “You complain that they do not let us into literature, but we would not let them into the tram”.