There has recently been some comment about the rampant buttoism which is the norm of public behaviour in Jamaica these days, and with good reason. One of the things drilled into us as youngsters was proper behaviour and good manners.

Keeble Mcfarlane

It wasn't something foreign to our nature, since despite the hardships of grinding out a daily existence under hard conditions, Jamaicans generally reflected the country's climate - warm and sunny. But in the last couple of decades, some sinister kind of infection has taken hold, and boorishness, bad manners, inconsideration and coarse behaviour have taken over that attractive quality.

About 10 years ago, just as I retired, I came on a visit after a gap of about 15 years during which I had been busy travelling to other places in the course of my job. That gap was sufficient to observe clearly any changes that had taken place. If you live in, or visit a place regularly, changes are not so readily apparent as when you have an appreciable break allowing you to contrast then and now more fully.

What jumped out at me on that occasion was the coarsening of a people I had assumed were still the polite bunch I had grown up with. It seemed as if there had been an almost deliberate campaign to buttoise and bungoise the country, to eschew any kind of refinement or decency. Everything now had to be rough and ready, crude and in-your-face.

There may be any number of reasons for this, but the main one, I suspect, is a misguided sense of nationalism and the incorrect reaction to the undeniably real slights, insults, slurs and put-downs inflicted by colonisers upon the colonised.

During that mannerly age in which I grew up, it was quite common for the expats and their colonial imitators to behave towards those they considered as lesser people without displaying the same manners they expected those people to demonstrate towards them.

This built up a reservoir of resentment, leading many to feel that abandoning manners was a sign of liberation from the colonial burden. To lash out in the crudest form not only made an aggrieved person feel better, it made that person feel equal to the oppressor.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu... Civility costs nothing and buys everything

Remember, too, the notion of "black man time now", and the reflexive, unthought-out feeling that courtesy and good manners were part and parcel of the mechanism of oppression by the (white) colonialists. Therefore, if you reject the colonial oppression you reject those positive aspects as well. As a youngster, I can remember a man close to our family objecting to hearing children at school calling the teachers "sir" and "ma'am" because he felt this was demeaning to the youngsters. Of course, he was beaten down by his peers.

Now, while this is an understandable reaction, it doesn't require much further examination to understand that it is, to say the least, counter-productive and ultimately damaging to that person's own sense of self-worth. It also has a corrosive effect which requires even more of that kind of behaviour to justify the thinking which caused the behaviour in the first place.

While attending Kingston College in the mid-1950s, I recall a series of lectures in which people from different callings in life would come to the school and tell us about their jobs and what they entailed. On one occasion we heard from the US consul about life in the foreign service.

He regaled us with stories about the different places he had served in, but made sure that we understood the job had serious aspects to it. He explained that relations between countries were governed by what diplomats call protocol - rules, procedures and formalities which countries observe in order to work together. He described protocol as "the oil of international relations", meaning that it acted as a lubricant to smooth out any friction which was bound to occur between the rough edges and gritty surfaces where the interests of nations met.

You could describe manners the same way - as the oil which allows human beings to occupy the same space without grinding too much on each other's nerves. At the root of all of this is the old Biblical concept of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - if you wish, treat people as you would like them to treat you.

Respect plays a vital role here, too - if you don't respect yourself, you won't respect anyone else, and therefore, won't extend any courtesy to them. In this situation, it is highly unlikely that you will find any courtesy extended to you, and so the cycle continues.

Throw some weapons into this situation and you can see how things got to where they are today. Those who inhabit the culture of the gun regard it as the ultimate social equaliser and tool of control. It provides a warped sense of power and demonstrates precisely this culture of bungoism, buttoism and anti-manners, in which only the desires of the gun-wielder matter. To twist a phrase from the 1970s ever so slightly, Heavy Manners redux.

The headline at the top of this column is a quotation from a letter an 18th century English writer, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, sent to her daughter, and it sums up concisely how courtesy works. It's a pity the bungos don't understand that.

A story which went the rounds a few years ago beautifully illustrates the extent of the bungoistic attitude: a passenger on a flight to London was standing in the aisle as the plane was about to begin its descent. The flight attendant approached him and very professionally and politely said, "Sir, will you please take your seat, as the plane will soon be landing." "Ah who yu ah call SURR?!"

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

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