Morals and Manners

I was tempted to write another book report about two excellent books (the second a continuation of the first)— The Searcher and The Hunter, both by Tana French. Although they’re in the category of mystery, they’re much more about character, relationship and the impressive poetry of Irish speakers and folk wisdom of the people. With a good mystery in each that untwists slowly and keeps you wondering. 

 

Meanwhile, there’s also some Dickensian commentary on matters of universal human issues relevant to the times. This gem from The Searchers so eloquently articulates my impatience with political correctness by acknowledging that it has its place— manners— but when imagined in the wrong place—morals— confusion reigns. I’ll let the passage speak for itself. (Boldface mine):

 

“Over the last few years, it has been brought home to Cal that the boundaries between morals, manners and etiquette, which have always seemed crystal clear to him, may not look the same to everyone else. He hears talk about the immorality of young people nowadays, but it seems to him that the young people he knows spend plenty of time concentrating on right and wrong. The thing is that many of their most passionate moral stances, as far as he can see, have to do with what words you should or shouldn’t use for people. Based on what problems they have, what race they are, who they like to sleep with. While he agrees that you should call people whatever they prefer to be called, he considers this to be a question of basic manners, not of morals. …

 

In Cal’s view, morals mean something more than terminology. At Thanksgiving dinner, his daughter’s boyfriend Ben damn near lost his mind when talking about the proper term for people in wheelchairs and he clearly felt pretty proud of himself for doing that. But he didn’t mention ever doing anything useful for one single person in one single wheelchair. 

 

On top of that, the right terms change every few years so that someone who thinks like Ben has to always be listening to other people to tell him what’s moral or immoral now. It seems to Cal that this isn’t how a person goes about having a sense of right and wrong. 

 

Then the police department went the same way, bringing in a mandatory sensitivity training , which was fine by Cal, given how some of his colleagues treated people from bad neighborhoods or rape victims. Except the sessions turned out to be all about what words they were and weren’t allowed to use, nothing about what they were doing underneath all the words and how they could do it better. Everyone was always talking about talking and the most moral person was the one who yelled loudest at the other people for doing the talking all wrong. “