Rudeness and doom

“Rudeness has a long history as a token of radicalism – the Roundheads, French revolutionaries and Bolsheviks were all notoriously short on manners – so a generous interpretation of middle-class nastiness might be that it is a perverse signifier of solidarity with the masses. Or perhaps people are having a bad day, or had unhappy childhoods, or their cat died that morning.

Then again, the mark of a grown-up is the ability not to make other people suffer for one’s own misfortunes. I had a dear friend who was killed because the driver of the car that ran him over had been having a bad day, and it didn’t strike me as a good-enough excuse. In fact, it has left me with a conviction that our only hope as a species is to be kind to one another. And if the middle classes can’t behave properly at parties, we’re all doomed.” Jane Shilling, “If the bourgeoisie can’t behave, we’re doomed.”