Manners and morés – been and gone.

I’ve always maintained that the day you start saying, “When I was a child…” you’ve officially become a FOF. That, in this acronym-fraught era, means a ‘Funny Old Fart’, if you’ll excuse the language. 

Being in the blessed position of playing mentor to a variety of individuals, I’m struck by the absence of plain good manners among many young people of all ethnic groups. Whether this has something to do with conscious anarchism, drugs, tattoos, graffiti, freaky hairstyles and clothing, inappropriate or deeply uncultured role models, hostile ‘music’ videos and lyrics, Kwaito, or rap ‘artistes’ (if that isn’t too generous a word to use), I don’t know.

I came from what might be called a ‘kerkmuisarm’ (very poor, doll) home. Despite that, we were taught to rise when a woman older than ourselves entered the room and to write thank you notes to the uncle who only rarely gave us a half crown coin. We said ‘please’ when asking and ‘thank you’ when obliged and gave up bus seats to little old ladies, expectant women and even non-expectant ones. I recall doffing my cap (taking it off and putting it back on) when I greeted my mother in the afternoon after school. Maybe these were silly notions, but somehow they made for a less startling social interaction than I encounter with many young people today.

Technology without a doubt plays a role. But the fact that it’s easier to say ‘thank you’ via an e-mail, seems not necessarily to correlate with the number of thank you e-mails others or I receive.

I was recently ‘stood up’ big time, on some appointments with a brat from a business school, who was outraged that I could then tell someone from ‘an influential family’ (his words) to sod off and never to darken my door again. His needs came first and he clearly found it difficult to accept that someone could be irritated by his inconsiderate and self-serving behaviour. He’s white-skinned (just in case you lapse into stereotyping!) but has big-time ‘entitlement mentality’ written all over him.

Another – also a twenty-something – had the sheer chutzpah to send me an e-mail reading, “I’ve written a book. It’s attached. I await your comments with interest.” He would probably have been offended to discover that I hadn’t been sitting there all week praying that some still-damp-behind-the-ears wannabe author would afflict me with a manuscript. You see, if he’d written, “Hi, my name is so-and-so and I’ve written a book. I’d really like to get a sense of whether it has literary or other merit and wondered if you might find a moment to glance through it and give me some feedback?” - I would almost certainly have taken a half hour some weekend and done just that. But it was the brazen entitlement mentality that niggled. He’s also white skinned, by the way.

The second half of my quibble with many of today’s youth is directed largely at black South African youth. It’s becoming increasingly fashionable (and shortsighted) to reject all sorts of behavioural or etiquette advice or thinking, because ‘it’s colonial.’

I’m among those who applaud the resurgence of Afro-centric pride. Love him or hate him, the late Steve Biko was probably ‘the’ catalyst for black South African people beginning to re-evaluate and appreciate their ethnic heritage.

But today, I find that there’s little appreciation of the very real fact of globalization and the need to understand international norms and morés, if one is to engage with the international community. There’s a too frequent a knee-jerk response by many young black people, via the cliché, “That’s a colonial imposition.” I’m now quite brutal in my reply: “Stick to your township ‘chic’, persist in wearing a cap indoors to meetings, slide down in your chair so you look like you’re sleeping, break every body language, communication and etiquette guideline in the book, and then ask yourself why you don’t get the job you’re after.”

Manners and morés have nothing whatsoever to do with colonialism or even ‘re-colonisation’ of which some unoriginal people speak. Rather, they have to do with culturally neutral, inoffensive behaviour, mannerisms and speech that will ‘travel’ well - anywhere. They exhibit social sensitivity and intelligence Without them, life is going to be an unnecessarily bumpy ride. Think about it, young people!

OK, the gripe’s almost over, except for this thought: If you really want to give your children a few worthwhile gifts in this life, leave them with a sense of curiosity, good manners and a considerate nature. You will have made a bequest of inestimable value.

Youth, sex and senses

It’s total poppycock to suggest as do the KZN-based Christians For Truth (CFT), that the monthly government child-support grant of R 160 is an incentive for young girls to fall pregnant. Just as well they’re not called Christians For Logic, because if they’ve done any shopping lately, they’d realise that R 160 isn’t even going to buy the average teenager a month’s mobile phone recharge time, let alone incentivise pregnancy. CFT say they’d prefer ‘abstinence-based programmes.’ Well, people, welcome to the real world.

The human sex drive is a potent one. Mother Nature has put it at the top of her list of difficult to control impulses, precisely in order to keep the species viable. Humans don’t (although it’s a disappointment to the Pope) engage in intercourse only for ‘the procreation of children.’ They do it for enjoyment. Assuming therefore, that we can premise youth sexuality education programmes on an abstinence platform, is truly rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Contrary to CFT’s assertion that the LoveLife campaigns ‘promote experimentation and lifestyles that lead to pregnancies,’ I believe LoveLife ads and publications talk to teenagers in language they understand. Generation gaps have never been as pronounced as they are today. Ably aided and abetted by technology, fashion, music and the like, the teenage ‘universe’ is very different from that of even a twenty-something. The latest market and sociological research techniques around the world factor this into their methodology.

We are a society in a state of moral implosion. As an example, instead of pregnancy prevention, our clinics and hospitals provide free and confidential abortions - thousands of them, each month. One commentator has said that we’ve now reduced pregnancy to little more than ‘an inconvenience.’ There have been some ghastly recent media reports of pharmacies or clinics dispensing the ‘abortion pill,’ giving young girls a garbage bag and instructing them to ‘squat’ if they feel the foetus aborting. There’s something fundamentally wrong with our values and our morals when we reduce life to the same level of disregard as spraying insecticide on a cockroach.

I subscribe emphatically to the view that women who have been raped, or whose lives are endangered by a pregnancy, should be entitled to an abortion. But (disempowerment issues aside) assuming that just because you don’t use a condom, the pill or any other protection, entitles you to ‘get rid’ of the consequences, is an abusive onslaught on the sanctity of life.

I’m not big on the concept of sin. But this sure as heck sounds like sin to me. Regardless of the level of development of a foetus, it’s a human-being-in-waiting, with (I believe) a soul. Therefore the wanton destruction of it, is murder. That our society has turned crushing skulls and suctioning wombs into a minor appointment in someone’s day, is a measure of the level to which we’ve sunk.

I applaud the approach being taken with the American equivalent of our child-care grant. A single unemployed mother receives welfare assistance for her first child. If she produces another, the state refuses to assist financially unless she goes into a job skills development program. We should do the same.

The issue goes way beyond just a child-care grant. There is little or no sense control by many humans on the planet. America is populated by increasingly obese people. A report this very last week by the Medical Journal of Australia has ranked Australia a close second. This is in the face of an African continent on which, daily, children die from malnutrition. Our world is horribly out of balance.

Scientists are saying that they’ll shortly identify the gene that ‘causes’ over-eating. Heaven forbid that they should conclude that obesity (with rare exceptions) is the result of unmanaged appetites, emotions and minds. It’s much more convenient to bring (as people have done) a class action lawsuit against McDonalds for ‘making’ them fat. And against various American Airlines for discriminating against ‘large’ people. These are not ‘large’ people. They’re grossly obese, with huge backsides and they ooze into your and my (paid for) aircraft seat space. They jolly well should be required to buy two seats. Or get themselves into a counselling, rehab or lifestyle adjustment program.

Blaming others for our own lack of self-management saves us from responsibility or accountability. Including the production of  babies that get aborted, or ‘unaffordable’ children who get neglected.

When we’re creative enough to get teenagers to use protection rather than abortion – because their sex drive is definitely here to stay, folks – we’ll have passed a milestone. Until then, teenage pregnancy will remain a barometer of our failure as a species to rise above animal-level behaviour.