This article was originally published in Danish on October 25, 2018.
Introduction
Tact and Tone – How to deal with people1 is the title of a book written by Emma Gad in 1918 in which she teaches the reader “how we socialize”. Her point is that when socializing between considerate people, “tact and tone” are unnecessary. It is the indifferent, selfish or inconsiderate who create the need for formal etiquette.
For our English readers, the book can perhaps be compared to Philip Stanhope’s Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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“I eat the way I want to eat”
This summer I had the great joy and pleasure of spending a few weeks with my 3 lovely grandchildren. Consciously or unconsciously, they are always updating me on the latest news from their completely alien world – often about things that humanity could have done without. Understandably, they are incredibly lovely kids, gorgeous, extremely bright and reasonably well mannered – as far as you can raise your kids these days. I am very fond of them and I try with all my might to refrain from interfering. It’s not my job, and I hope I’m reasonably successful. Instead, I take on the role of observer, and it often pays off in the form of observations that inevitably make you think.
Take, for example, the youngest at 8 years old, who is what you understand by a really healthy boy with lots of spunk. A really nice kid. One day we were sitting in a restaurant with the most beautiful view of Marseille. It’s hard to choose when all you really want are burgers from MacDonald’s, and thankfully If doesn’t have that kind of decor, and probably never will, thankfully. Eventually my eyes fell on the spaghetti bolognese – it looked familiar. It was served with pasta crusts – but it wasn’t an Italian restaurant either. I was amazed to see the boy eating the pasta with his fingers. This is when a grandfather should keep his mouth shut, but I couldn’t resist asking him if the waiter had forgotten to give him a fork. “No, no,” he replied unperturbed as he continued to dip his spaghetti into the meat sauce and bring it to his mouth with his fingers. I fought a brief battle and lost. I couldn’t help myself and asked if he didn’t think it was a bit disgusting. After all, there were other people on this terrace who might lose their appetite at this sight. And that’s when the young man said the golden words: “I eat the way I want to eat”
“As I want to!” It’s the worm in the apple, and it has gnawed its way to the core. We do as we please and ignore the unwritten rules that are the basis for peaceful coexistence in a civilized society. Thirty years ago, a restaurateur at a good Italian restaurant on Strøget, which today unfortunately exists in name only, threw a family out because the children – the cute little educated boys – insisted on having the tablecloth knocked aside so they could pour the food out onto the tabletop and eat it directly from it. Why did they have to use a plate too? The parents supported this initiative and the family had to leave the restaurant. It was more than fair. About 15 years later, my mother invited me to dinner at a Jutland inn. It was a nightmare because the restaurant was completely dominated by a single Swedish family whose children were constantly screaming and shouting at the top of their lungs. They did what they wanted, of course. No one intervened here. You wouldn’t dare. You would inevitably have been accused of racism, as the children had seen the light of day under warmer skies than you find in Sweden, and perhaps even worse. It was many years before I set foot in this inn again.
I have elsewhere harped on the fact that people go to the Royal Theater wearing washed-out jeans, ditto Icelandic sweaters and clogs. You do what you want to do. It’s simply a lack of respect for the author, the actors and the rest of the audience. I’ve solved that problem for myself by no longer going to the Royal Theater, as they no longer play anything I want to see anyway. But then again, in a world where teachers show up for their classes in sweatpants or bleached, pre-washed T-shirts with idiotic inscriptions, where doctors meet their patients unwashed and unshaven and in clothes the rest of us wouldn’t wear for gardening, where TV personalities appear in shorts, where lawyers litigate and judges rule in whatever clothes they can find, and ministers go on TV with their shirts open or in T-shirts, no wonder…. They all just do what they want to do. And if you want to rake, spit, shout and urinate in public, why shouldn’t you do it too – whenever you feel like it?
It’s been a long time since people stood up for older people on the bus – because who wants to stand? Who wants to help others at all? A Danish bus driver refused to help an old lady with severe walking difficulties down a flight of stairs, “because it wasn’t on his paperwork that she needed help”. We talk so much about doing something for others, but of course it should preferably be for people on the other side of the world. It makes us feel good and we want to do it! And it’s much more interesting than handing a Danish welfare recipient a USD 100 note so he can pay for his medicine. We don’t want to do that.
A few years ago in my small village there was a terrible funeral. A young girl aged 18 had been killed by a driver who drove into a curve at full speed on the wrong side of the road. As he was not drunk, he was not penalized significantly. After all, he was understandably just driving the way he wanted to. It was just unfortunate that Katrine got in the way of his life. At the funeral, the church was packed and there were of course many young people among the mourners. One of these hopeful beings wore a loose-fitting T-shirt with the text “Hells Bells” in a circle on the back with corresponding illustrations. He gets my award for the most tasteless attire I’ve ever seen. But come on. He wanted to wear that T-shirt – and it didn’t occur to him to consider what the text meant, where he was or why! He was just following his desire!
An 8-year-old – in the presence of his siblings – throws a rock onto the highway, totals a car and is inches away from causing a serious accident, possibly resulting in death. He wanted to do that. You might have expected the parents to have had a very serious conversation with the young man’s rear end, but instead the mother comes out in the press and declares that no one should threaten her children. The perpetrator is victimized because he just did what he wanted to do. This seems to be a case of serious parental neglect where a forced removal was in order! But of course you should be allowed to do what you want to do. Isn’t that what a free society is all about? And woe betide anyone who says anything against it!
We live in a world where the individual is at the center. Everyone can do whatever they want. But if everyone just does what they want, what is left to bind society together? If you won’t consider other people in the small things, how can you imagine that you will in the big things?
As for my grandson, he’ll probably find himself using a fork when his friends tell him he eats like a baby. But then again, he’s naturally endowed with a good amount of self-confidence, so who knows?
Unfortunately, the criminal law prevents me from doing what I want to do! Many people can be very happy about that! Except the undertakers, of course!
Povl H. Riis-Knudsen
Translated by means of AI
- The book has not been translated into English. ↩︎
Danmarks Frihedsraad 