The Civility Solution

Another book by the same author that wrote Choosing Civility that I posted yesterday. This one focuses on how to deal effectively (and politely) with the rudeness of others. His main point, is that if you deal with the rudeness of others with rudeness yourself, all it does is make the situation more rude and acrimonious. Rarely does the original rude person think "gee, I should have been polite" after you been rude back.

Anyway, the book is called The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude and it's got 4 of 5 stars at Amazon, and I think it could be a helpful book - how to derail rude behavior in others, without resorting to rudeness yourself. I might add, the only two people who have given it anything other than 5 stars, was someone who was complaining about Amazon's service (not the book itself), and the other called it "namby-pamby", and as most of the comments point out - the reader may have missed the point, or misapplied the scenarios.

Anyway, if you've read the book, I'd love comments about it here.

Choosing Civility

Yesterday, I posted a link to an article that mentioned a book called Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct. It focuses primarily on how to BE polite. As I mentioned yesterday, most people consider rudeness a serious national problem, but none of them consider themselves rude. This might be the book for all of us. I suspect that most people don't even realize when of if they are being rude.

It's rated 4.5 stars by 19 people at Amazon, and it's available both in paperback and for the kindle, for those that have one.

I haven't read it yet, but will review the book here once I've read it.

Rudeness on the rise

In this CNN/Oprah article, it talks about how 80% of Americans think that rudeness is a serious national problem, but 99% think that they themselves are not rude.

Hmmmm.... there's a bit of a disconnect there.

Anyway, it's an interesting article, with a few good tips (and some appalling anecdotes about awful behavior. I was especially shocked by the gynecologist who talked on his cell phone for 10 minutes while his patient was in the stirrups. She never went back, unsurprisingly.) Give it a read:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/11/11/o.are.you.rude.test/index.html

Be polite. Even when the other person is rude.

One of the most powerful things that people can do to make this a better world is this: Be polite. Be respectful. Show courtesy even — and this is the really hard part — when it’s not returned. For one thing, being courteous and respectful even in the face of rudeness is a GREAT way to stop the escalation of meanness that we so often see.

I read the following in an essay by Greg Knauss, which is included in a book called Things I Learned About My Dad. The book is pretty good. It has lots of good stuff about parenting, but has lots of other good stuff too:

If disobedience is maddening because it's active and open defiance, and lying is maddening because it's sneaky and covert dismissal, then rudeness is maddening because it's thoughtless and self-satisfied arrogance. Oh, were you there? How about that? You don't like having your dinner interrupted with an air horn? Huh. How, exactly does that affect me?

So let's avoid being thoughtless and arrogant. Being nice is well... nice.