Rude

It’s interesting how things feel rude based on vestigial concerns.

Why is it rude to wear a hat indoors? A long time ago, knights removed their helmets to identify themselves and demonstrate that they weren’t impostors. I don’t know about you, but even on the rare occasion where I do wear a hat, it’s not a full-face metal helmet that obscures my identity. So why is it rude to keep it on? People say things like “Oh, it shows that you might be in a hurry to leave,” but that fails on two fronts. One, I might be in a hurry to leave, but that isn’t necessarily rude depending on the context. But more importantly, that feels like hollow justification. It seems like wearing hats inside was rude, and when the reason for it to be rude disappeared, people came up with new reasons for the same thing to be rude just so they could keep the same rules of etiquette.

Smoking, once ubiquitous, has fallen out of fashion. If you light up a cigarette in someone’s company in pretty much any context, it might be considered rude. If you’re in a shared public space such as an office, restaurant, bus, etc. then lighting a cigarette subjects other people to foul smells that can linger for days. That’s certainly rude in my book!

But now consider the age of virtual meetings. 99% of my business is conducted from my own home over a series of video conferences with people all across the globe. I don’t smoke, but if I chose to while I was working, it would affect no one but me. My colleagues could see it, but they couldn’t smell it. It wouldn’t affect them in any way. But some casual conversation with folks elicited exactly the responses I suspected: People can’t put their finger on why, but they still instinctively think of it as rude.

The rules of etiquette become subconscious. They burrow into our culture and stay there, even when they no longer connect to any meaning within that culture. Of course, some of the rules still make a lot of sense – cover your mouth when you cough, people. But that makes it all the harder to separate the ones that don’t.

It’s worth examining because outdated notions of rudeness build up as cultural barriers. A culture that never had knights might not care if you wear hats indoors, and therefore they might think nothing of keeping their headwear on at your dinner party. You might think they’re rude, but they don’t have an unkind intention in their heart – just a fancy hat on their head.