This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Seattle is giving up on the automated public toilet, with city officials saying they've become too filthy, crime-ridden and vandal-prone to work. You might say that's not the most critical policy issue out there, but this story speaks to a real public concern.
"Other cities around the world seem to be able to handle toilets civilly," one city councilman said, and "civilly" may be the key word here. One of the consistent themes we've run into in our opinion research is that people think their fellow Americans are increasingly rude, disrespectful and inconsiderate, and it bothers them. A lot. In our Aggravating Circumstances survey, one of the first to focus on this problem, we found eight in 10 called "a lack of respect and courtesy" a serious problem in society. More than half (52 percent) said bad incidents are difficult to shrug off and tend to stay with them for some time.
What's also striking is that the issue of civility also crops up when we're examining other issues as well. We find it's a strong theme in education, for example – a stronger theme than many educators seem to want to deal with. Even students complain about profanity and rudeness in their high schools. And it's a powerful theme in people's attitudes about parenting, where parents tell us they're always playing defense against the crude influences of pop culture.
It isn't that people are looking for the government to solve this. In focus groups, we usually run into one or two people who want media censorship or some kind of Singapore-style legally imposed courtesy, but far more see this as their own battle. Four in 10 admit they've behaved badly themselves. And they largely see protecting their kids as their job (and they expect other parents to do this as well). When a major city can't sustain a minor public convenience, it just provides the public with more evidence that they can't quite trust their fellow citizens to behave.
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You have touched on a central point of concern which pervades all areas of society, an aspect of civic literacy that begs the question "What are our responsibilities to one another?" It is a common thread woven through a number of studies and commentaries on your site.
It is time to re-consider the premise that 'business' can lead or demonstrate the way forward for a truly advanced society. Business, by definition, has no principles, and, nothwithstanding the best efforts of schools and think-tanks, and the refined politesse of many of its corporate elite, no 'ethics' per se. Unfortunately, and as you have documented, our charitable organizations, in adopting the business model (for profit philanthropy), are now aggressively marginalizing their reputations. Society, in the greater sense of the environment within which business plys its trades, must set the parameters here.Business, to put it bluntly, and not without having been accorded the greatest opportunity, has proven itself incapable of this deeper, more meaningful, and most important sense of leadership. We have much to learn and appreciate from and about business - but this is confined to its ability to muster resources, engage people, and apply them, effectively and efficiently to a singular purpose.
Unfortunately, there is a rather widely held notion, among the most rude - often, some of the most affluent or successful among us - that 'manners' and 'civility' are a weakness or liability to one's personal capacity (to achieve or attain what one wants). That may be. But it is this sense of extreme individualism, to the exclusion of others, that is now manifested in the behavior documented in many of your reports. The answer, in my opinion, lies in a new paradigm of connectedness - "green behavior" if you will, where we re-discover how survival is a function of respect and intelligent, cooperative conduct aimed at perpetuating, nurturing and sustaining our lives and those of others.
Thank goodness for the work you're doing.
Paul.
This is truly interesting. Today's society has become so fast-paced and competition is so heightened that individuals tend to overlook or even ignore their fellow man. And while there are definitely a fair number of people who do a lot to assist others, the public toilet debacle does show a decrease in citizen value. It's so much easier to just be inconsiderate, but if our world continues to move forward in such a direction, social and political systems -- not just public toilets -- are going to face immense challenges!
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