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.The as-sistant had not known and not cared where the book might be found, and theold lady had asked if she could be more helpful. So I told her to fuck off, wasthe assistant s triumphant punchline.A friend in a precarious industry, shattered by his third redundancy in three 2years, made an appointment with the local careers service to discuss other op-tions.The adviser didn t bother to turn up for the first appointment, or for thesecond.There was no apology and no explanation.My friend wasn t prepared tobe humiliated by asking for a third. Just when you feel like a piece of rubbish,they treat you like one, he said.An acquaintance on a newspaper, a tough and experienced journalist, felt 3so continuously unwell that her doctor decided she was going through an early STRATEGY TWO: DEVELOPING AN ESSAY BASED ON A SOURCE 211menopause.Then her hypercritical and contemptuous boss moved on, and hersymptoms disappeared.One factor links many of the miseries we inflict upon one another, from an- 4tisocial behavior to bullying at work and our encounters in public places.It isour lack of respect for others, coupled with our obsession with being treatedwith respect ourselves.And the less respect we encounter, the less prepared weare to offer any to anyone else.It s no longer true that most people aspire tohaving good manners; many just want to protect their egos in every social en-counter.Conscious of our jealous sensitivity to any slight, we go out into thepublic arena armed only with our own willingness to be aggressive or obliviousin response.We live in a culture where the primacy of the self and its satisfactions is 5everything.We are bombarded with messages telling us that we should havewhat we want because we re worth it.As consumers, we are kings.We knowthat we have rights, that brands seek our favor; that as long as we can pay, wefeel powerful.We like that sensation.It is seductive because it is so at oddswith the reality of the rest of our lives.As workers and producers we are undermore pressure and feel more insecure than ever before.Our private lives are in-creasingly unpredictable; our financial futures uncertain.There is no general re-spect for mundane lives, well lived, in a popular culture that celebrates wealth,beauty, celebrity, notoriety and youth.Most of us cannot feel confident aboutour worth and about the regard in which we are held.This conflict between our sense of entitlement and our shaky sense of 6self-worth enrages us.At work many of us bolster ourselves by struggling to as-sert our superiority to others.Managers who crave the respect of their staff, butfear they don t have it, create the semblance of it by frightening those under-neath them.They are too concerned with maintaining their status to thinkabout the damage they are doing to their subordinates.Service staff who feeltheir jobs are beneath them often make their disdain clear by doing them asgracelessly as possible.Minor officials take pleasure in exercising obstructivepetty authority.This behavior matters enormously because we are social animals, critically 7dependent on the reactions of others for our well-being.Two centuries ago theEarl of Chesterfield, writing to his son, warned him that men will forgive any quar-rel or criticism, except one.They cannot tolerate being treated with contempt.Last month new scientific research demonstrated that the brain reacts to a socialsnub in just the same way as it does to a physical injury.In effect, by our thought-less and self-protective behavior, we are going through our days delivering smallsocial injuries to one another, each one of which is felt as acutely as physical pain.Some of this is caused by our confusion over the end of deference.Freed 8from old social codes, we can be reluctant to show respect to anyone, in case it 212 5 / THE SINGLE-SOURCE ESSAYappears to diminish us.Much of it, too, is simply carelessness, or lack of time.We know, and are often embarrassed by, our own sensitivity.We know howeasy it is to feel negligible when powerful people ignore emails or job applica-tions or requests for help.We know that we can be made furious by a bus driverignoring us at a request stop, or feel ridiculously uplifted by the unexpectedkindness of strangers.But we don t ascribe such power or significance to ourown behavior.The people most vulnerable to hurt are those whose self-worth is already 9undermined by those around them: bullied workers, mothers who have givenup work, recent immigrants, people in menial jobs.Those with the least moneyand the least authority are made continually aware of others contempt.But theerosion of concern for others is taking place at all levels of society.The wealthieryou are, the more protected you are from the consequences.Prosperous peoplecan largely pay others to be nice to them.Yet they too practice and suffer fromthe new selfishness.Fewer people now observe the conventions of good manners.They accept 10invitations, only to withdraw at the last minute when something more desirableappears.At formal events, some people are ruthless about ignoring a neighborin favor of a more useful guest.The old idea that one had a social responsibilitytoward one s host or fellow guests is beginning to be replaced by a determina-tion to maximize one s individual satisfaction, regardless of the emotional injurycaused to anyone else.The values of the market are openly invading the socialsphere.Why practice duty when you could make a contact or secure a gain?The answer is that we are all diminished by this behavior.If every social 11encounter is reduced to a self-marketing opportunity, we will all, at some point,be made savagely unhappy.It may work, temporarily, for the powerful anddesirable.But at some time every one of us will experience failure, be perceivedas dull or grow old.We all want to be valued as human beings, rather thancommodities.It is the generosity and tolerance of others that makes our livesbearable.The human, social and economic cost of our lack of mutual respect is enor- 12mous.Consider the wasted emotional energy, the destruction of confidenceand creativity, and the alienation that results from it.Anxious and undermined,we hand on humiliation to others, then deplore the dissolution of social bonds.The industries that surround us will do nothing to reverse this trend.They maketheir money and find their audiences by appealing to our egos.We cannot allow marketeers to establish our social norms.We need to find 13ways to re-establish the encouragement of empathy, respect and considerationtoward the people around us.The existence of those values acts as a social STRATEGY TWO: DEVELOPING AN ESSAY BASED ON A SOURCE 213safety net, connecting us to one another.They make us feel happier and lessthreatened by the world in which we live.It s another burden to be taken up by schools
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