Social Tact Anyone?

Social tact seems to be a thing of the past. I walk around thinking mostly the best of people, hoping that this notion can be recognized and solidified. Instead I seem to be shot down left and right, making it a bit hard to have faith in the people that are supposed to be fellow members of my generation. It’s amazing to think that people will one, steal from a house party (drunkenness is not an excuse), and speak to people any which way they feel like (again drunkenness is not an excuse). I like to think of myself as an optimist when it comes to people and their nature, I have always thought the best of people I meet and don’t consider myself to be a cynic when it comes to people. Unfortunately this has changed a lot and it all comes from contact with people I meet day to day thinking that acting any which way is appropriate. I am in support of doing what you want to do and taking advantage of the fact that at this point in time responsibility is looming but not necessarily ever present. However, I think this mentality is enforced much too much and leads to this lack of social tact. It is easy to forget how to act in college and condoned even. But that is the exact problem; people have begun to numb themselves to the importance of interactions with people. Instead of acting like normal human beings and creating a social bond with someone, we vomit up whatever comes to mind, the filter is gone (but it is okay because we’re drunk/high/messed up etc). I am starting to wonder whether I have been lucky to be involved with fairly kind people, people that do not act on any whim but keep in mind the people around them.

It is proving to be very frustrating to filter out the, what seems like, few socially apt people in the bunch. Has it really come to the point where even when we are faced with a common relationship of student-teacher we forget our bounds? Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about self-reliance, the core to any person in his opinion. However, if it really were the case that human nature was to be the thing that guided us in our everyday lives, would it be safe? Then on the other hand, Emerson seemed to have the right idea, at the end of the day, who can you really count on other than yourself, number one, if you will? Unfortunately it is also human nature to be accepted to be validated by others around you. People take this to a level where in an environment like the college bubble, the drunken principle, so to speak, is the principle to live by. This slowly dissipates into our social interactions in their entirety. It is becoming increasingly difficult to sit in class and listen to people spout opinions that they claim to be the be all end all, with an in one ear out the other attitude towards the opinions of others. Henry David Thoreau can sum up my thoughts better then I can:

“To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granite truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in out thought with the purest and subtilest truth? I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other."

-soma