h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

is the salt of the earth.

Doesn't exclude politeness, I've known it combined. But it's too easy to use politeness as a cover. Or a defense. The politest society I've experienced was Ian Smith's white Rhodesia.

My family was very politely shunned after my father started learning Shona and speaking it to the gardener. Maybe my mistrust of etiquette is an overreaction to that, I don't know, but I do tend to mistrust any emphasis on it. Consideration is what I'd place importance on.


When was the last time someone was genuinely courteous to you? What does genuine courtesy mean? Someone was genuinely kind just yesterday evening.

Holding a door open for a member of the opposite sex: outmoded sexism or just common decency? Usually it's just convenient.

Do we need to invent new rules and codes to deal with a burgeoning populace? We just need consideration.

Could we learn more from other cultures about the way we treat each other? If consideration has a higher priority in them, yes.

Is a more spiritual approach to the burdens of modern life a way of taking off the pressure instead? No idea, but consideration's pretty practical.

Is there a custom you'd like to see make a comeback? Giving back one seventh.

What's the rudest thing you've ever done (and do you regret it?)? I forgot a friend's birthday, I regret that.

Giving back one seventh
BRILLIANT idea, but what's the historical precedent. One seventh because there are seven days in the week possibly?
Whatever, it's a corker...
GJ

Hi GJ

I was thinking of harvest offerings, tithing customs, 'Sabbath' days. I suspect other cultures/religions than Christianity have similar practices and that something similar happened before our modern religions came into being.

10% of agricultural produce is the old figure connected with tithing but when I first heard of it in connection with donating to charities it was a seventh. Possibly it's an easy rule of thumb way of converting 10% of gross into the roughly equivalent of net pay after tax etc. But one seventh also connects with the idea of a Sabbath day, which you could see as either a gift of quality time or of a day's lost food gathering.

Voluntarily giving back one seventh to your community, planet, environment just seems a really good principle. Going back to harvest offerings, it's not limited to money - leave one seventh of a field fallow, or unsprayed, give a day to the community, or give away part of your earnings.

Actually it ties in with the spiritual approach question - these all being ways of recognising something beyond self.