No one is more insufferable than he who lacks basic courtesy

Okay, I should really lay my cards on the table and show you my hand on this one. I am very annoyed right now with the sheer amount of rude people I have met over the last two weeks. They will be referred to from now on as 'people'. The reason for this is largely due to the vast majority people who I have spoken to fall within this rude 'people' category, seriously like 90% of them. In all honesty that's too many for me to bother distinguishing. You are all getting tarred with the same brush because the chances are you, your friends, your family, even lovely Mrs Gibbons from across the street who is a member of the salvation army, you probably all fall into that category. If you do not believe me that it is this common I propose a test, go knock on a strangers door and try to talk to them without receiving a torrent of abuse, vile looks that make you feel like human waste, or just the simple slam of a door into your face. Now I appreciate that door to door people are very annoying, most try to sell you junk (or products depending on your opinion of the tat on offer) aggressively, but this is not an excuse for launching into a tirade at a person when the personal circumstances that have led him or her into this position are not known. Have some damn courtesy people, that door knocker almost certainly is very poorly paid and hating their job, perhaps they are going through a particularly bad time and this is the only way they can make ends meet, or maybe they are already struggling with some personal problem that will not be bettered by being made to feel worthless.

Moving on and feeling the need to clarify, this is not just a moan about the 'people' who I have met over the last few weeks either, it is part of a much larger problem, part of an epidemic within our society. It seems to me that the main reasons for this are lack of interpersonal skills and an emotional distancing from your fellow human beings. We are all, without exception to large swathes of 'people' in this country, simply walking wallets, or tools to provide them with services. There is little or no regard for others, for their well-being and needs, all social interactions (beyond the few friends and family they consider worthy of their precious and rationed manners) boil down to the exchange of goods or services. People believe they require no other social interaction, no need for manners, no desire to communicate with anything other than contempt for the human in front of them, all because they have that new thing they see on telly. From shop assistants to nurses I have witnessed a lack of common decency to others by a wide variety of people, this has happened so often that it is impossible to argue against the widespread alienation of people from the rest of the human world. It is there and it most definitely exists within modern society. It is easy to blame this on the capitalist system, a way of ordering the world so that it encourages all workers to view others as being in competition with them, rather than in cooperation and existing as part of the same community. I do blame it just to make that clear. This attitude is actively encourage by our 'betters' but... what is not excusable is to view other people as sub-human just because they have knocked on your door whilst doing a job they hate, or because you wrongly assume the customer is always right (trust me they rarely are), or because you are so used to being aggressive to others you act that way to those who are helping you. 

Perhaps even more grinding is the assumption by these 'people' that somehow this job is you. That you somehow fit into a category of person because of a job. That they mostly judge other people based upon their misguided notions relating to the exchange of commodities. You are related to the mythical properties of the tat you are selling, in it you become a further appendage of the machine. To these 'people' who are rude at their doors it seems all methods of exchange have an extra added value. Something that is attached additionally to the actual, monetary value of goods. This value has little basis in the goods being exchanged. Poor and rich alike have paid for the tat I am being forced to shift. This value they create in their heads is not directly beneficial to them. The value is in their own feeling of superiority over the scum, the vermin, the undesirables who feed their inexhaustible need for consumption. When we come knocking I suspect they secretly delight in the opportunity to engage in the socially acceptable act of belittling a door canvaser. It is acceptable because as we all know, we are not human, we are at the bottom of the pile. You can be as rude as you want and maintain the moral high-ground. After all, it is not like we deserve even the most basic of courtesies.