13 February

People are getting angrier and ruder, I’m sure of it. Anybody who works with the public is treated with contempt. Moralists would ask people to be nice and have good manners. But manners are a sign of deference, and we don’t defer to anybody now. We’re each monarchs. That’s our default state. It’s only when societies have hierarchies that we defer to a chain of people ‘above’ us. Better to understand than to moralise, I think.