Robert Heinlein's Friday, Again

In Robert Heinlein's novel Friday the character identified as the Boss remarked at one point in the novel that "a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters," and that this "symptom" of a dying culture "is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength."

The remark was not a throwaway line, but relevant to the book's theme, precisely because the titular protagonist's problem was that of making a life for herself in a world that really was supposed to be falling apart.

Of course, people have always complained that their "culture was dying"--and as part of the package always complained about the decline of manners. It has especially been the case that the old have always complained about the young in this manner. And for precisely that reason I ordinarily discount this sort of thing.

Still, the passage caught my eye partly because there was a bit more nuance here, in particular the observation that it is something that worsens, with the bit about mistaking rudeness for "proof of strength" especially telling. A culture where people take such pride in being an "asshole" as we see, in which people who act like "assholes" are worshipped by people whose greatest aspiration in life seems to similarly be "assholes," is not necessarily "dying," but also far from healthy.