What Are Social Graces?

I recently found it surprisingly difficult to find a convenient definition of "social graces" online to which to refer in this item. The search engine I used instead kept referring me simply to various definitions of "grace," often religious ones, and most of them quite far removed from what I was seeking.

Still, if convenient definitions were difficult to find online I do not think it would be seen as too disputable were I to say (in line with the best of those definitions I was able to find) that "social graces" are a matter of the skills requisite for dealing successfully with others in "polite society." However, what really distinguishes social graces from mere display of "politeness" or "etiquette" is that they are not a matter of simple correctness according to well-defined rules, but a matter of how one acts when the rules are not so clear, or when others do not adhere perfectly to those rules because social graces come down to that ability to smooth social interaction, make it bearable and even pleasing, in part by enabling others to feel at ease. This requires an alertness, a consideration, a creativity not reducible to such matters as the proper forms of greeting or which fork to use with which dish. Indeed, it requires tolerance for others' foibles--letting things go, and holding things back.

That a simple explanation of all this was elusive online seems to me highly symbolic of our situation today in regard to such graces. After all, just how much of such graces do you see, and expect to see? Ours, after all, is a culture which exalts self-assertion at its most idiotic, and those engaging in it most freely, thinking such a lack of consideration for others as proof of one's own strength, as such "strength" seems to be what people of low and conventional mind desire to possess above all else in an era in which the "apologists and admirers of injustice, misery and brutality" supply the conventional wisdom, and make of the bully and the troll, the braggart and the swaggerer, and all the others of their disgusting ilk, not the despised social outcasts they deserve to be, but the culture heroes of the day.1

Thus does the public watch "reality" shows in which vulgarian mediocrities who got every conceivable break yet attribute their billions solely to their own utterly unevidentiated "genius" pour contumely on aspirants to "success" before the eyes of the whole world, as all concerned think the revolting demeanor of "the panelists" is yet further proof of their "genius." Thus do they think the "freedom of speech" is no more and no less than the right of the powerful to punch down at the helpless without anyone punching back at them (the "unbound but protected" victimizing those in the other category). Thus do they salivate at any excuse to "cancel" somebody, indeed claim that their acting on their bigoted vindictiveness is some social duty. And so on and so forth, ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

At the same time those others who do not behave in these ways, and indeed find them objectionable, are surrounded by so much of this behavior that they are apt to have precious little consideration or tolerance to spare for anything but coping with it. They would be gracious if they could--but the mental and emotional resources that would enable them to let things go and hold things back have in all too many cases been used up, even overtaxed, in the course of their just getting through the day.

In a culture like that the existence of social graces is apt to seem like the existence of the Loch Ness monster. We have a fuzzy photo from 1934 that we are told captured it on film. Some people say they have seen it with their own eyes. A percentage of those surveyed think it exists on the basis of such "evidence." However, in the end its existence is far from well-confirmed, and reason abounds for skepticism about whether there ever was anything to be photographed or seen in the first place.

1. The quote's from William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, to whose credit the remark was not intended to be complimentary.