Interesting post. I understand and broadly agree with your message: why close yourself off even to the possibility of developing some kind of friendship, and what’s the point, apart from trying to appear stylishly arch, of gratuitously offending your host?
On the other hand, Dave does have some kind of point. Insincere greetings or promises can be quite hurtful, too. It also strikes me that some of our ‘manners’ are rooted in a class system and are subtle ways of maintaining class difference, therefore anything but egalitarian, in which case why indulge it?
The challenge of course is to be able to tell one from the other. Not easy.
Anyway, thanks again (sincerely) for a stimulating start to my Thursday!
Maybe it's because I hail from the same part of the country, but I completely understand Blackburn Dave. We're so used to people being uninterested in us that we can spot a phony interest in staying in touch from a mile away. No one notices when we leave a party so why go to the trouble of disrupting other people's conversations? I disagree that it's an act of ego; we're doing everyone else a favour. Manners, of course, are different and I would always discreetly thank a host before slipping away. Dave will probably have turned out to be one of those people in life who seemingly have very few acquaintances but a handful of solid gold friends. And I'm sure he'll be happier for it.
Interesting post. I understand and broadly agree with your message: why close yourself off even to the possibility of developing some kind of friendship, and what’s the point, apart from trying to appear stylishly arch, of gratuitously offending your host?
On the other hand, Dave does have some kind of point. Insincere greetings or promises can be quite hurtful, too. It also strikes me that some of our ‘manners’ are rooted in a class system and are subtle ways of maintaining class difference, therefore anything but egalitarian, in which case why indulge it?
The challenge of course is to be able to tell one from the other. Not easy.
Anyway, thanks again (sincerely) for a stimulating start to my Thursday!
Maybe it's because I hail from the same part of the country, but I completely understand Blackburn Dave. We're so used to people being uninterested in us that we can spot a phony interest in staying in touch from a mile away. No one notices when we leave a party so why go to the trouble of disrupting other people's conversations? I disagree that it's an act of ego; we're doing everyone else a favour. Manners, of course, are different and I would always discreetly thank a host before slipping away. Dave will probably have turned out to be one of those people in life who seemingly have very few acquaintances but a handful of solid gold friends. And I'm sure he'll be happier for it.