The Little Gestures That Make a Society Work

If you want a basic test of whether someone fits into civilized society, whether they put a shopping cart back at the grocery store is a good thing to watch. Yes, whether you put your shopping cart back or not after putting your groceries in your car DOES SAY something about the type of person you are.

Some people, usually people who are too lazy to put their shopping carts back, don’t like the idea of a “shopping cart test.”

How could such a seemingly insignificant thing matter?

Yet, our society is full of small gestures that we make toward each other that cumulatively make a big difference because they send signals about the sort of people that surround us.

To name another seemingly insignificant example, at the grocery store last night, I was trying to look at some steaks, and a guy and his wife sort of wandered into my path. He looked me in the eye and said, “Excuse me” as he moved out of my way. I looked him back in the eye and said, “No, excuse me,” and went about my business.

That seems trivial, right? In a sense, it is. However, what is the subtext of what happened there? That man saw he was minorly inconveniencing another man. He acknowledged it and showed me respect by saying, “Excuse me.” I acknowledged his gesture and showed him respect in return by saying, “No, excuse me.” In a subtle way, the message both of us took out of that encounter is, “That’s an alright guy. It’s okay to share a space with him.” When those types of encounters stack in a place, the reaction moves from, “That guy is alright” to “This place is alright.”

You go to the supermarket and the shopping carts get put back, people are polite and maybe someone will even let you go ahead of them if they have 40 items, and you have one and you feel comfortable and good about the people surrounding you.

Compare that to say a place where there are bums in front of the store, wild kids running everywhere, people aren’t very polite and the whole store looks a little rundown. What happens there? It makes you a little on edge. A bit like you need to watch your back.

Over time, these feelings accumulate in us. This is one of the many issues with social media. It obsesses over rude comments, outrage-provoking events, anger, and signs that things aren’t “okay.” The less “okay” things feel, the more on guard you are, the less you trust your neighbors, and the more uncertain you feel about whether “all is well.”

On the other hand, back in the real world, in your neighborhood, saying “Hi” to your neighbors, waving as you pass someone on the street, taking your neighbors their mail if it gets delivered to you – these are the sort of small gestures that make people feel good about where they live. On the other hand, you may have lived in apartment buildings where people weren’t scary or rude, but you literally don’t know your neighbors at all. They’re just people you pass in the halls occasionally. What’s the feeling there? “I need to be a little wary because I’m on my own.”

In recent years, to the detriment of our whole society, liberals have become increasingly hostile to some of these significant little gestures.

For example, when someone has something bad happen to them, many libs now get huffy about people sending “thoughts and prayers.” Well, if you believe in the power of prayer, and many of us – myself included – do, the prayer is a very good thing. But, even if you don’t, it’s one of those small gestures. It’s a human being saying, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” That’s not going to fix your problem and it’s not life-changing, but it does mean something. It’s a small gesture of concern and support from the community, which is a healthy thing to experience.

So is saying, “sir” or “ma’am.” It’s a polite gesture that shows respect and sends a message about what type of behavior someone can expect from you. You can be a small, old woman talking to a big, rough-looking dude, but if you ask him something and he replies with a “ma’am” at the end of the sentence, you receive some basic assurances about how he behaves and will treat you. That doesn’t mean you’re best friends or that you should go off to the rock quarry with him, but you can feel comfortable around him in public. That’s valuable and when liberals try to take that away on behalf of Weirdy McWeirdson, who doesn’t know if he’s going to be a sir, a ma’am, or a xe/xir today, it does people a disservice.

The same goes for chivalry. Opening a door or pulling out a chair for a woman is a small gesture that sends a message about how a man intends to behave. It’s his way of saying, “You can expect me to behave like a gentleman and you’re safe in my presence.” Yet, it’s the same unhappy women who will tell you they “choose the bear,” who don’t like chivalry because they feel like it’s a man trying to lord it over them somehow:

There are lots of other little gestures we could point toward:

Letting someone in while you’re in traffic. Taking a neighbor food after a death in the family. Giving someone with a dead battery a jump. Giving a compliment to a passing stranger. Picking up a piece of trash in your neighborhood. Giving up your seat on the subway to an old or pregnant woman. Having a nice conversation with a stranger while you’re waiting in line. Making a point of saying “Hello” to a new person at church or a social group. Being polite to a service worker doing their best in a place where they’re understaffed, and you’ve had to wait too long. Asking if a neighbor’s dog or child wants to have a play date with yours.

Now, you might say, “These are all small beans. Piddly things! But we need big things to fix America!”

But do we?

Ask yourself this question: “If you were going to move to a neighborhood and the only thing you knew about it was that most people in it did all these small things we talked about, what would you know about that neighborhood?”

Would there be drug dealers on the corner? Would you have to worry about someone breaking into your house at any time? Would you be scared to let your kids play in the backyard? Probably not, right? You can say that with a good bit of confidence even though you don’t know the race, the religion, the political leanings, or the income level of that neighborhood.

How can that be?

It’s because, over time, little gestures add up and make a big difference. People who make these small gestures are the type of people we all like to be around. They’re the type of people who, in numbers, create nice neighborhoods. Furthermore, if you have enough nice neighborhoods, soon you have a nice town. If your nice town gets big enough, you end up with a nice city. Heck, you get enough people together that do these small gestures, and the next thing you know, you have a nice state to live in. If you have enough nice states, then you have a nice country.

I am a believer in thinking big and shooting for the moon, but what I would also tell you is that if you have enough people doing the right thing on a micro level, making those small gestures toward people around them, good things will happen on a larger level almost by default. Give it a try yourself. Make those small gestures and give it a while to see if it catches on where you live. It has a low cost, it’s easy to do and over time, it might be the changes created by little gestures like these that help get our country back on track.

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