FOR THE BROTHAS: CULTURE AND INTELLECTUALISM

FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Monday, April 29, 2013

DOES ETIQUETTE HAVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE?

Whenever someone mentions etiquette I get the image of a long opulently appointed banquet table where gentle folk are deliciously seated equally elegant in both appearance and demeanor enjoying the wittiest conversation. But there is much more to this fairy tale than mere elegance and eloquence; there is a wonderfully practical side to all this “ haute reverie”; people of diverse backgrounds, using the dining table as a political folly, are coming together in order to execute one of the most important features of human civilisation… “Communication”!

The true purpose of etiquette is to facilitate interpersonal relations. Every echelon of culture has some form of etiquette from the roughest ghetto to the most affluent communities including specific types of institutional communities such as religions, professions and social organizations. The most practical purpose of etiquette is aimed at getting everyone on the same page so that the simplest of rituals such as entering and exiting a room, or greeting and receiving familiar and unfamiliar guests, clients etc., does not become burdensome. One must admit that some of the strange customs that have become adopted as standards of etiquette were doubtless invented by the idle rich who had no other thing to do but squander time. It is my sincere opinion that these practices will not endure the test of time but that the most basic and essential rules of etiquette designed around facilitating a seamless flow of human interaction will ultimately be the ones that survive.

Finally etiquette serves the purpose of crystallizing social standards which have evolved over millennia of human evolution such as the rituals of respect youths show to their elders; as such etiquette is a codex of human social superlatives. During the twentieth century, with the advent of the Sexual and Cultural revolutions established traditions such as etiquette were rightfully challenged. Etiquette was wrongfully passed off as obsolete but as the tide of anarchy begins to sweep the globe we now begin to recognize that some of its most basic tenets must be preserved if humans are to survive as a species. For those who have grandiose ideas of reverting to a socioeconomic world that no longer exists etiquette is a bad elitist tool meant to divide rather than unify but for those who understand the necessity for humans to develop universal norms for proper social interaction with no racial, sexual or ethnic, economic or other barriers, etiquette is a useful tool with a practical purpose.