People ask me why I love traveling to Japan, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands so much.
One word: manners!
I’m not naïve. I have lived and travelled across far too many countries to know that, given time, the underbelly of any culture will eventually show itself and that no society is perfect. Just read Butter, by Asako Yuzuki (柚木 麻子) and you get my point.
Still, just travel to Japan and some of the countries I just mentioned (which is by no means a complete list) and you will see what I am talking about – the culture is brimming with manners.
By the way, just to be clear, so we know what I mean by manners, here is my working definition. Manners are the everyday civic virtues that guide how we treat one another in shared social space. They involve kindness toward strangers, concern for the wellbeing of others, awareness of how our behaviour affects those around us, respect for difference, tolerance in moments of disagreement, and a basic willingness to cooperate with others. In this sense, manners are the ordinary moral habits that sustain trust and make civil society possible.
So, how do the manners of other countries compare? Well, let’s just say, that is my worry.
Yet another caveat: for the naysayers, yes, certainly manners still exist throughout the world, and more so in some cultures than others; and there are also lots of people and communities that get up every day and are kind and considerate and aware. So, let’s get that critique of my argument out of the way.
Bottom line: something in our collective moral structure has changed.
What got me thinking about all of this was a text from my friend Scott – one of my old-school, progressive rock buddies who is also keen on 1980s alternative music. He sent me a 2026 interview with David Byrne, from the Talking Heads, who is touring the UK with the release of his new album, Who is the Sky? The interview is on YouTube, so you can watch it yourself. (The new album, by the way, is pure brilliance! Byrne is just so amazing.)
If I were a music critic, I would say the record circles around the possibility of human connection at a moment when the world feels deeply divided, suggesting that even in a fragmented landscape there remain everyday ways people can still find one another.
To make his point, in the YouTube interview Byrne quotes John Cameron Mitchell – actor, playwright, screenwriter, singer, songwriter, producer and director – that, ‘Punk used to be about making a big noise, but now this is the resistance: kindness and empathy.’
In a recent article for the New York Times, Mitchell explains what he means: the real spirit of punk today, he says, lies not in rebellion, but in collective action, tolerance, storytelling, and people having one another’s backs in times of crisis. In our current fragmented and fearful political moment, we need to stop cancelling one another or pulling to the hard-right of politics and start building communities, working together outside approved systems, and acting with empathy. Today’s punk ethic is grounded in cooperation, courage, and shared responsibility—qualities that sustain civic life.
I could not agree more!
As the American science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein famously wrote: ‘A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.’
The last sentence is particularly full of punch. Reading the daily news in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, it often feels as though we are living through the erosion of civil society that Heinlein described.
And this erosion is at us, it seems, from all sides. The liberal left contributes to a breakdown in manners through moralism, cancel culture, ideological purity tests, and the endless bifurcating of identity politics to the point of absurdity – a point that many comedians today go hard at.
On the other side, hard-right conservatives and populists contribute in far more structurally damaging ways: democratic backsliding, attacks on institutions, the promotion of intolerance, authoritarian rhetoric, and escalating partisan hostility—developments widely documented in recent political science research on democratic erosion and populism. In this environment, abusive rhetoric toward opponents and women, LGBTQI communities, immigrants, liberals, and minorities becomes normalized and expectations of accountability in public life weaken.
Yes, manners also mean accountability!
As Edmund Burke stated in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), ‘Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend.’
Manners set the basic expectation that people answer for what they say and do. Yet we are living through a moment in which many of the most powerful figures in politics, media, and public life increasingly operate without that expectation. The message filters downward. When those at the top face little consequence for cruelty, dishonesty, or open contempt for others, the signal sent to the rest of society is clear: accountability no longer matters; manners are for the weak.
Manners also mean honour and self-respect. Historically, manners were never just about etiquette. They were the outward expression of character—the everyday way people showed restraint, respect, and responsibility toward others. Honour meant treating others with dignity even when you had the power not to. Self-respect meant holding yourself to a standard even when no one was watching. In that sense, manners are the small civic virtues that show whether we are capable of living together without tearing one another apart.
Or, as Hannah Arendt stated, ‘The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.’
So, where does that leave us?
When I travel to places like Japan, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands, what I feel most strongly is not perfection. A healthy culture is never perfect; healthy does not mean everything works or that there are no tensions or failures. What I feel is that in these countries the everyday civic habits of their societies still hold—small acts of respect, awareness, restraint, and kindness. In other words, manners remain part of the social fabric.
And perhaps that is my ultimate point. In a moment when cruelty, outrage, and performative hostility increasingly dominate public life, bringing manners back into everyday existence can do more to quiet the riot than we might imagine. It is the small, daily acts of consideration—holding ourselves accountable, treating others with dignity, showing restraint in moments of anger—that slowly repair the civic bonds that hold a society together.
David Byrne and John Cameron Mitchell may be right.
Today, manners are the new punk.
