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In my opinion, there should be no rules for such basic social interactions, neither rules for regulating the touching nor rules for regulating the reaction to i

In my opinion, there should be no rules for such basic social interactions, neither rules for regulating the touching nor rules for regulating the reaction to it. It's not just a matter of personal freedom not to have such rules, human behavior cannot and should not be regulated in such ways. Every human interaction enforces or is based on existing norms anyway, but these change over time and fixed rules would prevent that change. The change is needed to adapt to changing living conditions and technological changes. Of course, there can be exceptions, for example rules may make sense when there is an extremely asymmetric power relation, e.g. one is the employer of another, and we already have rules in the form of laws for that purpose. Without getting political (please!), does somebody have an idea where does this obsession with rules come from? Fear of civil lawsuits in the US?

0815test 7y ago
It's actually a matter of personal freedom to have such rules. Joe Biden's-- or anyone else's-- freedom to swing his fist should end at my nose, and this should be made clear and unambiguous to everyone's benefit. License and anarchy are the opposite of genuine, actual freedom.
- jfk13 7y ago
  I think you'll find we already have rules that restrict Joe Biden's freedom to punch you on the nose. On the other hand, we don't have rules that say I must ask for your explicit consent before putting out my hand to shake yours when we meet. Somewhere in between, there are gray areas. The question is whether one vocal minority should be allowed to define where the lines are drawn, and insist the rest of society adjusts its norms to abide by their definitions. Or is it OK for the establishment of social norms to be a broader, slower, less clearly-defined, and sometimes ambiguous process?
  - manicdee 7y ago
    How come the rules that restrict Joe Biden’s freedom to touch other people shouldn’t apply to you? There don’t need to be rules about shaking hands or high giving because those are mutually consensual actions. Fist bumping a non-receptive individual (aka punching a colleague on the shoulder) is not consensual. For the “vocal minority” which is most women and some men, non-consensual touching is associated with bullying, intimidation, physical coercion and assault. In the workplace we try to avoid emotional arousal because people shouting angrily at each other makes it difficult for others to focus on their work. In social settings, you are free to explore boundaries as long as you are aware that failure to take non-vocal hints can lead to being ostracised from those social circles. But yes, the “vocal minority” should be allowed to define the lines, which are pretty simple even for people who have never had to follow etiquette: other people’s bodies are off limits to you unless they indicate otherwise. By all means go for the high five, but accept that if it is not returned you don’t try forcing it to happen. You have now divined where one boundary existed at one point in time.
- dinkudunk 7y ago
  Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules.
- mc32 7y ago
  Biden isn’t swinging his fist. It’s social interaction. Now, blurring the distinction between interactions with friends and strangers is problematic. But the interaction itself isn’t a problem, it’s recontextualizing the interaction which is problematic.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
apacheCamel 7y ago
Would you be able to give other examples of this obsession with rules? From this, and this alone, I'd like to imagine that people just want to clear up the unknown. Social interactions are almost always different from one person to the next. Social norms do tend to keep things pretty similar but the whole range can vary wildly. Maybe this is just a way to narrow the range? I don't think it is a great way to handle things that make you uncomfortable and I also don't think uncomfortable is always a bad thing.
- CJefferson 7y ago
  The problem with setting social rules, is they always seem to line up exactly with what the currently dominant group defines "normal", in my experience. The worst advice I was given as a child was "treat others as you wish to be treated", because it is awful advice when moving in to a significantly different set of people.
  - benj111 7y ago
    "treat others as you wish to be treated" It's a useful minimum surely? How else should you treat a significantly different set of people? Yes once you get to know them, you learn how they want to be treated (mainly?) based on how they treat you and others. Are you talking about using general formal politeness?
    - CJefferson 7y ago
      The problem is it sounds seductive, but fails when your rules of pilteness don't line up with other people's. For example, I hate being asked questions multiple times. Therefore when i went to ubiversity, if I asked someone is they wanted me to buy a round, and they said no, I would not accept the answer. After some months I discovered I was considered tight, as the first offer is always refused, so "doesn't count".
      - benj111 7y ago
        Right, but 'first contact' situations generally call for both sides to be forgiving of the other side. Theres plenty of time over the ensuing months to communicate your preferences. FWIW I wouldn't say theres a particular rule requiring offering to buy a round multiple times, so I'd have have been viewed as tight also, even if I was trying to fit in with normal convention.
icebraining 7y ago
Since you're distinguishing rules from norms and laws, can you describe what kind of rules are you talking about?
- JohnStrangeII 7y ago
  The kind of rules the Washington Post article talks about, i.e., explicitly formulated rules that are supposed to regulate behavior but are not (yet) laws. The article contrasts this to "unwritten rules", by which they seem to mean social norms and/or conventions. Social norms are usually not explicitly formulated and codified and if they are, they still exist independently of that formulation insofar as they are internalized by a significant number of members of a group. They evolve organically out of actual social interactions. How exactly they evolve, what distinguishes social norms from conventions, and their relation to institutions, these are highly controversial topics. I'd personally recommend Cristina Bicchieri's taxonomy and approach, but there are other theories out there. In any case, it seemed clear to me that the WP article didn't talk about social norms - you cannot just decide what social norm is to be in place, these evolve independently and can be more or less stable -, and the WP article doesn't talk about laws only either. It seems to be based on the idea that written codes that are not laws should complement laws and replace actual social norms as kind of guidelines of how to behave, and I reject this idea for many reasons, including many moral ones. To summarize my reasons very briefly: Everybody has a right to be an asshole and not every undesirable or unwanted behavior is also immoral. I'm very unhappy about the apparent trend (which seems to mostly exist in the US only) of not being able to distinguish between criminal behavior, immoral behavior, generally undesirable behavior, and personally unwanted behavior. These are all different things and mixing them up leads to a lot of confusion.
DanBC 7y ago
The rule is "ask for permission before toucing someone else". I find it weird that you've escalated this into some huge thing that infringes upon your freedoms. Keep your fucking hands off my body.
- Veen 7y ago
  Have you considered that your discomfort with social touching is indicative of personal issues that you need to address, rather than demanding a monumental shift in social norms to align everyone's behaviour with your idiosyncratic preferences.
  - purple-again 7y ago
    The above poster was very brash with his emotions which is probably the source of downvotes but his opinion is shared by many, and by me very deeply. I’m forced to spend a significant amount of time in Miami in a professional setting. I am so damn tired of women touching me in what I consider a wildly inappropriate and intimate way. I never say anything to them because I don’t think their is anything wrong with them, I understand it’s just cultural. I share deep hugs with my close male friends of 30+ years frequently. I don’t accept that there is anything wrong with me or the above poster. We simply don’t want to be touched outside of the contexts we find appropriate. This discussion has been excellent as it’s mainly focused on how to handle the rules of engagement in a world that includes people like us and people like them. Please try to focus on that and not on deciding who is wrong.
    - Veen 7y ago
      I have no problem with a person who doesn’t like to be touched saying so. It’s just good manners to respect people’s preferences. And it’s good manners to be attentive to people’s reactions and adjust accordingly. We should all try to respect each other’s boundaries. But I object to people who insist that a common behavior is deviant, wrong, or offensive simply because they don’t like it. Social norms should not be dictated by an loud idiosyncratic minority with extreme adverse reactions to normal interactions.
  - deleted 7y ago

0815test 7y ago

It's actually a matter of personal freedom to have such rules. Joe Biden's-- or anyone else's-- freedom to swing his fist should end at my nose, and this should be made clear and unambiguous to everyone's benefit. License and anarchy are the opposite of genuine, actual freedom.

jfk13 7y ago
I think you'll find we already have rules that restrict Joe Biden's freedom to punch you on the nose. On the other hand, we don't have rules that say I must ask for your explicit consent before putting out my hand to shake yours when we meet. Somewhere in between, there are gray areas. The question is whether one vocal minority should be allowed to define where the lines are drawn, and insist the rest of society adjusts its norms to abide by their definitions. Or is it OK for the establishment of social norms to be a broader, slower, less clearly-defined, and sometimes ambiguous process?
- manicdee 7y ago
  How come the rules that restrict Joe Biden’s freedom to touch other people shouldn’t apply to you? There don’t need to be rules about shaking hands or high giving because those are mutually consensual actions. Fist bumping a non-receptive individual (aka punching a colleague on the shoulder) is not consensual. For the “vocal minority” which is most women and some men, non-consensual touching is associated with bullying, intimidation, physical coercion and assault. In the workplace we try to avoid emotional arousal because people shouting angrily at each other makes it difficult for others to focus on their work. In social settings, you are free to explore boundaries as long as you are aware that failure to take non-vocal hints can lead to being ostracised from those social circles. But yes, the “vocal minority” should be allowed to define the lines, which are pretty simple even for people who have never had to follow etiquette: other people’s bodies are off limits to you unless they indicate otherwise. By all means go for the high five, but accept that if it is not returned you don’t try forcing it to happen. You have now divined where one boundary existed at one point in time.
dinkudunk 7y ago
Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules.
mc32 7y ago
Biden isn’t swinging his fist. It’s social interaction. Now, blurring the distinction between interactions with friends and strangers is problematic. But the interaction itself isn’t a problem, it’s recontextualizing the interaction which is problematic.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

apacheCamel 7y ago

Would you be able to give other examples of this obsession with rules? From this, and this alone, I'd like to imagine that people just want to clear up the unknown. Social interactions are almost always different from one person to the next. Social norms do tend to keep things pretty similar but the whole range can vary wildly. Maybe this is just a way to narrow the range? I don't think it is a great way to handle things that make you uncomfortable and I also don't think uncomfortable is always a bad thing.

CJefferson 7y ago
The problem with setting social rules, is they always seem to line up exactly with what the currently dominant group defines "normal", in my experience. The worst advice I was given as a child was "treat others as you wish to be treated", because it is awful advice when moving in to a significantly different set of people.
- benj111 7y ago
  "treat others as you wish to be treated" It's a useful minimum surely? How else should you treat a significantly different set of people? Yes once you get to know them, you learn how they want to be treated (mainly?) based on how they treat you and others. Are you talking about using general formal politeness?
  - CJefferson 7y ago
    The problem is it sounds seductive, but fails when your rules of pilteness don't line up with other people's. For example, I hate being asked questions multiple times. Therefore when i went to ubiversity, if I asked someone is they wanted me to buy a round, and they said no, I would not accept the answer. After some months I discovered I was considered tight, as the first offer is always refused, so "doesn't count".
    - benj111 7y ago
      Right, but 'first contact' situations generally call for both sides to be forgiving of the other side. Theres plenty of time over the ensuing months to communicate your preferences. FWIW I wouldn't say theres a particular rule requiring offering to buy a round multiple times, so I'd have have been viewed as tight also, even if I was trying to fit in with normal convention.

icebraining 7y ago

Since you're distinguishing rules from norms and laws, can you describe what kind of rules are you talking about?

JohnStrangeII 7y ago
The kind of rules the Washington Post article talks about, i.e., explicitly formulated rules that are supposed to regulate behavior but are not (yet) laws. The article contrasts this to "unwritten rules", by which they seem to mean social norms and/or conventions. Social norms are usually not explicitly formulated and codified and if they are, they still exist independently of that formulation insofar as they are internalized by a significant number of members of a group. They evolve organically out of actual social interactions. How exactly they evolve, what distinguishes social norms from conventions, and their relation to institutions, these are highly controversial topics. I'd personally recommend Cristina Bicchieri's taxonomy and approach, but there are other theories out there. In any case, it seemed clear to me that the WP article didn't talk about social norms - you cannot just decide what social norm is to be in place, these evolve independently and can be more or less stable -, and the WP article doesn't talk about laws only either. It seems to be based on the idea that written codes that are not laws should complement laws and replace actual social norms as kind of guidelines of how to behave, and I reject this idea for many reasons, including many moral ones. To summarize my reasons very briefly: Everybody has a right to be an asshole and not every undesirable or unwanted behavior is also immoral. I'm very unhappy about the apparent trend (which seems to mostly exist in the US only) of not being able to distinguish between criminal behavior, immoral behavior, generally undesirable behavior, and personally unwanted behavior. These are all different things and mixing them up leads to a lot of confusion.

DanBC 7y ago

The rule is "ask for permission before toucing someone else". I find it weird that you've escalated this into some huge thing that infringes upon your freedoms. Keep your fucking hands off my body.

Veen 7y ago
Have you considered that your discomfort with social touching is indicative of personal issues that you need to address, rather than demanding a monumental shift in social norms to align everyone's behaviour with your idiosyncratic preferences.
- purple-again 7y ago
  The above poster was very brash with his emotions which is probably the source of downvotes but his opinion is shared by many, and by me very deeply. I’m forced to spend a significant amount of time in Miami in a professional setting. I am so damn tired of women touching me in what I consider a wildly inappropriate and intimate way. I never say anything to them because I don’t think their is anything wrong with them, I understand it’s just cultural. I share deep hugs with my close male friends of 30+ years frequently. I don’t accept that there is anything wrong with me or the above poster. We simply don’t want to be touched outside of the contexts we find appropriate. This discussion has been excellent as it’s mainly focused on how to handle the rules of engagement in a world that includes people like us and people like them. Please try to focus on that and not on deciding who is wrong.
  - Veen 7y ago
    I have no problem with a person who doesn’t like to be touched saying so. It’s just good manners to respect people’s preferences. And it’s good manners to be attentive to people’s reactions and adjust accordingly. We should all try to respect each other’s boundaries. But I object to people who insist that a common behavior is deviant, wrong, or offensive simply because they don’t like it. Social norms should not be dictated by an loud idiosyncratic minority with extreme adverse reactions to normal interactions.
- deleted 7y ago