I agree, and we should include people who wear perfume, have noticible body odor, drives an internal combustion vehicle that exudes exhaust and cook meat (especially bacon) where other people are exposed to the fumes. Your freedom to create odors that are noxious stop at my nose, after all.

Seriously, what ever happened to "if you don't like it, you can remove yourself from it" in the modern mindset? If I climb on a bus that reeks, I either tolerate it, or get a cab. If I walk into a restaurant that smells horrid, I go to another one. If I am unlucky enough to sit next to someone that smells at a theater, I deal with it or I move. I would imagine with over 1 billion people (most of them now crowded together in cities), the Chinese have adopted the best approach - tolerate others instead of trying to make them bend to your will.

Your example above with the noisy neighbors - have you considered moving to a less crowded area? Someplace in Nevada perhaps, with a few dozen acres between you and your neighbors? That way, your actions and their actions won't infringe on each other. Or do you want to live in the middle of the hustle and bustle, but can't tolerate living stacked one on top of the other? TANSTAAFL, Amy.

Having a free society means other people having the freedom to do things you don't like. Start limiting those freedoms (no, you can't smoke on an airplane, no you can't bring whatever you want on an airplane, you have to stay buckled into your seat during the flight) and eventually limiting freedoms becomes normal (no, you can't board until we've groped you and irradiated you). Most poeple would say that those first two are acceptable, but the last two aren't - that we need balance. I say, give them an inch and they'll take a mile - that once we start letting our freedoms get stripped, even if it seems reasonable, we're heading down a slippery slope that usually doesn't end well (ala the Niemoller poem.)

Just my $1.50.

> When I go to anyplace where I will be seated
> close to other people, I don't wear perfume.

✔

Amy, like you, I always try to be considerate of others, and teach my children to be as well. Unfortunately, we're very much in the minority, because so many people are of the mindset "I'll do as I damn well please, and the rest of you can go scratch." I see it so often, that it sometimes gets me to the point where I want to just say screw it, too. But then I remember, I'm not like that. At all. It bothers me that so many are, though.

When exactly is that one-child law going to have a truly visible, positive effect on crime, pollution, poverty, overcrowding - and bad manners?

Don't get me wrong; I'll certainly be glad if it does. I just feel as though the whole world has been waiting forever to see it happen.

And it's sad how many people still can't grasp that manners are just as important as laws, in part because self-imposed rules are always emotionally easier to bear than laws imposed on unwilling people.

" In the west we might define freedom as the ability to participate or not participate in any act, so long as it doesn't affect others"

Wow what an idiotic way to limit freedom. It affects anyone. Very few things don't affect anyone, possitively or negatively, often both. In this definition of freedom if Amy wrote something that changed the way peeople thought about something, well that would definately affect them. And by this persons definition be fine to be made illegal. Sad.

> So, inconsideration is king for you?

No, tolerance is. Consideration is a matter of perspective (see below).

>When I go to anyplace where I will be seated close to other people, I don't wear perfume. As soon as I could afford a new car, I bought a Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle so I would poison other people's lungs as little as possible. Gregg and I don't sit out on my porch, which is beautiful, because he has a booming voice and my neighbors in the apartments next to me are maybe eight feet from my porch and they shouldn't have to listen to my boyfriend's life as a soundtrack to theirs. Likewise, I trained my dog not to bark because I don't think the people next to me should have their conversations, their reading or their sleep interrupted simply because I have a pet.

So, let me get this straight - you wantonly wear perfume in public where innocent pedestrians or passerbys might be subjected to your scent, rather than bicycle or use other forms of non-combustion travel you rationalize your spewing fumes with "but, it's less fumes than I could be spewing", your boyfriend uses his voice outside the confines of his home or other soundproofed areas and your dog barks when you're not around? I'll bet you cook meat in your kitchen and let the fumes go out the window where other people will be subjected to the stench too!

Yes, that was over-the-top, and intentionally so (although, a handful of people would probably think those were legitimate gripes). That's what I'm trying to explain: everyone thinks their own pet peeves are reasonable, its just everyone else that needs to be considerate. Personally, I could care less about 4am music; I sleep through much worse regularly. But, I don't post signs on my neighbors fence when they decide to barbecue, even though the smell makes me nauseous. I just close my windows and go into my basement - I remove myself from the situation.

> This isn't the stuff of laws -- it's the stuff of not being an inconsiderate asshole.

You mean like posting signs on walls complaining about your neighbors? Did you, oh.. I don't know.. try talking to them before going on your little rampage? They may not have realized the noise was offensive to you, they may have apologized and worked to keep the decibels down. Or, they might have given you a middle finger and told you to mind your own business, in which case, you have some choices to make.

No, instead, since they were "inconsiderate assholes", so you were an "inconsiderate asshole" right back at them. And then talk about being neighborly. The Chinese have chosen a different path - one of tolerance. Why is that such a foreign idea in the West these days?

>Oh, get real. You have no argument so you're being ridiculous.

Ad hominem attacks? I expected better from you.

>I sometimes have to drive places, yes. But I drive little and pollute little. I have a 2004 Honda Insight that gets 65 mpg highway. Since 2004, I've put 20,000 miles on it. Last year, I spent $93 on gas. All last year for the entire year.

Rationalization, blah blah. Your excuse for "poisoning other peoples lungs" is you don't do it as much as the next person, so that makes it better. Or right. Or something. Cognitive dissonance much? Try accepting that you affect other people with your actions and realize that other people effect you. We each have different levels of tolerance to being affected (I don't care about loud noises and you do, even at 4am). The choice we all make is how we deal with those effects; the Chinese have chosen the tolerance route.

>People who are blasting music at 4am -- after blasting it all night -- don't get asked nicely. They know they are being rude and they don't give a half a flying fuck about it.

They knew they are being rude. They couldn't possibly think that the music wasn't too loud or that the walls muffled the noise or they weren't bothering anyone. Inconceivable, right?

>If, on the other hand, you're absent-mindedly using a cell phone at the no cell phones cafe, I'll approach you, duck down so as to not come off intimidating, smile a little and say, "Excuse me, you probably didn't know, but they have a no cell phones policy here. They ask that people take their calls outside." I couldn't be sweeter about it unless I threw a little fairy dust on them.

Absolutely was an oversight. Couldn't be they were just being inconsiderate. Impossible that they were just flaunting the rules.

What amazes me is that you are willing to be polite around some impolite people but not others, all around this perception of the motivation of the person you're labeling as being impolite. The noisy neighbor was being intentionally rude. The cafe patron was just absent-minded.

Let me guess, you would never crank up the music at 4am, but have occasionally done something in area where that action was restricted without realizing it. So, you can empathize with the one and condemn the other (or, more accurately, you would want forgiveness in the thing you might do, but feel perfectly justified in meting out punishment for the thing you'd never do).

In a free society, tolerance is critical, or we start making laws that cater to one person or peoples pet peeves (wear a seatbelt because I think you're not smart enough to wear it yourself, don't smoke here because I don't like it or I might get sick, you can't get an abortion because I think it's murder, you can't have a gun because I think they are dangerous). If you want to lock down a society (make it nice and obedient), revel in intolerance - even encourage it. Then, people will start demanding some laws.

>I'm on deadline, so I can't respond very fully to your bile-spew,

Bile-spew? You are the one dropping f-bombs like a drunken sailor.

Look, don't bother. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them think, no matter how hard you try - so I'm done trying. I think intolerance is intolerance, whether it's a smoker or an openly gay man being ridiculed in public. You think some forms of intolerance are fine, but others aren't.

You stay warm and cozy in your rationalizations and righteous indignation.

You stay warm and cozy in your rationalizations and righteous indignation

That funny, the only one being indignat is you.

And you are right incedentally the smell of bacon and cancer are exactly the same thing

I sort of agree with Rod on this one.

Music loud at 4 a.m. is just pain rude, no excuse for it. They're not oblivious teenagers, they're grownups who have presumably lived around people before, and are well aware that most people sleep at 4 in the morning.

They just don't give a shit. So they should be publicly shamed.

If they can cope with being pariahs, they can cope.

But Rod, like his approach or not, has a point.

Every single thing we do will have an impact on another human being in some form or fashion. Its considered rude to smoke in a restaurant because it impacts the taste of the food others enjoy. But it should fall to the restaurant to decide their policy.

Don't give me that crap about 2nd hand smoke either. A person who starts smoking in their 20s or 30s will probably not see cancer until their 70s or 80s unless they are chain smokers that go through packs at a time, if they get cancer at all. So the people who directly take smoke into their lungs have enough time to have grand children before they get sick from it.

So why on earth should anyone think that it poses a serious risk to someone exposed to it second hand, as in only every once and awhile, and only in the smallest concentrations.

No, I don't smoke in restaurants, I use the outdoor tables where I can enjoy a good cigar and a properly paired meal with other smokers of the same sort.

On another note, the suggestion that Miss Alkon "move" out of the area over loud neighbors is a bit extreme. I'm all for tolerance, but there comes a point where you've just set the bar way to low. Its easy to not play loud music, or to wear headphones, its a far more arduous process to move. They can just turn the damn stuff down, or become the pariahs they deserve.

You don't have the right never to have your delicate nasal passages offended.

My husband can't handle strong odors, and cigarette smoke makes him physically ill, but he doesn't treat his condition as proof of moral superiority over those who are not as sensitive.

@lujlp:

>That funny, the only one being indignat is you.

No, Amy (the author of I See Rude People), feels justified in being rude as a response to rude without finding out if the party in question was being rude intentionally - she assumes so, and that's good enough for her. That justification is called "righteous indignation"; the feeling that the offensive act warrants an offensive response (a form of "post hoc, ergo proptor hoc", where she feels that her response was appropriate to the act, and justifiably caused by it). She even wants people to commend her on her ingenuity for not calling the police, but taking the role of judge, jury and punishment-giver for herself. Amy is fond of logical fallacies, as I'm sure you've seen in her posts.

>And you are right incedentally the smell of bacon and cancer are exactly the same thing

Well, you have me here - I've never smelled cancer before. But, I can tell you that after smelling bacon, I can imagine that cancer smells similar.

@Robert:

>On another note, the suggestion that Miss Alkon "move" out of the area over loud neighbors is a bit extreme.

No more extreme that Miss Alkon suggesting that her neighbors move because they can't control the volume knob to her satisfaction. People like Miss Alkon seem to think that her world is the only world, populated by animate objects instead of people. She accuses others of this narssisistic bent, but ignores it in herself.

All I'm saying is that the Chinese have chosen to tolerate things they personally don't like. Miss Alkon thinks they should be intolerant like us. This is her blog, and she makes a living telling people her version of right and wrong, and does what she can to get people to agree with her. She's very public about her Libertarianism, but can't seem to accept that freedom doesn't just apply to her when it applies to everyone, even in the things she doesn't like. Perhaps she should consider aligning herself with one of the major political parties, where bending people to their will is the party platform.

I doubt Miss Alkon would appreciate further conversation on this subject on her blog; she's already on the defensive about her automobile habits and upping her swearing for shock value. If anyone would like to continue this discussion elsewhere, I would recommend we move the conversation to the original poster's blog or any other venue that would seem applicable.

I keep hearing smokers yelling about car exhaust being just as bad as cigarette smoke. Tell me this, if car exhaust is just as bad as tobacco, then why is it that all of us breathe in the same city air, but over 95% of lung cancer patients are smokers?

By the way, second hand smoke exposure isn't 'crap', it's an instant asthma attack for me.

Rod, buddy, moron, I never mentiond the smell of cancer.

Ofcourse if you werent such an idiot you might have noticed that fact