Oh gee, how do I answer this? I could say something dumb like you either have it or don't but that's not true. I like the defination that was given in the above threads as it kinda of fits. Never heard that one before. In my earlier dating years I got off to a slow start, not dating until I was out of high school. Oh, there were pretty girls around but somehow making the first step was just not easy. As I look back I think it was for the best. I was always able to observe and benefit from those who made mistakes. Somehow or other, in the process, I learned that there was a way I would like to be. When I saw other people there were some that I liked better than others. In some way, attitudes and actions reflected what they were. This has caused some personal conflicts in my life at times but I think I have stayed the course. There are somethings that are basic. For instance, I go to the post office every once in a while. I hold the door open for someone to exit the building or for that one behind me to enter first. What is one place in line in the scheme of one's life? I think the curitousy far outweighs the place in line. Doesn't matter who is coming though, age, race, or gender. One of the best things you can do is make new folks at ease. Make them feel as if they are home or welcome. Not just here at the boards but in life. Somehow, you are what do. Making a lifetime of such practices makes you different. Slowly you change. Be who you are. There was a line in a movie that always got to me. The movie had hit a point where the main character had to make a moral decision that would affect the rest of his life and he knew it. He was supported by another actor saying something to this effect. "Knowing what is right is easy, I always knew the right path. When it came to taking it I didn't. Why? It was to damn hard. Now here is, (Name of character) who has come to a crossroad in his life. He has instinctively choosen the right path. This is called character, courage, and being a gentleman. There was always something in that which moved me. We all know what is really the right path, deep down. Choosing the right path is not always what is the easy way though. I shall come back to this thread sometime later as I need some time to think about this. I seem to be wandering more than normal..
Going back over the thread, I am suprised that someone should consider that I might know of such rules. I will give you a quote: The True Gentleman The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe. - John Walter Wayland Such is not easily lived up to. I do not think that rules of things to do will help. I would suggest that you observe life. Follow those examples you feel are worthy. It is a process of discovering yourself. As a last thought on this, if you are "fake" others will see it immeadately. You only fool yourself. Likewise if you are sincere in your efforts that too will be recognised just as readily...
I find that I have not answered the question. I have wandered in the process. The reasons, I think, go back to a time long before our present day when it was thought that women and others less fortunate than the defenders of truth, home, and hearth, deserved better treatment than feudal lords of the day rendered to their subjects. Such courtesy was given because it was thought that it showed a step above just being manly. Women were always considered the weaker sex. Subject to dying in childbirth. Also not being of the same physical nature of men and were unable to properly defend themselves by an act of God. Further, it was the way man perpetuated himself and was granted immortality in the future by his progeny. Integrity is another word that belongs within these writings. The ability to be depended on to do the responsible thing. Being the stronger of the sexes it was the man’s duty to be the protector. So such behavior was the gentleman’s duty. Nowadays, that attitude is sometimes resented. Times have changed circumstances with it. People change very slowly though. There will always be those who appreciate these attitudes, it will never go completely out of style. There will be that one who will treasure finding such qualities in a man, rest assured. Somehow, I have managed to make to make three posts where one should have sufficed. I think I dotter...
I think first dates are a crock!! I also think physical attractiveness needs some reconsideration. Cos when ya think you've 'landed' a babe of either sex it turns out six months down the road they pick their feet and chew with their mouthes open. Often at the same time. Firstly what's with the 'Being a gentleman is always equated with the quality of your interaction with women' stuff? I have every respect and admiration for the female of our species. Maybe even more so in some ways cos' I don't fuck em. Being a gentleman is all to do with respecting yourself and interacting with all people in a way which mirrors that amount of respect in your dealings with them. Oh, and always make sure your flies are zipped Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'm confused Adam you always say that people suck and now you question the ways of the gentleman... explain please. Surely a true gentleman can't suck. (Or if he does he asks nicely first Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! )
Oh! This definition I like. Joeman: Nooo! This is not about dating, it is about living honorably. One is never a gentleman (or lady) on dates and a arsehole the rest of the time. One must be such all of the time, or not be such.
thoth: Presuming that a lady is the female equivalent of a gentleman, I should think so. If you wish to regard a lady as somthing out of a swashbuckler epic, I pray to the Great Cthulhu that such are gone. Thanks Bbcboy!
Okay you are right. So a person is either a gentleman or he is not. If he is not he shouldn't pretend he is on first date. That I can agree with, but that is not exactly what I was thinking. I have a very eccentric personality. I am not like...weird in a creepy way but just different. If I act like I am actually normal on first date, is that considered not living honorably? If you think so, I would never have ever gotten a girlfriend probably Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Don't take "People suck. I hate people." to be a four-word encapsulation of my entire outlook on life.
Basic ... 1. Show respect when respect is shown; 2. Don't promise what you can't deliver; 3. Don't threaten what you can't back up; 4. Don't say 'I love you' to get into her knickers. That's about it. Take care Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
While browsing an antiquarian bookshop many years ago, I picked up a sad looking leather-bound volume published in the 19th Century. It turned out to be a gentleman’s guide to proper etiquette. Of the several hundred pages of terse “do’s and don’ts,” I came away remembering only a single rule: Upon meeting a lady, a gentleman is never first to offer his hand in greeting. Sound advice both then and now, but is a gentleman exclusively defined by his relationship to women? Most of us men rack our brains to think of some clever and amusing thing to say when we meet an attractive woman. We fall over ourselves, trying to open the door for her or any number of other “helpful” things. To my way of thinking, all this has more to do with gallantry, or chivalry, than with being a gentleman. Besides, don’t you think a man’s true character is portrayed more accurately by his interactions with unattractive rather than with attractive women? Are good manners all that are required of a gentleman? Doubtless we’ve all met rogues hiding behind a veneer of impeccable manners and charm. In fact, there is considerably more to being a gentleman than knowing which fork to use, or when to applaud at a classical music recital. Etiquette, or I might say instead, politeness, is a necessary, though not a sufficient requirement to be a gentleman. To answer Adam's question, I believe the primary "rule" for a gentleman, is that he ought to be “on speaking terms” with the Virtues. The Virtues? Politeness Fidelity Prudence Temperance Courage Justice Generosity Compassion Mercy Gratitude Humility Simplicity Tolerance Purity Gentleness Good Faith Humor Love (The list is courtesy of Andre Comte-Sponville) A good thing would be to write this list of virtues on a slip of paper and put it in your wallet. Take it out when you’re waiting in a bank queue and memorize it. Later, when you’re driving to work, or lying in bed unable to sleep, you might start by picking out a single virtue. Think about how that particular virtue relates to your life. If you can come to terms with this list of virtues I doubt you’ll ever be troubled about how to act as a gentleman, because you won’t merely be “acting.” With the first principles of virtue in your heart, you’ll never be at a loss for what to do. Michael
No offense Orthie, but that's just silly. Such behaviour is not about being a gentleman, being chivalrous, or being gallant. It's about finding a cute chick to fuck. Honestly, that seems to be where this discussion has gone. Honest-fucking-ly, is there nothing more important than sex? Oh yes, I am in a bad mood. But really! Is not honor its own reward?
What is being yourself anyway? Being a gender, ie being a male would be yourself? Yeah, I think the govenrment needs to hand out a 'how to be a human' hand book at birth. I mean you get manuals for everything else!
Xev, A "gallant" (noun) is "one who pays court to women." The second definition of the (adjective) "gallant" in my dictionary is, "attentive to women." "Chivalry" (noun) is "any value associated with knighthood, as gallantry." You might take a look through Boccaccio's Decameron (written around 1350) for an example. A good many of the hundred stories dealt with gallantry and chivalry in the sense that I'm speaking. It's all about noblemen, knights, and peasants alike falling over themselves to get the girl. I kept a copy under my bed as a teenager. Think also of Helen of Troy. She had the face that launched a thousand ships. Or consider Marc Anthony's heart-throb... Like it or not, sex has been a major driving force throughout history. I'd ask you not to overlook one product of man's insatiable interest in sex, namely; you. Allowing 25 years per generation, my calculator tells me that your direct ancestors had successful sex (in the sense that a child was produced capable of itself reproducing) at least 524,288 times in only the past 500 years. Allowing for the very high infant mortality of the time, and considering that each union most likely would not produce a child, it looks as if in only the past 500 years alone, many millions of couplings were required so that you could live today. It's lucky for you that your ancestral fathers took such an interest in your ancestral mothers. From the time we wiggled out of the swamp, men and women have been locked in a dance for mutual survival. Any increase in the reluctance of one must have been matched by an increase in the aggressivness of the other, or we would not be here today. I'm pleased that as a result of some perceived slight, my ancestral father didn't slam the cave-door in the face of my ancestral mother. Furthermore, I've little doubt that the vast proportions of my ancestral fathers simply raped my ancestral mothers. It was a thoughly nasty business. But out of that nasty business came civilization. And from this civilization came men, who in overwhelming numbers manage to repudiate their ape origins and inclinations. You have to realize Xev, we are still ape-men. Humanoids appeared roughly 15,000,000 years ago, yet we've only used written language for 5000 years. We have not changed physically in at least the past 10,000 years. How would you behave if you had the brain and testosterone levels of an ape-man? All men want is sex, right? And if by the flip of the coin you were born a male, tell me how would you manage to be different than your 4.5 billion brothers? Modern culture requires men to strangle their natural sexual inclinations. Women, on the other hand, are fortunate enough to be able to continue to follow their age-old natural inclinations. When men give in to their ape-like inclinations they become rapists. When women give in to their ape-like inclinations they merely want to raise a family! What if modern human civilization was such that raping were considered moral, whereas nurturing children were considered bestial? Do you think all women would successfully fight their powerful natural inclinations to reproduce and nurture children, or do you think a small percentage would fall prey to their inclinations? Yes, of course civilized men view rape as an abomination and the raising of children as a beautiful thing. This is as it should be. I'm asking you to understand that while women were biologically selected to bear the children, men were biologically selected to be aggressive. While it's not fair to either sex, each has to shoulder their burden and carry on. It is in both men's and women's interest that both sexes overcome their inherited shortcomings. Our collective virtue, or culture, is the only thing that stands between modern society and a very nasty world for all of us. We have glimpses of how bad it might be when our culture sporadically breaks down (The great World Wars, Rwanda, Bosnia, The "Killing Fields" of Cambodia,...). Events such as these do not occur when men forget their inner nature, or when the world is turned upsidedown. These events occur when men remember their inner nature, that is, when the world is turned rightside up! Polite society is an artifice, and a delicate artifice at that. A peaceful civilization is produced by the collective virtue of all of its citizens. Plato's Republic, book 8, has Socrates say: "Societies are not made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters, by turning the scale one way or the other, determine the direction of the society as a whole." David Barash wrote in Evolution's Odd Couple: Biology and Culture: "The little hyphon in ape-man is the longest line imaginable, connecting two radically different worlds, one biological and one cultural. Imagine two people chained together; one a world class sprinter, the other barely able to hobble. Now imagine they are asked to run... The likely outcome includes a bit of tension all around." Virtue is a creation of the ape-man to combat his natural inclinations toward violence and aggression. If it were an easy thing to become virtuous then violence and aggression would be rare. Obviously it's not an easy thing. Most of the violence on this planet is committed by men. I suppose I sound like a broken record with all my talk of virtue. The reason I evangelize about virtue is that I understand that the whip of superstition and religion is fading. Men are beginning to cast their eyes about in search for a reason why they should continue to surpress their aggression. It is by no means a given that we shall become ever more civilized. It was a long and tortuous road to reach even this level of civilization. As we see all too often, the fall back into bedlam is quick and easy by comparison. The death of religion and the birth of Post-Modernist Relativism together have produced a moral void. If I could give the world anything it would be a sustainable reason to treat each other with benevolence and respect. In fact, I believe a sense of Kantian duty as well as the cultivation of the Virtues might be what we are looking for. Xev, please forgive my directness. I'm not lashing out at you. I'm asking for a measure of sympathy and support for the difficult task ahead of us. I suspect what little good men have done in this world has been at the prompting of women. Women must continue to lead men into a state of higher virtue. Women actually have no choice in the matter, they either help men vanquish the monster within us, or we shall all perish together. As I said, we are all locked in a dance for survival. I'll leave you with a joke to cheer you up (well, it usually only gets a laugh from Classical Studies Scholars). What is a milliHelen? It's the quantity of beauty required to launch one ship. Michael
Wonderfull ! That seems to be a very good definition. I think that some of you make a mistake about "gentleman" : that's not the same than "galant". A gentleman is the man you is defined by J.W. Wayland, but a galant man is someone who take care of women (by opening doors, giving his bus chair... ). You should see the difference between these two kind of people. Oh, it's not easy to be a gentleman (may be that it's an utopia : something perfect that you can't reach) and it's not easy to be a galant (but easier than a gentleman as there are less rules and it seems more "natural").
sorry adam but some things you said i dissagree with i wouldn't give myself a back ach for ANYONE (unless there was a reason for i), my house MY bed second i open doors when someone has there hands full, if you try to open a door most of the time you will just end up doing a stupid dance of "you do it, no you, ok i will, no i will" rather embarising i don't give up my seat on train for a girl, i would for a pregnat mother or an old person, or disabled person, or a child. Women can stand just as well as guys can normaly i prefer to worrie about the important things like honesty, and integraty i try not to lie (i would be lying if i said i NEVER lied but i try), and i try to help others and be the best person i can be thats whats important, not the other stuff
There is always an easy end to this. If it occurs that there is another with such ideas; smile, say thank you, and proceed through the door. Do it the first time and there is no conflict, no continuance, and no embarrasing moments. Only the recognising of a fellow man's simular attitudes. You have each recognised the other in the process. (I have reached the age that I must realize that such actions include the door being opened for me.) In particular, I like some of orthogonal's responces. He has said some of the very things I had searched for a way to say and came up empty on. As you see, describing a gentleman's duty, requires that you define a gentleman's actions. A vague idea at best, which varies from one person to the next, an intangible value to define a quality that some would wish to be. Being a gentleman does not deal only with sex and courtship dance. I think that we got off on a tangent there.
here is another tangent for you wet1 i was about to make a new thread to ask you this but.. did you know your screen name is what Australians call a moist towl used for wiping babys bums (among other things)?
