Politeness,the history.

From the article

“http://www.thebookoflife.org/politeness/

Paradoxically, the polite person who is pessimistic about their own nature, doesn’t in fact end up behaving horribly with anyone. So aware are they of their own dislikable sides, they nimbly minimise their impact upon the world. It is their extraordinary suspicion of themselves that helps them be – in everyday life – uncommonly friendly, trustworthy and kind.”

“”The Polite person also passionately cares about spreading kindness, love and goodness on a mass scale, but they are cautious about the chances of doing so on any realistic time horizon. Yet their belief that you perhaps can’t make things a lot better for a huge number of people in the coming decades makes them feel that it is still very much a worthy goal to try and make a modest, minor improvement in the lives of the few humans you do have direct contact with in the here and now. They may never be able to transform another person’s prospects entirely or rescue the species from its agonies, but they can smile and stop for five minutes to chat to a neighbour about the weather. Their modesty around what is possible makes them acutely sensitive to the worth of the little things that can be done before today is over.”