I remember while growing up about several finer points or life that seem to have been left behind. All of them hinge on ETIQUETTE. You know “a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group”. I know I am not the greatest one to talk about this subject. I, on numerous occasions, have shown a huge lack of the same topic here. However, I try harder every day to show respect and give a little more than I receive, which is not too hard to do.
What happened to those days when we were all smacked hard for not saying “please” and “thank-you”, or holding the door for our elders, giving up our seat for someone with a greater need, or just giving for no real reason at all? Oh yea they would put the parents in jail now for abuse, or the giver would be watched carefully as they must surely want something in return. We even have commercials on television now trying to “bring back” this lost art of giving with out expecting return. I know my parents would be serving a life sentence for abuse on todays criteria, and I do not mean to say they ever abused me or my siblings. They did do a much better job of teaching us respect is earned by the amount of respect you give. In fact I think they were less abusive than a lot of my friends parents but we knew if we crossed that line we were in really big trouble and they didn’t just say we were in trouble they meant it. We were likely to get double chores, extra forced study or a real “grounding” for not showing the proper amount of respect and ETIQUETTE private as well as public. Chores= things kids had to do before they could watch TV, or go to town, or …. have desert. Today, I am not sure most of the parents have the same measure for this as my parents had. I know I was a backslider on the enforcement level, my kids will not think so but they didn’t see what it was like at my house when I was young. The lack of enforcement actually got worse as I got older, I am sorry to say but I tried. It got easier to just look the other way and hope things would get better as I didn’t want the neighbors to think I was abusive and turn me in.
Our society has not only lost IT, in the common venues but in other such things as “Amateur Radio Operation”. I have read numerous articles in the past months from other Hams about operation on the bands. Although in contesting what do you expect. It seems contesting, as in professional sports, politics and finance, is a game to see just how little “respect” you can show to others while aiming to win. This article points to the same failure:
Post-Thanksgiving Leftovers by K2DBK
This one from many years ago had some of the same problems:
SO YOU WANT TO BE A LID! by W5VSR
The new generation of “me first” or “instant gratification” kids seems to have changed a lot of us to expecting more, giving less, practicing less, and for sure study less. Maybe we should all take a weekend off – not operate and read up on “proper operations etiquette”? In fact how many of you have even read such things as:
“Ethics and Operating Procedures for the Radio Amateur” from the ARRL?
The article from The arrl page 
RST – meaningful or obsolete? about the RST code may even bound on poor etiquette and a true lack of reading what it means for R-S- and T? I am sure it is not Ready – Set – Transmit… !
It seems while working for my license, way back when, I listened a lot, studied a lot and was mentored to do even more of monitoring good operations and try my best to emulate that. ID every 10 minutes, try your best to not talk over others(listen first), apologize even when you didn’t think you did wrong, give credit to others and study more even when you think you know it all. Maybe we need to step back and try that again? – WD0AJG