Reviving Respectful Tourism, Kurt Vonnegut Jr's Common Decency and "Secretary of The Future"

When it comes to real initiatives to curb tourist misbehavior and tomfoolery, it seems that we are slipping or have already slipped big time!

Recent articles bemoan the lack of civility and decency among some travelers in Europe and other destinations probably leaving the more subdued travelers to go out of their way to not act like a complete tool on vacation... Just like If you are in line at the grocery store and someone in front of you is rude to the cashier, don’t you go out of your way to be nice to the employee? — trying to say, we’re not all like that?

We're nicer to AI than we are to each other

We are just now seeing press about how GPT works better when you are polite and gracious to it.

Also AI has better Emotional Intelligence than most managers and in our sloppy digital culture our companion AI can say just what your friends can't.

Since we're being taught to be civil to our technology, we might want to look into being civil with each other.

Common Decency and an midwestern Professor who taught new generations how to love to read with his dark and absurdist humor

As the counter-culture darling Kurt Vonnegut Jr once wrote

I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency". I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in return. Love need not have anything to do with it. (...) Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency".

―Kurt Vonnegut, Jr Slapstick

Mr Vonnegut I believe got it right. It's not like the local tourist towns are asking for your love, they just want to see some common decency.

In the late 80s and early 90s the big book was All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten, where the author says we should behave in the way we were taught in early schooling with principles like being kind to one another and cleaning up after yourselves, saying "please" and "thank you" -- some basic lessons we need to revisit.

The literary snobs called the book trite garbage but the author Robert Fulghum cried all the way to the bank!

Kurt Vonnegut's Secretary of The Future

In his last in-depth broadcast interview, the late writer and social critic Kurt Vonnegut said,?“I’ll tell you…one thing that no Cabinet has ever had is a Secretary of the Future, and there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.”?

We would put this on the agenda for Secretary of The Future: Retrain people to practice Common Decency.

Where were those manners? In a country like Spain, which has had tourists for centuries, what was that tipping point? Was it one too many rude tourist? One too many entitled brats? Our was it a bunch of rude tourists and entitled brats?

Only the residents could tell you for sure. It was just enough to tick off people enough to go to the store, buy a water pistol, fill it up with water and spray it at a tourist.

Jim Finlaw is Managing Director of Round Agencies, a Creative Cooperative. Find out more at www.roundagencies.com