Though they are very different, ethics and etiquette go hand
in hand. You can’t necessarily have one without the other. Ethics lie in one’s
conscious—the inner drive to do the right thing. In what could be described as both parallel
and perpendicular to ethics, etiquette is the standards—or expectations—that
society emplaces in an attempt to come off as more sophisticated and well
mannered. I say parallel because both
ethics and etiquette can seem to be related to “the right thing”; however, the
flip side of the coin can be argued because, while ethics is completely internal,
etiquette is an external force. Coinciding with this idea also lie the problems
with both. Because ethics is an internal drive it tends to change—though often
in just slight ways—from person to person. The same can be said for etiquette
only on a much larger scale. Etiquette, being an external set of manners or
customs, can vary drastically depending on the culture.
One
thing that has made me respect the sport of soccer is the unwritten etiquette.
When a player is injured—and I mean actually injured, not just trying to get a
penalty kick—the opposing team could just continue to play. Every other sport I
can think of would continue play. However, soccer is different. The competing
team more often than not kicks the ball out of bounds to stop play. Of course,
the team that had the injured player gets to throw the ball in. From what I have
seen, they usually throw the ball in to their own teammate who, in turn, boots
the ball far down field—thus returning the ball to the team who first had
possession. Despite a game being very competitive, between two rivals, or even
a championship, the etiquette always seems to take priority.
Now,
this may seem like a way to avoid typing these twenty-nine examples out, but I assure
you it is not. Taking notes is certainly in line with etiquette in the class
room. By showing you my annotations of Death
of a Salesman, I can kill two proverbial birds with a single stone. Here I
will show my example of exemplary etiquette while also giving numerous examples
of utter unethical behavior.
