Although I agree with Mr. McArthur that conventions like door-opening are only white-washed sepulchers for an original kernel of respect and concern, I would also say that they purport a subtle form of social violence on unsuspecting strangers. Mr. McArthur insightfully points out how the waiting door-holder inconveniences the approaching door-holdee who must speed up their pace in order to accept the favor. What if I didn’t want to go through that door? What if I have a physical disability and I enjoy opening the door for myself? What if I don’t want to feel indebted to a stranger? Except the few times when the other truly needs and wants the help, what passes for altruism is really my way of coercing a social exchange: a nod, a smile, an expression of gratefulness (however insincere).
It is because we are slaves to routine that we cannot be bothered to search for ways to truly show that we care for someone. Of course these people for whom we are holding the door open are usually strangers. Which begs the question: why we should be so concerned about them anyway? And really we’re not. We are seeking to affirm ourselves, our ego, our sense of self-worth, our conscience, call it what you will. We could do this just as easily through a more overt violence: insults, athletic competition or intellectual debates. However, the opening of the door provides a much more subtle way to feed our solipsistic addiction through the benign channel of common courtesy.
Door-holding is yet another manifestation of egoistic self-affirmation as old as doors themselves. We burden others with our own insecurities – albeit masked with a veneer of selflessness. Just as the fallacious truism of common sense allows us to belittle others for not knowing things that everyone knows, common courtesy is an imposition of a false standard of kindness - a way for us to elicit gratitude from someone else where none is really due. This is why it seems rather silly for two people to hold open the door or for a whole room so say “bless you.” The more singular our display, the more value it has to affirm something extraordinary about the kind of person we are.
Precisely because there are so many more important and inescapable conventions that burden our social life, we should rejct the trivial door-holdings and train a sense of self-worth not dependent on social habit. In doing so we might go one step toward freeing ourselves and those around us from the social chains that hold us all in thrall.
well said, Jefferson!