Because it’s a custom like a handshake. Whether we choose to be patriotic by standing, sitting, or jumping up and down, it really doesn’t matter. In the OP I meant to refer to activities which are done for no benefit or for reasons unrelated to the act.
Yes, the term “Dear” confers respect, (likewise with Sincerely yours at the end)but it really doesn’t mean what it says. I don’t have love or affection for Mr. Smith. My wife or girlfriend is called “dear” (when I know what’s good for me) but the 63 year old guy that I secretly hate is in no way dear to me.
Likewise I am not sincerely “his.” I am in no way “his.” We use those words because we always have.
I like the tie example. Ties serve no purpose. Unlike shirts or pants, they don’t provide warmth or cover up private body parts. They are uncomfortable and are only worn because that’s what we are supposed to do when dressing nicely.
I’ll skip the first as one of those “you get it or you don’t” issues, and note that Robert Heinlein was perpetually amused by younger generations who wanted to do away with “all that phony politeness crap” - social lubricant, he called it, and correctly.
As for the latter, as the license plate I once saw on a hearse put it… U21DAY.
But ties. Yeah, time for ties to go into the Roman history section of the local museum.
Because our marriage customs necessarily create a large number of pairs of people with the same surname who attend a lot of social functions together are primarily distinguishable by gender.
Which brings up another antiquated custom – women changing their last name when they get married. If women changing their title from Miss to Mrs to indicate martial status is antiquated, changing their name to indicate who they are married to (and obliterating indication of who their parents are) certainly is.
It’s taking longer than you thought- only yesterday, when filling out a form, I was asked by the nice lady checking it why I’d given my title as Ms. though I’d ticked a box saying I was single. Surely, Ms. was for divorced women, so I must have made a mistake?
What sprang immediately to my mind was fathers giving away brides at their weddings.
While it is antiquated that that it’s always the woman who changes her name, it makes perfect sense to unify the surnames in one way or another, and hyphenated names quickly become unsustainable.
This. The tie is most useless and uncomfortable piece of clothing there is. It’s objectively ridiculous to wear one (imagine ETs examining this custom), it serves no purpose whatsoever and it’s even inconveniencing. People in the past wore equally idiotic pieces of clothing (say, a ruff during the Renaissance) but they had the common sense to give it up after a couple generations or so. We’ve been wearing ties for 150 years, now. And we got other people all over the planet to follow suit, somehow. It puzzles me it hasn’t been replaced by wearing a reversed conical hat, or a fur wristband, or nose paintjob, or something equally sensible, since at least the 1920s.
And the family in mourning. When you pull over (particularly on the other side of the street) for a funeral procession, it’s a way of saying to the mourners “I’m sorry for your loss.” When I’ve been in funeral processions, I have always appreciated the people who pull over on the opposite side of the street. For all I know, the people on the same side are silently sending good thoughts, or saying a Psalm, but they have to pull over.
What would happen if people didn’t, and the procession broke up? A lot of people come in from out of town for funerals, and likely some people would get lost on the way to the cemetery, even with GPS systems and all, and the family riding in front would have to wait uncomfortably for everyone to arrive. Also, there’d be no way of knowing for sure that the last car had gotten there, so you wouldn’t know when to start the graveside services.
People want to be together at a time of mourning, and that includes people being together in the procession.
jtgain, if by ‘antiquated’ you mean ‘outdated’, then it’s going to be hard to find something that serves NO purpose; even if it’s only demonstrated conformity to a shared social code of conduct, many otherwise pointless things do that. There are things that are simply holdovers that haven’t changed, which serve no purpose other than aggravating those who seek more efficiency (such as the Julian calendar not updating the month numbers, so that November, the ‘nine month’ becomes the eleventh, and no one does anything about it for two thousand years; or, more relevantly, formgoers on the internet referring the creator of a thread as ‘OP’, rather than simply scrolling upwards to see who it was, as though no speed requirement distinction was made between a forum and a chat room), but the distinction between the two categories is often difficult at best.
If, on the other hand, by ‘antiquate custom’ you simply mean ‘something really old that’s not, strictly speaking, necessary’, I nominate burying the dead, which predates AMH humanity.
The necktie is a decoration, like jewelry. Now, one could argue that decoration serves no purpose.
However, the decorations we choose say something about us, and can be symbols of position, rank, and so on. The traditional business attire shows that the person considers a situation important enough to put on this particular “costume.”
Is this going to be one of those Straight Dope vs. Human Customs robot anthropologist threads again? “Explain why you humans prefer garments beyond the strictly utilitarian. And why do you shake hands in a greeting ritual with humans you already know?”.
Military salutes originated with armored knights raising their visor to identify themselves when passing or appearing before a superior.
It’s also probable that handwaving or raising the right arm in greeting was also done to demonstrate that you weren’t holding a weapon. The world has always been quite a dangerous place.
The concept of the 60 minute hour may be 4000 years old, and also establishes that once in a while something potentially worthwhile does come out of Iraq.
Daylight Savings Time is a pretty good one. Indiana just started doing this like, four years ago. My husband like to say “There used to be one really outstanding thing about living in Indiana…” We are still annoyed at former governor Mitch Daniels for bringing this custom to Indiana.
Burying the dead is actually a pretty good one, because incinerating or dissolving them in a chemical bath would be way more efficient, and more sanitary, and people wouldn’t get ripped off by the mortuary business. Also, if we stopped the custom of viewing (which Jews don’t do, and creeps the hell out of me), a lot more people might be willing to be organ and tissue donors. Or, more to the point, their relatives might donate tissue.
My father died of cancer, so not much of him was donatable, but his corneas still were. When my FIL died, I tried to talk my husband into bringing it up with his step-mother, but he didn’t think she’d be receptive, so, two fewer corneas. And he was cremated, too.
I always thought that the taking of her husband’s surname after marriage allows a women to “hide” from ex suitors that might try to look her up possibly to reestablish their relationship. (I was involved in organizing my 20th HS class reunion and the girls were very difficult to find compared to the men.)
The same idea is that the Mrs./Miss distinction tells ex suitors and men that she may come in contact with that she is married and that they should “back off”. (Not that this stops some guys.)
I like this one as well. I know the OP has grey areas, but it is intended to highlight customs which serve no real purpose and that we do them just because. Handshakes could be replaced by jumping up and down, but shaking hands is just as good. Likewise with 60 minutes being an hour. It could be 70 minutes or 100 minutes, but we need some standard of time, and 60 is just as good as 70.
I update my list as follows:
