Most passengers never greet the driver. Is a small courtesy a moral matter, or only manners?
Its coordinates: 3.2.3 Character-Based Approaches
I drive the 413 across Ankara. Some passengers, when they get on, say kolay gelsin, "may it come easy", which we say in Turkish to anyone who is working. Most say nothing. They tap the card and look at the phone. It does not change my pay or my route.
I am not angry about it. But I listen to philosophy lectures between stops and I notice the lecturers put manners very low. Ethics is about lying, killing, justice. Greeting the driver is etiquette, like which fork to use.
Then I read in the Analects (12.1) that when Yan Hui asked about humaneness, Confucius told him to subdue himself and return to ritual: look at nothing, listen to nothing, say nothing and do nothing contrary to ritual. For Confucius the small forms are not decoration. They are where goodness is learned.
So who is right? Is the passenger who ignores me doing a small wrong, or nothing wrong at all? And if it is nothing, why do I remember for the whole day the woman with the shopping bags who said kolay gelsin this morning?