I may have Norbert Elias entirely wrong...
Because the source for Norbert-Elias-The Civilising-Process-for-Dummies notion I have is not even Journal of Saw It Somewhere Studies, it is Proceedings of I Think I Heard This In A Conference Presentation Once.
Anyway, I was given to think about it by reading various of those infuriating accounts of people not observing requirements to wear masks in various settings, and thinking, I am sure there are other things they quite unthinkingly do because there is by now a completely unspoken social contract that these are things that people do in these particular situations, but masks for these people are an intrusion and a thing they have to think about (I advert here to Katharine Whitehorn's piece on people who 'always think' this or that because they have got thinking out of the way on whatever thing it was and no longer have to bother their heads).
Which reminded me of the impression I had of Elias's account of The Civilising Process: which is, that when somebody first suggests or does something, be it a behaviour or a reform, it is weird and people probably cry out at it or mock it -
E.g. who are these effete types who blow their noses on handkerchiefs - let us satirise them in plays and comic prints etc. And as for these cranks who condemn cruelty to animals, virtue-signalling prigs who do not want people to enjoy themselves at ye tradde bear-baitinge.
You then get a phase during which behaviour is learned and taught and has to be thought about and policed - 'nice people use their handkerchief, darling' - and people go some way with reforms (Metropolitan cattle troughs keep working animals in better condition, as it might be, and bear-baiting brings riotous crowds of urban rabble, let's not be having that) but not to the wild extremes ('ban fox-hunting???!!!')
And then these things get assimilated to the point where it's not about thinking, but about The Conduct Proper to Living in a Society with Other People -
Obviously a lot of this is very culturally mediated. I was a bit startled recently at the designation of us Brits as a loose and lawless culture and can only suppose that the people who were writing this had never tried jumping a queue in the UK...
But this was a process that did used to take time, even several generations (we still see this, in the excusing of older family members' bad takes as being because They Were Of Another Day - yeah, the 60s, mutter mutter).
On the other hand, there are times when things have changed/do change with sudden rapidity.
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