By Robert E.L. Walters
Image By CIVICS RENEWAL NETWORK
"Aristotle's analysis of the communicative virtues reveals that the purpose of civility is not to compromise truthfulness and human flourishing in the interests of appearances; rather, it is the effort to maintain a spirit of truthfulness and well-being in the context of amiable sociable relations."
Megan Laverty,
Teachers College, Columbia University
Where have we gone as a republic? Where have we gone as a society? As the elections roll by through the decades of the the twenty-first century, why do we feel so polarized and vitriolic? Why are we creating civil wars and social conflicts where none really need exist?
I am a fairly well-traveled person, and when I hear the United States portrayed as a racist intolerant nation it infuriates me. Have we made mistakes in the past as a nation and as an empire? Certainly. But then, what nation or empire is ever blameless or faultless? It's a question of magnitude and degrees.
The intolerance we face these days however, is not one of race, or sex, or sexual orientation. It's of thought and basic civility.
My mother used to say, "etiquette is the lubricant of society that makes everything go smoother." It's a truism I have never seen disproved, and to this end, I always told my nephews that good manners would get them further than a PhD. But where have our manners gone? Why is basic civility beyond us?
As I approach my sixtieth year, and as a child of older parents, I have a very wide-view of etiquette and manners. My great-grand parents for example, were born a full century before I was. With this said, I can sense the shift we've experienced as a society where the focus moved from "us" to "me."
As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, things that were deemed inviolably important to society were cast aside one-by-one. We can frame this as "culture war," but at the heart of it, have we cast off societal taboos without considering the unintended consequences of doing so? I think we have not. Whether its abdicating altruism to the "Government" (a nameless, faceless abstraction of questionable accountability) or seeing the world only through our own eyes and worldview, devoid of empathy, we have sacrificed civility in its purest sense for public sanctimony.
A civil society relies on civility to function. Reading and reacting to rants and threats on social media does not advance anyone's cause individually, and instead, damages everyone's cause collectively. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I am a libertarian. I really don't want to meddle in other people's lives or have them meddle in mine, and supporting a government that aims to do just that is anathema to my own worldview But likewise, supporting others who do have that worldview is only tolerable for as far as they are equally willing to tolerate, which is where our society is having a massive heart attack these days. By making every issue existential, personal, and, non-negotiable, we're painting ourselves into a corner from which it is very difficult to get out.
But even admonitions for "Christian charity" can be met with suspicion in our modern world. If our only faith and ethics are based on "what's in it for us," we are surely doomed. If we cannot look across a table, a room, or the aisle in Congress and find redeeming qualities in our friends, colleagues and family members, then we truly have brought our society to an ignominious end. I hope that is not the case. I hope we can revive at least the good manners to be civil, otherwise like all machines left to rust in disrepair, the mechanisms of our society will grind to a screeching and miserable halt. And I'm not sure who would be the beneficiary in such a grim and dire world as that.
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