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Overview
Is civility dead? Americans ask this question every election season, but their concern is hardly limited to political campaigns. Doubts about civility regularly arise in just about every aspect of American public life. Rudeness runs rampant. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our digital platforms teem with trolls and expressions of disrespect. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. Everywhere we look, there seems to be conflict and hostility, with shared respect and consideration nowhere to be found. In a country that encourages thick skins and speaking one's mind, is civility even possible, let alone desirable?
In How Civility Works, Keith J. Bybee elegantly explores the "crisis" in civility, looking closely at how civility intertwines with our long history of boorish behavior and the ongoing quest for pleasant company. Bybee argues that the very features that make civility ineffective and undesirable also point to civility's power and appeal. Can we all get along? If we live by the contradictions on which civility depends, then yes, we can, and yes, we should.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781503601826 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/25/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 88 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
How Civility Works
By Keith J. Bybee
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5036-0182-6
CHAPTER 1
THE PROMISE OF CIVILITY
Can we all get along?
In 1992 Rodney King plaintively posed this question in front of television news cameras after the police officers who had beaten him were acquitted and the streets of Los Angeles erupted in riots. The rampage lasted five days and in the end left over sixty people dead and one thousand buildings destroyed. King's plea did not stop the rioting, but he did achieve a kind of fame, and the call for peaceful coexistence would follow him for the rest of his life. When he died, "Can We All Get Along" was placed on his tombstone.
King spoke during a time of intense violence, but his question has a far broader resonance and can be asked of American society as a whole. We regularly experience episodes of turbulent protest. And beyond any particular instance of turmoil, we inhabit and sustain a contentious public culture. Our politics are preoccupied with the demonization of opponents. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our workplaces are rife with boorish behavior. Our digital platforms teem with expressions of disrespect and invective. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. A quarter of a century after King wondered whether we can get along, we find ourselves in a social world filled with conflict and hostility.
A host of authors and observers have diagnosed our malaise as a lack of civility and prescribed civility's return as the cure. Americans once treated one another with far greater respect and consideration, the argument goes. If we can recover the traditionally courteous modes of relating to one another, we will find that our public life can be more restrained and peaceful. Political disagreements will remain, but new compromises will become possible as adversaries turn their attention away from maligning one another's character and focus instead on scrutinizing competing policies. The news media will model civil engagement in its coverage, emphasizing fact-based analysis rather than sensationalizing conflict and relentlessly stoking animosities. Everyday exchanges between individuals — including those on social media, in website comment sections, and at work — will become more sociable, with substantially less tolerance for harassment and insult.
IS CIVILITY POSSIBLE OR DESIRABLE?
Many say that civility is quite important. But the standard argument for it rests on shaky foundations. To begin with, it is not clear how we can rely on a settled store of past courtesies to save us when there is in fact no period in the past when civility was fully established and secure from challenge.
It is true that many people today feel that civility has vanished, and true that the cause can be traced to contemporary factors like political polarization and the rise of the internet. Yet it is also true, as historians of civility have noted, that generations of Americans have felt threatened by escalating incivility and they had no trouble finding causes in their own time. At different points during the twentieth century, Americans chalked up the deterioration of public conduct to jazz music, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, rock and roll, and the large-scale entry of women into the workforce. Nineteenth-century Americans blamed the Civil War, new immigrants, urban life, the vulgar rich, and the insolent poor. Talk of social crisis and fear of coarsening relations were also easy to find in the eighteenth century. James Madison along with many of our Founders complained about the truculence and crass materialism produced by the grasping, interest-ridden politics in the states. Given such a long history of rudeness, why should we believe that people are capable of getting along now?
In addition to this question of capacity there is also a question of motivation. The standard argument for civility begins with the assumption that our current ways of interacting are obviously dysfunctional and in need of repair. Yet instead of stipulating that we have failed, one could argue that our contentious public culture is a genuine accomplishment that we should wish to preserve.
For much of the modern era the courts have broadly interpreted the guarantees of the First Amendment. The result, as the Supreme Court noted in its landmark decision New York Times v. Sullivan, is that our public discussion has intentionally been kept "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." Caustic critique, furious rants, and outright lies go largely unchecked by the Constitution to ensure that the greatest possible diversity of claims floods into the public sphere. Some views may seem too abrasive and offensive to endure. But as Justice Holmes observed almost one hundred years ago, "when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe, even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct, that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out." Nor does the value of untrammeled opinion stop with the discovery of truth and the exposure of injustice. Liberty of expression also allows for expansive breadth of thought and an extraordinary range for self-definition. Both of these things are very valuable. Indeed, according to Justice Brandeis, the development of conditions necessary to "make men free to develop their faculties" is nothing less than the final goal of government.
In short, our free speech society provides many advantages and in return asks only that we speak our minds and have thick skins. Why should we seek a more genteel means of managing our behavior?
The question of whether we are able to be civil, as well as the question of why we should want to be civil, can be answered by examining how civility works. The following pages are devoted to such an examination. As we shall see, there is substantial disagreement over what should count as civil behavior; strong criticism of civility's repressive regimentation; and serious concern about civility's authenticity. These disagreements and criticisms are themselves tied to underlying conditions, including the heterogeneity and dynamism of American society, a robust tradition of free expression, and our frequent inability to live up to our collective ideals.
Although my examination will turn up reasons to doubt civility and to worry about the endless proliferation of conflict, I will argue that the deeper, incongruous truth is that civility's strengths are ultimately in its weaknesses. The very features that make civility ineffective and undesirable also account for civility's power and appeal. Can we all get along? If we live by the paradoxes on which civility depends then yes, we can, and yes, we should.
CHAPTER 2CIVILITY DEFINED
What is civility? And how is it organized, enacted, and enforced? By taking up these questions, we can begin to understand why so many people have trouble getting along.
In the most general sense civility is a code of public conduct. It is not the only such code. Politeness and courtesy are readily recognized codes of public conduct. So too are chivalry and gallantry. All of these modes of behavioral management, including civility, are forms of good manners.
The different forms of manners cluster and blend in several ways, yet each also retains its own meaning. Chivalry, at its origins, referred to the piety and valor expected of medieval knights. Gallantry came along several centuries later and described the ideal behavior of aristocrats. The two sets of manners demand different actions: gallantry entails dashing deeds and ornate expressions of formal regard, while chivalry stresses self-sacrificing acts of kindness and protection. These different requirements frequently run together in contemporary discussions, and chivalry and gallantry are now often viewed as essentially equivalent practices primarily concerned with the treatment of women.
Unlike chivalry and gallantry, politeness is not narrowly preoccupied with the honor due women. On the contrary, polite society has rules that are meant to govern the behavior of everyone within it. This breadth of application is paired with an element of elevation: politeness is a refined set of good manners aligned with the interests and pursuits of high culture. Although people may sometimes refer to ordinary politeness, polite behavior generally carries an air of polish and urbane sophistication. Polite elegance is to be displayed with polite restraint. When taken to extremes of elaborate formality and pretension, politeness is branded as politesse, a disparaging term that is used to criticize a tendency to push refining impulses too far.
Like politeness, courtesy also has a link to elite affairs. Courtesy initially drew its name from princely courts and referred to the gracious behavior of courtly gentlemen. Unlike politeness, courtesy did not retain its patrician patina. Over time courtesy became less associated with courtiers and ultimately took on a more democratic cast. This more plebian descendant is now known as common courtesy and it signifies an everyday form of correct conduct.
Civility is a close cousin of both politeness and courtesy. As Norbert Elias documented in his massive two-volume series The Civilizing Process, civility emerged out of courtesy during the Middle Ages. Compared to its medieval predecessor, civility called for a more self-conscious molding of personal behavior to conform to norms of appropriateness and to facilitate coordination in increasingly complex urban communities. After being adopted by the upper classes (and connected with politeness), civility gradually spread throughout society, developing into a standard of conduct for all citizens in the polity. By the mid-1500s an understanding of civility as "behavior proper to the intercourse of civilized people" had been cemented in the English-speaking world.
The intersecting histories of civility, courtesy, and politeness — as well as the fact that all three codes now apply to broad swaths of society — lead many people to treat these schemes of manners as closely related. The family resemblance between these three forms is useful for conveying emphasis and orientation. For example, to underscore that being civil is a kind of cultural achievement, one can render civility as a kind of politeness. To highlight the everyday utility of being civil, one can relate the requirements of civility in the language of courtesy. Over the course of the argument here, it will occasionally be helpful to reference civility in terms of politeness or courtesy and to remind ourselves that the three varieties of manners overlap in important ways.
We can also speak directly about civility's own core meaning. Just as we can distinguish the polish of politeness from the daily devotions of common courtesy, we can find a distinctive significance in civility's foundational role. As the standard for all citizens, civility is the baseline of decent behavior and its requirements outline the most basic kinds of consideration that we owe one another in public life. We might frame civility's baseline function negatively as the bare minimum of good manners steering people away from only the most blatant rudeness. Alternatively and more positively, we might view civility as a threshold condition that precedes and permits the kinds of interaction required by the other codes of conduct. Either way, a sense of fundamentality is civility's central defining feature. And this central sense helps explain why the perceived decline of civility evokes a chorus of alarm. If civility is meant to be the zero point for appropriate behavior, then incivility undermines the rudiments of social order and all is lost.
AM I BEING RUDE?
How is one supposed to actually go about being well mannered? To be civil — just as to be chivalrous, gallant, polite, or courteous — is to follow the appropriate rules and requirements. These rules and requirements are generally known as etiquette or decorum, and their number and specificity varies substantially depending on the source consulted. As a teenager in colonial America, George Washington wrote out 110 precepts for his Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company & Conversation, listing equal respect as the first commandment of civility ("Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present") and ending with a directive to maintain moral sensibilities ("Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience").
More recently, P. M. Forni, director of the Civility Initiative and author of Choosing Civility, has settled on twenty-five rules of civil etiquette, including "Speak kindly," "Refrain from idle complaints," and "Respect the environment and be gentle." Lynne Truss, an author who decries the collapse of civility in her book Talk to the Hand, boils down all manners to a single rule: "remember you are with other people; show some consideration." Emily Post's Etiquette, now in its eighteenth edition, not only lists a number of everyday manners, common courtesies, and guidelines for living but also details specific rules of behavior for dozens of different situations, ranging from dining and traveling, to work, weddings, funerals, and official life.
The variation in the range and domain of etiquette gives us our first clue to civility's precarious state. Which set of rules is one to follow? And how can one be sure that a selected body of rules is properly translated into concrete action? We might respond by noting that manners of all kinds are first learned at home, the rules of good behavior being handed down from parent to child. But this answer simply pushes the concern for uniformity back one level. How do we ensure that families are instilling the same precepts and teaching the same methods of application?
We would expect home schooling in civility to be consistent throughout a static, homogenous society. A society with a measure of dynamism and heterogeneity will produce more mixed results.
The United States has greatly transformed since its inception and it continues to change even now. We began with a traditional rank-ordered society inherited from England in the colonial era. Since then, our way of life has been repeatedly refashioned. The rise of mass markets and mass democracy, the abolition of slavery, the growth of cities, the influx of different waves of immigration, the accretion of vast government power, the social movement for civil rights, the reconfiguration of gender roles, the alterations in family formation, the explosion of digital communication, the increasing engagement with global politics and commerce — all of these factors (and more) have helped create a nation shot through with diversity and disagreement.
We should not be surprised to find that conceptions of civility have altered as conditions develop and change. American citizenship, Judith Shklar once observed, is "not a notion that can be discussed intelligibly in a static and empty social space." As forms of social organization and modes of relating to one another repeatedly shift, ideas about the behavior required in public life will continually transform. It is true that civility was, at its medieval origins, derived from the relatively fixed model of conduct employed in royal courts. But there is no longer a central model of appropriate conduct, and manners are democratically and flexibly fashioned from the assortment of different beliefs and practices found in modern society. Without an established rule of behavior handed down from an aristocracy, we employ many different methods to establish rules for ourselves.
Our views of civility today clearly reflect such diversity and ongoing ferment. As readers of advice columns well know, we have many different understandings of the basic consideration and signs of respect required in public life. Some manage to learn a common set of current courtesies, while others doggedly cling to the retrograde standards of conduct from bygone eras. Others have their own idiosyncratic rulebooks of etiquette, and many people insist that the only rule of good behavior is that each person be natural and authentic (the sole commandment of this latter code is "You do you"). Even those who share the same general conception of civility are often divided by uncertainty and quarrels about the actions best suited to specific contexts.
The multiple understandings of appropriate conduct make it easy for individuals to spot incivility when they experience it, but harder to identify incivility when they inflict it. We keenly feel the slight when someone has not shown us the respect we think we deserve. We are often less aware of how offensive our own deeds are to others who have different interpretations of required decorum. In their fourteen years of research on how people are treated in the workplace, Christine Porath and Christine Pearson found that 98 percent of those polled had experienced incivility on the job. At the same time, substantial numbers of employees and managers reported that they did not fully understand how to treat others civilly. And one quarter of those who offended their work colleagues had no idea they had been rude. We tend to take our own good manners for granted, as Henry Alford writes in Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? and we tend to assume that our own comportment is always commendable. As for bad manners, we at once recognize their ubiquity and "almost never think that we ourselves have them."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How Civility Works by Keith J. Bybee. Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
1. The Promise of Civility2. Civility Defined
3. The Excellence of Free Expression
4. Are You Just Being Polite?
5. Strength in Weakness