Why Civility Matters
By: Christopher Laine
Tags: Philosophy, Social Media, Debate, Society, Politics

I left the US eighteen years ago this month.

I mark every June with a shout out to my former life, and a grateful pat on the back for past me who made the decision to go. It wasn’t an easy decision. Leaving behind our lives, careers, friends and family to start anew in New Zealand was damned risky and more than one person told us so.

“You’ll be back in a year,” a couple smug would-be soothsayers claimed.

Their prognostications proved faulty.

One of those self-same soothsayers contacted me a while back to ask me what it would take for them to immigrate to New Zealand. I mercifully did not remind them of their snarky prediction so many years ago, but instead pointed them at the NZ Immigration website with some helpful tips.

They, like me, have watched in dismay at the fundamental breakdown of civility and fair treatment in US politics and public life, and an advent of viciousness and indelicacy which is not only patently embarrassing, but is tearing the US apart.

Be civil to all; serviceable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. — Benjamin Franklin

Why Did We Leave?

There are any number of reasons we decided to say our goodbyes to the United States.

My partner and I had both lived outside the US before. I lived in countries all around Asia; she had traveled extensively through Europe. Before our kids were born, we lived on an island in the Cyclades (Greece).

Our kids had reached school age, and we again longed for adventure rather than a mortgage. We had saved enough money to either indenture ourselves to a bank for a mortgage, or take the money and use it to set off on a new journey. We chose the latter. (I really, really, REALLY don’t like owing money to banks.)

Career opportunity was a small but contributing factor to our decision as well. While the pay in New Zealand was, with the exchange rate, significantly less, the number of skilled labourers (particularly in our fields) were in short supply. San Francisco was (and I understand still is) so overrun in job applicants, it was an ever-losing uphill battle to get and keep stable work.

Sure, those were all contributing factors, and I don’t dismiss them out of hand. Yet in the end, the biggest factor by far was the unsettling trend we saw taking hold in America. The populace — particularly where politics and opinion were concerned — were growing foul-tempered and growling with invective.

Civility, it seemed, was on its way out. Discourse and rational debate were in increasingly short supply, quickly being replaced with a nasty spite and ravenous need to shout down everyone who failed to agree.

I was raised in the 60s, 70s, and 80s in Northern CA. While politics had its ugly sides, there was this thing called civil discourse. My parents and teachers showed me — in word and in deeds — that someone who debased themselves by resorting to name-calling and expletives was hardly worthy of calling themselves a member of a democratic society. I was taught that while arguments will always take place, it is our duty as citizens and as people to carry ourselves with as much calm and intelligence as possible, and to listen to an opponent’s arguments fairly, to debate and discuss with equanimity.

My partner and I were at a crossroads in American history, and somehow we instinctively knew this. Something was coming, something which we wanted no part of, a destructive, unstoppable force growing in the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans. We could see how public debate was fast devolving into slander and name-calling.

Sides were being chosen. Elections were growing nastier by the year. Political ads were devolving into trashy videos bashing opponents, rather than information on a candidate’s positions and qualifications. Politics in Washington were turning into a bad episode of Jerry Springer. The Rush Limbaughs were getting louder and growing in popularity. The importance of decorum was already starting to fall by the wayside.

It was well and truly the time to skedaddle.

Speak not injurious words neither in jest nor earnest; scoff at none, although they give occasion. — George Washington

All the Worse Now

That was eighteen years ago. President George W Bush was in office, and the Iraq War had a lot of tempers high. Yet by today’s standards, things were damned placid and restrained. Presidents acted presidential. Debate, while nasty, was still debate, and the rules of political and public engagement were much the same as they’d been since the founding of the US. At the time what had seemed to us as churlish and uncouth, nasty and disrespectful now seem like the pinnacle of gentility. The ugliness we had seen was, we were to learn, only the beginning of the fear and loathing that would become the American public stage.

These days, much of the world looks on in baffled horror (and none too little bemusement) while present day America appears to becoming unhinged. To the rest of the globe, what is happening is little more than screeching and clawing at one another over every slight imaginable. It looks from the outside like children squabbling on the playground.

Not that this isn’t totally unexpected. The election of Donald Trump was a clear sign of things to come, and a direction that was already well under way when Trump blustered his way to power. Beyond all his other failings as a businessman and a human being, Trump is the picture of boorish loudmouthery, a man who has no time or inclination for etiquette or courtesy. He is an anathema to common decency and good manners. Hardly the picture of a statesman or a diplomat, Trump fundamentally lacks the qualities so needed when negotiating on the international stage.

And indeed he is neither statesman nor diplomat. Trump was elected by his base fundamentally because he was not diplomatic or civil. They wanted a swaggering braggadocio, a man who would say and do anything, who would put everyone — including other nations — in their place. That is precisely how he has acted, still the hollering star of his own “reality” show, but now at the head of the most powerful nation on earth.

Most world leaders think little to nothing of Trump, as was shown when a group of them at the G8 mocked the man while they thought no one was listening. Most are likely waiting in eager anticipation for Trump and his ilk to disappear into their sordid chapter in history. Trump and those like him have managed in less than four years to isolate the US on the international stage. His lack of good grace and tact has turned the US into the 800-pound gorilla no one wants to have around.

Trump’s followers — and the miasma of far-right celebrity goons which rile them nightly — trample every modicum of decency and restraint one can put in their paths.

Such TV “personalities” as Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and many more fill the airwaves with hate speech and bold-faced fabrications in an attempt to whip their viewers into a lather at every turn. Such blatant and mean-spirited demagoguery is inconceivable in other democratic nations. It’s all but impossible to explain to non-Americans what the hell is happening.

And let us not heap it all on your conservatives, either.

Progressives gleefully hope for the suffering and failure of any and all conservatives. Left-leaning television personalities are interested in mocking and deriding for ratings, chasing laughs at the expense of anyone and everyone more often than actually creating a real sense of engagement, of presenting the complexities of issues.

Far left-leaning news outlets paint everyone right of center as fascists, dictators, racists, warmongers, capitalist pigs. No one is spared the wrath of the high priests and priestesses of Political Correctness and Cancel Culture. Step off the approved liberal line, and you’re one of the enemies of equality and social justice.

Real impartial journalism struggles these days, since truth impartially told requires readers who can accept complexity and varied positions. Journalism requires an acceptance and respect for rational facts. Those have been thrown out in favour of what looks and sounds like intentional equivocation and propaganda.

Social media is one big screaming match over the top of a digital divide. I’ve seen more politesse at house parties than what we’re seeing today on Facebook and Twitter. Most conservatives and progressives don’t even bother talking anymore. Insulting tweets and comments lobbed over the line are the primary means of engagement, adding more angry fuel to the fire.

Even a pandemic has failed to unite America. While other nations are rallying together to weather this painful and frightening time in history, America appears to be carrying on with its perpetual mudslinging. Few are speaking rationally, and those who are might as well be talking to a stone. The art of listening has lost its place in post-modern America. Logic, rationality, and yes, civility appear to have packed their bags and emigrated elsewhere in a hurry. Meanwhile, most Americans are fist-fighting on the deck of the Titanic.

Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. — George W. Bush

Why Civility Matters

I’ve learned a lot from my adopted homeland of New Zealand. I understand Rugby now, and I can cook a pavlova. I even know a few phrases of Maori. Yet one of the most important lessons my fellow Kiwis have taught me is that for all their disagreements —across all aspects of society — civility and decorum are never abandoned.

It is civility in NZ society which allows such a wide number of political parties to work together to form a coalition government. It is decorum which keeps the debates rational and without histrionics or cheap theatrics. It is this very civility and trust in our government and in each other (no matter our political differences) which have helped us to weather the covid-19 pandemic so successfully.

Was there disagreement in parliament and in society as to Prime Minister Jacinda Arden’s decisions on the handling of the pandemic? Of course, but it never turned nasty. Letters to the editor and commentary appeared in newspapers. MPs spoke their minds against her approach. Yet it never took on the kind of invective we see pouring out the US in nigh endless supply.

Do we have uncouth and uncivil windbags in New Zealand? We do, of course. No society is complete without some percentage of indelicate oafs. Yet theirs is a minority voice, one which is looked upon with distaste and even condescension. Such lacking in propriety and reasonableness is not given much credence, since why diminish yourself and your society by giving such behaviour a place at the grownup table?

Civility matters because it is the only place from which one can find compromise. Restraining ourselves so that we always treat our opponents with inherent dignity is how we begin to acquiesce that another’s opinion is as valid as our own. Decorum matters because it is the line in the sand beyond which we do not cross. Not because we can’t, but because to do so sullies and debases everyone, ourselves included.

I cannot say that I’ve never been discourteous or rancorous in the public forum. I have — for any number of banal or petty reasons — made cantankerous or vindctive remarks both on and offline. Yet I’m reformed.

I’ll debate. I’ll argue. I’ll point out hypocrisy and lack of ethics where I see them. I may even quip and have a go, but no longer with any intent to harm or humiliate.

My adopted country has reminded me of what my parents and teachers taught me all those years ago. I have learned once more the value of hearing others, and letting them have their voice same as I wish to have mine. I have been reminded of how important it is to live in and be a member of a civil society.

Will I always be heard? No. Will I be shouted down by loudmouths and cacophonous boors? Likely, especially in the short term. Yet this is a long game we’re playing. By bringing civility and decorum back, we’re seeking to restore human dignity and rational debate to all levels of society. We are using the age-old weapons of rationality, courtesy, and logic to trounce the nincompoops and louts by showing everyone how this game is really supposed to be played. Not cheating, not throwing our toys when we don’t get our way, but by engaging in the real game of intellect, of thought and ethical reflection. In bringing back etiquette and grace to our social contract, we are helping to make our voices heard and in doing so help others to be heard as well.

What more do any of us want than that?