01-18-2011 Cultural Post #6: The Cultural Challenges Of Civility

 

“All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals…”.

(Joshua Lederberg)

“Civility costs nothing, and buys everything…”.
(Mary Wortley Montagu)

i have often seen people uncivil by too much civility and tiresome in their courtesy…”.
(Michel de Montaigne)

“So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that

civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof…”.

(John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

There has been much talk in the wake of the Arizona shootings about “civility.”  Tricky thing, that civility.  Tricky because almost no one means the same concept when they use the same word.

Thursday will be the 50^th Anniversary of JFK’s Inaugural Address, which (i think, although i wasn’t yet aLive) it seems to me most people remember fondly — whatever their political persuasion.  Personally, my opinion of JFK is like my opinion of a lot of U.S. Presidents: mixed.  However, i do think (as someone who studied rhetoric & analysis in college, is a trained researcher, and had dreams of being a political speechwriter when i was younger) that JFK’s inaugural address is one of the great speeches in U.S. Presidential history.

Civility was not necessarily something i think people remember as a key point of that speech, but given the hatred that dogged JFK’s presidential run toward Catholicism and the brutal way his presidency ended, it seems appropriate for me to broach the subject of civility and appeal to both Kennedy and the larger U.S. political climate and culture of the times.  While many remember either the family Life of “Camelot” or the shameful, playboy behavior of JFK on the extremes, the period of his presidency with its space race and pending racial battles, the foreign policy issues such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the election of the first Catholic president and the issues that raised of U.S. sovereignty and religion make it a very important time, at least in my mind.  So, civility, huh?

What exactly is civility?  i mean, i think a lot of people i know would say that one man’s civility is another man’s censorship or another man’s political correctness or even another man’s conceit.  Ralph Waldo Emerson used to quip, “There can be no high civility without a deep morality.”  If that’s True, then it seems to me that both how we define the word and how it is substantiated with whatever values lay behind it to back it up are very important matters, indeed, and worth considering.

Much of the talk in the last few days has been generated by Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” to respond to her critics who asserted that she was, at worst, responsible and, at least, complicit in the Arizona shootings because she had “cross hairs” on a website talking about targeting political races and officials as people who should be voted out of office, in her opinion.  So, people who were ideologically predisposed to disagree with her manipulated the Arizona shootings and took advantage, as Rahm Emmanuel has said they should, of this crisis in order to gain politically for various reasons (gun control, anti-Tea Party sentiment, Democratic support/Republican opposition, etc., etc.).  In the back-and-forth, there was much talk about the topic of “civility” that was only heightened by President Obama’s speech that focused squarely on the topic.

So, let’s start by defining the term.  The typical definition of “civility” tends to be something like “courtesy” or “politeness” or “manners.”  Cicero (Marcus Tullius), a Roman senator known for his oratory skills, argued, “A man's own manner & character is what most becomes him…”.  Ironic, given his seemingly incessant attacks on Marc Antony in speeches that eventually got him proscribed and murdered, but his appeal to character as the baseline for the essence of a person is exactly right.

Being polite or exhibiting manners of civility or acting courteously toward others can be a show.  In fact, in politics, it almost always is a show — a facade intended to deceive and garner what can not be obtained with sincerity.  Politicians are normally insincere and inauthentic by nature, for their trade is getting what they want from people who want something different, and that involves, at best, disingenuousness and, at worst, the dark arts.  Most fall somewhere in between, worse than merely disingenuous and less than completely sinister.  The mandate to rule is always best administrated by those who never seek it, but who, rather, have it thrust upon them by fellows due to the strength and depth of a character forged in temptation and self-denial, a courage galvanized into faith from a trusting response to elements such as injustice, assault, & tyranny, and a goodness cultivated in humility as one who knows that no person is good inherently.  The mandate to rule is never well administrated by those who have thought very much about how they would exercise it, and that includes both those who would like to lead while out front and those who would like to pull the strings from on high….

If civility is going to be an exercise in manners, then that will largely depend on what has been modeled to those who have grown up to join the public discourse.  i can scarcely think of a series of American generations less well-prepared to take on the mantle of something long lost like civility than the current set which have witnessed the last 50 years of our ancestors deteriorating and diminishing moral character.  i won’t go into generational theory here, but looking back at the rigidity of the G.I. generation, the naïveté of the Silent generation, the self-absorption of the Boomer generation, and the brokenness of the Buster (Gen X) generation, (not to mention the alternating nature of the idealistic/jaded dichotomy of the Millennial generation), there is little reason to think that “manners” (as something modeled & taught and watched & caught) will ever appear again.  We are beyond what tragedy can accomplish as a catalyst now; hoping for “manners” would be better suited to a hope linked to the beginning of a culture or nation than to a response by an entrenched one to any particular event or series of them.

So, that leaves us with politeness and courtesy.  Of the two, courtesy seems to be more weighty, and so i might choose eventually to hope for that one (although i doubt it).  Either, though, stem from the same core value of hospitality or hosting.  This is more a theological concept than a political one, although most people would think exactly the opposite of that.  Hospitality is mentioned in scripture as a spiritual gift, but people don’t seem to even know that, much less understand it or embrace it.  However, suffice it to say, for now, that one cannot be Truly polite or authentically courteous without hospitality under-girding the surface appearance.

Courtesy, best defined, would suggest that there is a social etiquette, a behavioral code that accompanies ideals to morph them from wish to reality.  Those behaviors, both admired & disdained, accepted & rejected, tolerated & punished, come from a culture (which is why i’m writing about it today as a cultural issue instead of tomorrow as a theological issue).  The American culture is adversarial.  It always has been and always will be.  It’s in our DNA, and You can see traces of it from Plymouth Rock to Arizona.  We prize ourselves on being worthy adversaries, but adversaries nonetheless.  Don’t mistake the American call for “civility” for unity.

It is my contention that to call for civility in a culture based on adversity is a little like arguing over the rules for gladiators: a matter of degree and not kind.  Whatever You want in terms of civility, try and imagine a way of asking for that without asking those with whom You disagree vehemently, viscerally, & vocally to change.  If You can find a way of appealing for civility by asking for change in Yourself and not in others, then i’m interested in what You have to say.  If not, then i just don’t think You have anything of substance to contribute.  But, hey, i have a different culture than most people have, so that kind of posture should be expected.  The main point i want to make today is this: try and be realistic about Your expectations, because, generally speaking, civility lies in the eyes of the beholdened….