https://www.hoover.org/research/restoring-civility-hostile-world
Basic Steps
Individuals who believe in Civility as a solution to what ails us as a society should take the basic steps of learning more about the Civility movement and then joining with one of the many grass-roots groups to share the content of Civility, especially the 7 values and 7 behaviors, with others. This is classic membership and communications work. There are many personal and community benefits from practicing and promoting Civility.
Help others to understand the solid content of modern Civility and remove the misunderstandings that Civility is politeness, utopian, weak, emotional, partisan, righteous and apologetic. There is much work required to refine and promote the true Civility brand.
Improve your personal Civility skills.
Review and commit to the underlying values that support Civility.
Apply your skills and insights in a single environment or community. Civility combines thinking, feeling and doing to create improved habits. Civility applies in family, social, political, educational and business environments. Your example can be contagious.
Recognize that Civility is a social norm. Social norms are reinforced by society. We have lost some of this social norm but can rebuild it by changing the insights, skills and behavior of a relatively small number of individuals, especially influential people, like my readers. Civility is not utopian. Its supporters don’t believe that we can change human nature. But we do see the viral, social networking, virtuous cycle nature of growing Civility as a practice and expectation throughout our society. We don’t need everyone to participate or each of us to be excellent in order to win; re-establishing a self-reinforcing set of norms. We just need to reach critical mass.
Research and share the amazing power that Civility has to address 6 of our social ills: radical individualism, weak aspects of human nature, skepticism, imperfect myths, our secular age and insecurity.
Politics
Don’t despair about politics. We have experienced polarized politics about important issues throughout history. The Civility movement aims to be nonpartisan, so it hesitates to offer specific structural “solutions” to our political challenges. It seeks to improve the Civility skills and values of all citizens, respecting the human dignity of every person, becoming more intentional and constructive and holding politicians accountable. We believe that this accountability for citizens and political leaders is the most important factor in reforming our political activities. It is directly actionable
Invite political actors and parties to adopt Civility as the core of their work. Many today don’t practice Civility. They blame “the other guy”. It will take time to make this happen, but we will re-establish this basic standard for representing our communities.
Civility is Not Trivial
We define Civility as primarily a set of behaviors, a set of habits. Habits are not easy to create. They are not easy to maintain. They are not easy to improve. Civility calls for specific habits in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, communications, growth and problem solving! Yes, it looks like a master’s degree in counseling, family therapy, psychology or organizational development! Effective communications, relations and problem solving are critical skills for modern life. They can be learned as children, youths, young adults and mature adults. They apply in all spheres of life.
Civility is modestly complex, integrating 7 values and 7 sets of behaviors. It integrates thinking, feeling and doing. It is an applied skill with theoretical supports. It requires practice and feedback to build and improve habits. It must be practiced in social settings, which may not be supportive. It requires an investment of time, attention, vulnerability, emotions and discipline. Civility, per se, is not required to perform basic life functions, so it can be ignored to some degree today. Like other moral systems, Civility is aspirational. There is no end to the possible improvements in our skills or the application of the values. Hence, it is sometimes frustrating. We prefer to have “achievement” type goals which can be completed just once.
Civility requires a big commitment. As noted in the first two articles, it provides great personal and community benefits. The 7 Civility values are supported by the major world religions, most cultures and professions. Civility insights and behaviors are applied throughout life. Not everyone will invest deeply in Civility. Those who choose to invest will be repaid multiple times.
Radical Individualism
As noted in the “Power of Civility” article, Civility provides a required community counterbalance to individualism. As Jonathan Haidt describes it, we’re 90% selfish chimps and 10% cooperative bees. Civility requires us to balance this dual nature. It embraces public-spiritedness as a core value, requiring us to look at the social dimensions of our thoughts, relations and decisions. This balance is not easy to decide or maintain. Different political, religious, philosophical and cultural systems take different positions.
Civility encourages us to become comfortable with considering, advocating and living these choices while respecting the different choices of others. In this sense, Civility is a “classical liberal” approach to managing our individual roles within society. We start with the individual and believe that our processes, norms and institutions will protect our individual rights as we resolve differences.
We are individualists who fear the infringement of our liberties and liberties by any powerful organizations. We don’t want a secular or religious culture that strongly limits our freedoms of thought, speech, religion, assembly, protection or property. Civility provides a set of tools that protects these rights while also considering the competing claims of communities at all levels.
We note that our individualistic society allows individuals to withdraw to their own choices and provision of goods and services with limited social interactions. We think that this allows individuals to ignore their responsibilities to the community. We live in an interdependent world. The “rugged individualist” cannot survive in the modern world. Civility asks each person to consider the community dimension of their behavior, speech and politics. Civility argues that individual rights and community responsibilities can coexist for everyone – with a wide variety of beliefs.
Civility does not guarantee success. It is a tool that can help the individual and the community.
Human Nature
Civility’s ability to bring out the best in human nature is described in the “Power of Civility” article.
Civility accepts that we can be selfish, exaggerate our own views, diminish the views of others and rationalize actions and non-actions to our own benefit.
We have a limited attention span. We struggle to truly multi-task. We let our subconscious do much of the work. We don’t challenge or articulate our political, religious, philosophical and cultural views. We have world views. We act relatively consistently. We defend/rationalize our views as needed. In general, we don’t use our slow and rational faculties. We tend to be self-righteous about our views.
We are morally imperfect. Even with practice, experience and social pressure, we still do what we know we shouldn’t do AND don’t do what we know we should. We reject feedback and social pressure even when it is in our own interest.
We hold different political and religious views. We have different interests, talents and personalities. Living together and reaching agreement is difficult, even with the best of intentions and Civility habits.
Civility accepts our shortcomings and offers a program to do the best we can with what we’ve got.
Insecurity
“The Power of Civility” article outlines how Civility can help us to improve security in a world that feels more insecure each day.
Humans crave security at the base level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Security is based upon perceived threats and risks. In a complex, urban, technological, global, secular, meritocratic world we’re insecure more often. We react by trying to build security. We seek certainty through our beliefs and groups. We avoid risks. We avoid “others”. We prejudge. We feel like victims. We buy security.
Civility requires a degree of openness, trust and interaction that is difficult when we feel insecure.
Individuals are encouraged to practice and build Civility skills in safe environments before flexing them in more difficult places.
Experience applying Civility skills can help us to better understand the size, likelihood and impact of risks and to understand our power to manage those situations effectively. An experienced negotiator, communicator, leader, volunteer, seller, and consumer is well-positioned to thrive and minimize significant threats.
Imperfect Myths/Our Secular Age
Civility is required because we live in society and we no longer live in a world where the religious, social, economic and political are merged into Christendom or even in a world where Christian moral values, imperfectly applied, prevail as social norms. We live in a “classical liberal” political system based upon individual rights and freedoms. It was created 250 years ago when a common Christian moral system prevailed. It is based upon the assumption that individuals have a core set of moral values in common.
Civility is based upon the core values of human dignity, respect, acceptance, responsibility, constructiveness, intentionality and public-spiritedness. These values are adequate to support all of the desired Civility behaviors. Some proponents of the “classical liberal” political system argue that it must not incorporate a subset of moral values because there is no way to evaluate these values without starting with a full-blown moral system. These groups have argued with the modern communitarians and been unable to find common ground. We advocate the 7 Civility values on a pragmatic basis. They are required to drive the Civility behaviors. We need the Civility behaviors to live together.
I don’t think many citizens will reject these values because they are somehow inconsistent with the theory of our political system.
Summary
The grass-roots efforts to restore Civility have accelerated in the last 2 decades. Politicians and journalists have leveraged modern media and social media to appeal to the lower angels of human nature in order to monetize attention. In a world without a dominant religion, political philosophy or culture, we have a clear need for help in addressing our major social and political system challenges.
Civility does require personal work and interactions. We have a much better understanding of the components of Civility today. It offers a scalable solution to our many problems. It can be developed one step at a time. It can be used in all arenas of life. It can be taught to everyone. We can re-establish Civility as a social norm. Like other social norms, there is a virtuous cycle/network effect that leverages our progress. Modern social science classes provide very effective tools and classes to build our skills. Civility has personal benefits, especially a sense of personal agency. It has benefits for the institutions of modern life that can invest and promote it. Civility is a personal choice that cannot be prevented by groups that oppose it. Civility is a “no brainer”. We have the opportunity to re-establish it for the benefit of all.
Good News 