Being Civil Is More Than Manners

My friend has taken a vow of civility for the new year. She reports this seriously, as though there were as many temptations to loosen her resolve as there are 7-Elevens with Marlboros.

She is, after all, not a have-a-nice-day kind of gal. No bumper sticker exhorting other people to “commit random acts of kindness” ever graced her car.

But after a year in which she finally began surfing away from political attack ads and banning “McLaughlin” groups from her living room, after assorted encounters of the third finger kind with hostile drivers and too many silent exchanges with supermarket checkers, she has decided to try going civil.

Starting now, she will not only ratchet up the pleases, thank-yous and would-you-minds, but also the friendly eye contact and the small daily conversations that are so trivially labeled as “mere pleasantries.” They do not seem so mere to her anymore.

She has resolved to liberally apply the lubricant of pleasant social exchanges to her brittle urban village. And see if it makes a difference.

I applaud this vow of civility. In collusion, I offer her the name of the surly dry cleaner from whom I have yet to wrench the glimmer of a human response.

But I wonder if she is just one vow ahead of the curve.

Civility has become a catchword in the past year, as if Americans experienced some great, late, collective awakening to the coarseness of public discourse, the rudeness of private life. There is talk of spitting ballplayers, swearing lyricists and dirty-warring politicians. In some odd twist, incivility has even become an accusation for combatants to throw at each other.

The calls for civility now come from left, right and center. From the progressive minister Jim Wallis to the cranky judge Robert Bork. In one radio address, the president called for civility in debate. And before a law school audience last fall, none other than Justice Clarence Thomas criticized “individuals who’ve forgotten the common standards of decency that every individual should show to others.”

Still I am uncertain if these civil servants mean the same thing. Is civility a point of agreement across the spectrum or just an easy cliche?

The motto of the 1960s was “Tell it like it is.” The motto of the late 1990s may yet become “Mind your manners.” But under this surface agreement it’s not clear whether we want to resolve or merely repress disagreements. It’s not clear whether we are hoping for a Disney World kind of courtesy-or-else between citizens, or a genuine reconnection.

Last month, a New England family anonymously donated $35 million to fund a new Institute for a Civil Society. There was a huge response to the announcement of this think-and-do tank, a project aimed at rebuilding the “social” institutions and associations that bring local people a sense of community.

Yet the institute’s president, former MacArthur Fellow Pam Solo, was struck by how many callers responded as if it were a project to restore good manners. They had rushed past the first dictionary definition of “civil” - “of or relating to citizens, to the state of citizenry” - straight to the second definition - “adequate in courtesy and politeness.”

Part of rebuilding a civil society, Solo agrees, “is getting people to talk to one another.” Indeed as a former peace activist she knows, “Violence is wordlessness; it begins where human conversation breaks down.”

But the way we misbehave or ignore each other in our everyday lives is emblematic of a larger disconnection. “It has to do with a deeper sense of insecurity,” says Solo. “A fear that I’m not sure I matter, that maybe we’re all expendable.” In this dialogue, we aren’t just talking about the behavior of a driver who cuts in line, but of a boss who treats workers as disposable, a community whose people remain strangers.

The outcry for civility is as modest as it is wide. In my dictionary after all, civil behavior “often suggests little more than the avoidance of overt rudeness.” But, in the end, “manners” are about treating others as if they matter.

So too, the quest can end in pro forma politeness. But it can also usher in a profound conversation about how we as a people treat and deal with one another. How do we re-create a community? One year and one vow at a time.

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