Is civility a sham Teresa Bejan
This talk contains mature language
Viewer discretion is advised
Let’s get this out of the way.
I’m here because I wrote
a book about civility,
and because that book came out
right around the 2016
American presidential election,
I started getting lots of invitations
to come and talk about civility
and why we need more of it
in American politics.
So great.
The only problem was that I had written
that book about civility
because I was convinced
that civility is …
bullshit.
(Laughter)
Now, that may sound
like a highly uncivil thing to say,
and lucky for you, and for my publisher,
I did eventually come to change my mind.
In the course of writing that book
and studying the long history
of civility and religious tolerance
in the 17th century,
I came to discover
that there is a virtue of civility,
and far from being bullshit,
it’s actually absolutely essential,
especially for tolerant societies,
so societies like this one,
that promise not only to protect diversity
but also the heated and sometimes
even hateful disagreements
that that diversity inspires.
You see, the thing about disagreement
is that there is a reason
that “disagreeable” is a synonym
for “unpleasant.”
As the English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes pointed out
all the way back in 1642,
that’s because the mere act
of disagreement is offensive.
And Hobbes is still right.
It works like this:
so, if you and I disagree,
and I’m right, because I always am,
how am I to make sense of the fact
that you are so very, very wrong?
It couldn’t possibly be that you’ve just
come to a different conclusion
in good faith?
No, you must be up to something,
you must be stupid,
bigoted, interested.
Maybe you’re insane.
And the same goes the other way. Right?
So the mere fact
of your disagreeing with me
is implicitly an insult not only
to my views, but to my intelligence, too.
And things only get worse
when the disagreements at stake
are the ones that we somehow
consider to be fundamental,
whether to our worldviews
or to our identities.
You know the kinds of disagreement I mean.
One doesn’t discuss religion or politics
or increasingly, the politics
of popular culture, at the dinner table,
because these are the disagreements,
these are the things that people
really, seriously disagree about,
and they define themselves against
their opponents in the controversy.
But of course
those fundamental disagreements
are precisely the ones
that tolerant societies
like the United States
propose to tolerate,
which perhaps explains why,
historically, at least,
tolerant societies haven’t been
the happy-clappy communities of difference
that you sometimes hear about.
No, they tend to be places
where people have to hold their noses
and rub along together
despite their mutual contempt.
That’s what I learned
from studying religious tolerance
in early modern England and America.
And I also learned
that the virtue that makes
that un-murderous coexistence,
if you will, possible,
is the virtue of civility,
because civility makes
our disagreements tolerable
so that we can share a life together
even if we don’t share a faith –
religious, political or otherwise.
Still, I couldn’t help but notice
that when most people
talk about civility today –
and boy, do they talk
about civility a lot –
they seem to have something else in mind.
So if civility is the virtue that makes it
possible to tolerate disagreement
so that we can actually
engage with our opponents,
talking about civility
seems to be mainly
a strategy of disengagement.
It’s a little bit like threatening
to take your ball and go home
when the game isn’t going your way.
Because the funny thing about incivility
is that it’s always
the sin of our opponents.
It’s funny.
When it comes to our own bad behavior,
well, we seem to develop
sudden-onset amnesia,
or we can always justify it
as an appropriate response
to the latest outrage from our opponents.
So, “How can I be civil to someone
who is set out to destroy
everything I stand for?
And by the way, they started it.”
It’s all terrifically convenient.
Also convenient is the fact
that most of today’s big civility talkers
tend to be quite vague and fuzzy
when it comes to what they think
civility actually entails.
We’re told that civility
is simply a synonym for respect,
for good manners, for politeness,
but at the same time, it’s clear
that to accuse someone of incivility
is much, much worse
than calling them impolite,
because to be uncivil
is to be potentially intolerable
in a way that merely being rude isn’t.
So to call someone uncivil,
to accuse them of incivility,
is a way of communicating
that they are somehow beyond the pale,
that they’re not worth
engaging with at all.
So here’s the thing:
civility isn’t bullshit,
it’s precious because it’s the virtue
that makes fundamental disagreement
not only possible but even
sometimes occasionally productive.
It’s precious, but it’s also
really, really difficult.
Civility talk, on the other hand,
well, that’s really easy,
really easy,
and it also is almost always
complete bullshit,
which makes things slightly awkward for me
as I continue to talk to you
about civility.
(Laughter)
Anyway, we tend to forget it,
but politicians and intellectuals
have been warning us for decades now
that the United States
is facing a crisis of civility,
and they’ve tended to blame that crisis
on technological developments,
on things like cable TV,
talk radio, social media.
But any historian will tell you
that there never was a golden age
of disagreement,
let alone good feelings,
not in American politics.
In my book, though, I argue
that the first modern crisis of civility
actually began about 500 years ago,
when a certain professor of theology
named Martin Luther
took advantage of a recent advancement
in communications technology,
the printing press,
to call the Pope the Antichrist,
and thus inadvertently launch
the Protestant Reformation.
So think of the press, if you will,
as the Twitter of the 16th century,
and Martin Luther as the original troll.
And I’m not exaggerating here.
He once declared himself unable to pray
without at the same time cursing
his “anti-Christian,”
i.e. Catholic, opponents.
And of course, those Catholic opponents
clutched their pearls
and called for civility then, too,
but all the while,
they gave as good as they got
with traditional slurs like “heretic,”
and, worst of all, “Protestant,”
which began in the 16th century
as an insult.
The thing about
civility talk, then as now,
was that you could call out
your opponent for going low,
and then take advantage
of the moral high ground
to go as low or lower,
because calling for civility
sets up the speaker
as a model of decorum
while implicitly, subtly stigmatizing
anyone with the temerity
to disagree as uncivil.
And so civility talk in the 17th century
becomes a really effective way
for members of the religious establishment
to silence, suppress, exclude dissenters
outside of the established church,
especially when they spoke out
against the status quo.
So Anglican ministers
could lecture atheists
on the offensiveness of their discourse.
Everyone could complain about the Quakers
for refusing to doff and don their hats
or their “uncouth” practice
of shaking hands.
But those accusations of incivility
pretty soon became
pretexts for persecution.
So far, so familiar, right?
We see that strategy again and again.
It’s used to silence civil rights
protesters in the 20th century.
And I think it explains
why partisans on both sides of the aisle
keep reaching for this,
frankly, antiquated,
early modern language of civility
precisely when they want to communicate
that certain people and certain views
are beyond the pale,
but they want to save
themselves the trouble
of actually making an argument.
So no wonder skeptics like me
tend to roll our eyes
when the calls for
conversational virtue begin,
because instead of healing
our social and political divisions,
it seems like so much civility talk
is actually making the problem worse.
It’s saving us the trouble
of actually speaking to each other,
allowing us to speak
past each other or at each other
while signaling our superior virtue
and letting the audience know
which side we’re on.
And given this, I think
one might be forgiven, as I did,
for assuming that because
so much civility talk is bullshit,
well then, the virtue of civility
must be bullshit, too.
But here, again, I think a little
historical perspective goes a long way.
Because remember, the same
early modern crisis of civility
that launched the Reformation
also gave birth to tolerant societies,
places like Rhode Island, Pennsylvania,
and indeed, eventually the United States,
places that at least aspired
to protect disagreement
as well as diversity,
and what made that possible
was the virtue of civility.
What made disagreement tolerable,
what it made it possible
for us to share a life,
even when we didn’t share a faith,
was a virtue,
but one, I think,
that is perhaps less aspirational
and a lot more confrontational
than the one that people
who talk about civility a lot today
tend to have in mind.
So I like to call that virtue
“mere civility.”
You may know it as the virtue
that allows us to get through
our relations with an ex-spouse,
or a bad neighbor,
not to mention a member
of the other party.
Because to be merely civil
is to meet a low bar grudgingly,
and that, again, makes sense,
because civility is a virtue
that’s meant to help us disagree,
and as Hobbes told us
all those centuries ago,
disagreeable means unpleasant
for a reason.
But if it isn’t bullshit,
what exactly is civility or mere civility?
What does it require?
Well, to start, it is not and cannot be
the same thing
as being respectful or polite,
because we need civility precisely
when we’re dealing with those people
that we find it the most difficult,
or maybe even impossible, to respect.
Similarly, being civil
can’t be the same as being nice,
because being nice means not telling
people what you really think about them
or their wrong, wrong views.
No, being civil means speaking your mind,
but to your opponent’s face,
not behind her back.
Being merely civil
means not pulling our punches,
but at the same time, it means maybe
not landing all those punches all at once,
because the point of mere civility
is to allow us to disagree,
to disagree fundamentally,
but to do so without denying or destroying
the possibility of a common life tomorrow
with the people that we think
are standing in our way today.
And in that sense, I think
civility is actually closely related
to another virtue, the virtue of courage.
So mere civility is having the courage
to make yourself disagreeable,
and to stay that way,
but to do so while staying in the room
and staying present to your opponents.
And it also means that, sometimes,
calling bullshit on people’s civility talk
is really the only civil thing to do.
At least that’s what I think.
But look, if I’ve learned anything
from studying the long history
of religious tolerance
in the 17th century, it’s this:
if you’re talking about civility
as a way to avoid an argument,
to isolate yourself
in the more agreeable company
of the like-minded
who already agree with you,
if you find yourself
never actually speaking to anyone
who really, truly, fundamentally
disagrees with you,
well, you’re doing civility wrong.
Thank you.
(Applause)