This from columnist Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun on Civil Society, one of a larger group of articles presented in a special guest edited edition of Vancouver Sun on civil society.
Todd’s extensive article is a must read for anyone who is genuinely interested in how one goes about civil society.
- Pay attention to what’s going on. (e.g. Steve Jobs)
- Practice compassion. (e.g. Dalai Lama)
- Act. (e.g. Angelina Jolie)
- Hold individuals accountable for what they do. (e.g. Beverley McLachlin)
- Be clear in stating your case. (e.g. Martin Luther King)
- Listen. (e.g. Oprah Winfrey)
- Be prepared to change. (e.g. Barack Obama)
- Avoid violence, physical and emotional. (e.g. Gandhi)
- Remain genuine. (e.g. Keith Richards)
- Treat others with the respect with which you’d like to be treated. (e.g. Jesus)
Making a difference for the good of all is no easy task. It takes courage and determination, but many extraordinary and ordinary people do it. The real achievers have been compassionate and respectful — but not always polite.
Teenage boys and girls in Canada are more likely than ever to bully, cheat, lie, steal, destroy others’ belongings, intimidate teachers and engage in aggressive and disruptive behaviour.
The Vanier Institute for the Family, which compared teenage civility over the past three decades, didn’t just blame the disturbing state of affairs on young people, however.
The respected institute attributed teens’ lack of civility to many things: Parents working longer hours, the eroding of communities, the decline of religion, rising stress on everyone and youth spending unparalleled amounts of time accessing television, the Internet and video games.
Dinner conversation these days is filled with anecdotes lamenting insensitive clerks, increased jaywalking, people failing to give up their seats on buses, food-gobbling, vitriolic blogging, workplace abruptness, harsh airline protocol, dour demeanours, road rage, ringing cellphones and the gradual disappearance of the phrase, “Thank you.”
The ultimate purpose of politeness, much like a smile, is to make people feel more comfortable. Politeness oils the wheels of social cohesion.
Good manners, if based on genuine interest, make people feel welcome.
When politeness disappears, we don’t feel so safe any more.
It is common today to complain about a general decline in “politeness,” which is also called “civility” — although there are often-blurry distinctions between the meanings of the words.
As we’ll see, we need more than politeness to create a civil society. But etiquette is not a bad place to start.
However, rather than scapegoating kids as the main source of society’s possibly increasing impoliteness, let’s look at the world adults have created for teenagers.
The typical child now sees thousands of murders a year with the help of the media. Self-absorbed, me-first behaviour is celebrated on TV, in movies and advertising.
Ordinary people are modelling the self-absorption and bad manners of people with status, argues Redford Williams in his new book, In Control: No More Snapping at Your Family, Sulking at Work, Steaming in the Grocery Line, Seething in Meetings, Stuffing Your Frustration.
The so-called rudeness epidemic, says Williams, flows from heightened stress and looser inhibitions. “The national discourse of this country is attack, attack, attack,” says Williams. Reality television stars, top athletes, media personalities and political leaders regularly insult, trade obscenities or tell anyone in disagreement to “shut up.”
With a loss of politeness, meanness is seen not only as acceptable, it signifies power and influence, Williams says, speaking mainly of his country, the United States.
Such impolite behaviour can even have serious economic and international implications. A British study found one of the main reasons Europeans weren’t travelling to the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, was the country’s “sarcastic, suspicious, patronizing, and downright rude” customs officials, as well as the U.S. government’s increasingly aggressive military forays.
However, before we wring our hands in despair about the sad state of this supposedly more impolite world, we need a reality check — because from ancient Greece to Victorian times, some people have always complained about uncouth behaviour.
Politeness is hard to measure, with even Vanier Institute research professor Anne-Marie Ambert admitting bad manners, aggression and me-first ethics are not as easy to study statistically as criminal behaviour — which, paradoxically, is declining in Canada.
In light of a poll suggesting 70 per cent of North Americans believe people are ruder now than they were 20 years ago, Reader’s Digest recently tested the conventional wisdom by gathering some informal evidence.
The international magazine had researchers in 35 countries perform three politeness experiments. They tried to find out whether people open doors for anonymous researchers and help them pick up a pile of “accidentally” dropped papers, and whether clerks would say “Thank you” for their purchases.
New Yorkers, despite their infamous reputations, turned out to be the most polite in the world, followed by the residents of Zurich, Toronto and Berlin. The least polite dwell in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Bucharest and Mumbai.
In a separate politeness survey by the magazine, Canadians in general performed well, particularly the citizens of Moncton, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria.
Despite its unscientific nature, the Readers Digest survey counters the widespread fear that everyone has suddenly become grotesquely rude.
That’s important because the main excuse people usually cite for their own thoughtless behaviour is: “Everybody else is doing it.”
So maybe we can’t simply blame our own impoliteness on others.
We need to put the politeness “crisis” in perspective for many reasons.
The main one is that forging a civil society goes far beyond being pleasant and nice.
There is more to creating a vibrant democracy than following the social graces of your culture, such as avoiding putting your elbows on the table or chewing gum. Sometimes the rules of etiquette are simply another means to control people.
We need to reclaim the word “civility,” which was originally linked to the concept of “civilization.”
By the mid-20th century, however, “civility” had dwindled to a genteel term for nominal courtesy, says linguist Geoff Nurnberg.
CIVILITY RUNS DEEPER
He cites how American establishment figures in the 1960s would stress “civility” to marginalize reformers and protesters, particularly unkempt hippies and loud radicals.
While I’m all for politeness, civility is much deeper and important. Civility points to the qualities necessary to create a better society, a thriving democratic civilization where everyone feels connected and engaged.
Sociologist Robert Putnam wrote in his famous book, Bowling Alone, about the decline of American civil society, as marked by decreasing membership in voluntary associations (such as bowling leagues, even while the number of bowlers has been increasing).
Noting North Americans’ reduced involvement in community and political life, Putnam maintains a healthy society is characterized by lively exchanges both between people who are alike and those who are not alike. He has recently become concerned about widespread suspicion between ethnic communities in the U.S.
A truly civil society, Putnam believes, is one in which people feel strong social connections and involvement in the wider society, reflected in such things as high voter turnouts.
What should be the rules of engagement to foster a truly civil society?
They should generally follow the rules of a dialogue. That requires a modicum of politeness with lots of eye-contact, handshaking and definitely no spitting.
That way everyone will feel welcome at the table of competing ideas and beliefs.
Beyond such basic politeness, however, we should have a broad understanding of what it means to be “civil” in a civil society.
I always remember John Dixon, a Capilano College philosophy instructor and activist with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, talking about how democracy is “messy.”
DISCOMFORT IS NECESSARY
While expressing one’s opinions and passions in the democratic tumult of competing ideas and values, people’s feelings and self-interest can sometimes be threatened.
But it’s not bad to be made to feel uncomfortable. Often it’s necessary for things to change.
In other words, the creation of a truly civil society sometimes requires people making intemperate, even critical remarks — about neighbours, media figures, politicians and corporate leaders — or doing impolite things, like staging protests.
Still, I’m often impressed by veteran agents of social betterment, like Dixon, who can join the fray and work for the common good while remaining, for lack of a better word, “polite.”
Such people illustrate my theory that it’s often the most radical people who are the most respectful. As a result, they’re also the most effective at making good things happen.
Even though many people think of the Dalai Lama as one of the most polite and affable people in the world, his Vancouver-based biographer, Victor Chan, emphasizes the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people believes in much more than being a nice guy.
“Politeness to him is overrated,” says Chan, who returned in late March from two weeks in India with the exiled Tibetan leader, while Chinese troops were cracking down on protesters in Tibet.
“He is very aware of the expression, ‘Within the smile there is a knife.’ ”
Instead of emphasizing the value of politeness, Chan says the Dalai Lama believes “the most important thing is what is in your heart, what is your motivation.”
As China tries to put on a friendly face to host the Summer Olympics, Chan says the Dalai Lama knows people often act politely to achieve their own ends.
Instead of expressing that kind of politeness, the Dalai Lama strives to treat everyone with “equanimity,” in other words, equally and genuinely.
The Tibetan leader acts the same with enemies as friends, Chan says, citing how the famed Buddhist monk sometimes told him he was asking “stupid” and “repetitive” questions as they worked on their book, Wisdom for Forgiveness.
At age 73, and wary of wasting his time, the Dalai Lama can be “very blunt,” said Chan — including with people in high station. When the Dalai Lama meets with U.S. President George W. Bush, he feels warmly toward him, Chan says. But he will not shirk from telling Bush the U.S.-led war against Iraq illustrates how violence always leads to a “dead end.”
Confronted with the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on Tibetan protesters, Chan said the Dalai Lama has been disturbed and saddened. The monk genuinely feels warmth for the Chinese people, Chan said. But he is determined to boldly resist the Chinese government’s oppression.
The Dalai Lama is not the only leader who believes that building civil society goes far beyond merely being polite, doing what is socially expected.
With mainstream Buddhists often criticized for politely opting out of society to pursue psychological enlightenment, the Dalai Lama supported the 1987 establishment of the organization, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.
It was founded by Thai Buddhist Sulak Sivaraksa, whose motto is, “Loyalty demands dissent.” Other members include Thich Nhat Hanh, the peace-activist Buddhist teacher from Vietnam.
These Buddhists are continuing the tradition of resistance inspired by Vietnamese monks who famously self-immolated during the 1960s Vietnam war to protest against government brutality — a decidedly impolite thing to do.
CIVIL + DISOBEDIENCE
Many people from spiritual and secular humanist traditions have shown the same kind of non-violent resistance. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, for instance, added a challenging twist to the concept of “civil” when they combined it with “disobedience.”
Gandhi, King and others were prepared to peacefully break unjust laws and suffer the consequences. They angered many with their “uppityness,” risking their lives.
I suspect the people who have the most long-lasting impact are those who diligently push their agenda in a gracious manner. Like Sivaraksa, who was exiled from Thailand, they believe “Radical transformation of society requires personal and spiritual change . . . that all comes back to being less and less selfish.”
Some other inspired reformers who have tried, as the saying goes, “to be the change you want to see in the world” have included: Jesus, Buddha, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, John Cobb, Martin Buber, Elie Wiesel, Dorothy Day, John Lennon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu — and even former Canadian politicians such as Mike Harcourt, Preston Manning and Lloyd Axworthy.
They all have cared deeply, in their own ways, about making a difference, and they’ve pursued it in a respectful way. They can be blunt in their truth-telling, with some people finding their approach troubling or even offensive.
But being polite — in a wallflower, conformist, do-what-society-expects way — is not necessarily the best way to contribute to a great civilization, nor even a great local community.
From columnist Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun on Civil Society, one of a larger group of articles presented in a special guest edited edition of Vancouver Sun on civil society.
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