Sitting in a nice restaurant in Minneapolis with two of my brothers recently, we enjoyed our brief time together, sharing thoughts on the books we’d read and observations of society. Then, a couple sat down at the table next to us.
One of them pulled out a phone, held it between them, and began to broadcast their conversation over the speaker, oblivious to how they were inflicting themselves on those around them. They were clueless about their intrusion. They had to be asked to turn the phone off speaker mode.
In a surgical waiting room, where parents, siblings, and spouses anxiously wait for word on the progress or outcome of a surgical procedure, a person puts their phone on speaker and begins talking loudly. It creates distress among a group of people already under a great deal of stress.
There are now signs in public places telling people not to use the speaker function on their phones because too many were obviously inconsiderate.
People wear shirts with the “F” word on them to county fairs and other crowded public places. The casual use of profanity while a family with young children is sitting at a table nearby is more common.
These are signs, signs of a deteriorating consciousness or care of how our behavior affects those around us.
“A landmark national study released (last month) reveals a striking paradox regarding civility in America: while individuals overwhelmingly see themselves as civil and respectful, only 26% believe society itself feels civil,” a Business Wire story on the research results by IW Group, says. It “reports that half of Americans believe civility has declined in just the past 12 months and that incivility significantly affects the nation’s mental health and social fabric.
“We’re witnessing a crisis of civility coupled with a deep distrust of others,” Bill Imada, Chairman and Chief Connectivity Officer of IW Group, a multicultural and multigenerational communications agency, said.
There are two primary causes at the core of the increased incivility today: social media and partisan politics. Social media is a destructive force that pervades society as people are allowed to be as crude and cruel as they want without fear of social consequences.
Political parties, through their campaign committees, political party machines, and candidate news releases, villainize their opponents, making claims that have no basis in reality, nurturing hate, and justifying incivility toward opponents.
Society’s uncivil behavior has accelerated in the past five years, with 88% of voters expressing “concern and frustration about the uncivil and rude behavior of many politicians,” according to Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service’s Civility Poll.
“Civility has worsened in the United States, and most people blame social media and the media generally,” the 2023 American Bar Association’s (ABA) Survey of Civic Literacy found. A definitive 85% of respondents said civility has declined over the past decade.
It isn’t just incivility, it’s harassment. “Algorithms push people to act less civilly to get attention and engagement,” Pew Research says. Incivility is “amplified” in our social media posts and is being ingrained in us by it.
There are consequences to lost civility, the IW Group study says. “Incivility has become a mental health issue, with 67% of Americans reporting negative mental health impacts from uncivil behavior in the past year,” it says.
Courtesy, consideration, and politeness are parts of civil behavior, but it is much more. “We believe the call to civility is nothing short of a call to our shared humanity where respect, kindness, compassion, and dialogue grow out of a commitment to an ever-deepening understanding of self and others,” the Institute for Civility says.
We have laws that govern behavior, ranging from owners letting dogs bark endlessly to violating noise ordinances and piling up junk in one’s yard. These laws protect the rights of neighbors, the value of their homes, and their peace of mind.
But there is a layer beneath those laws that comes into play first.
“Norms, though, are something else – and something more,” Richard Haas writes in his book First Principles. “Norms are the unwritten traditions, rules, customs, conventions, codes of conduct, and practices that reduce friction and brittleness in a society…. Laws provide the scaffolding of a society, but norms are what fill it in and make it livable….”
Norms create a civil society.
“Civility and being civil to others are essential to the workings of a democracy,” Haas writes. “Civility is closely aligned with manners. With respect. With courtesy. With politeness. To learn about how to disagree without being disagreeable.”
Civility is lost when norms are eroded.
In the past, families or society instilled the norms that underlie civility. However, many people today obviously have not had the norms that instill civility nurtured in their lives.
There is good evidence that our crumbling social and community connections are also at the root of increasing incivility.
“Civic life thins out not because we don’t care, but because the structures that once braided us together—4-H meetings, town parades planned in church basements, block-by-block phone trees—have frayed or moved online,” Stacy Davis of the Sumner County Economic Development Commission wrote in an online article.
“Our kids are growing up in a different world. We have abundance in some places—more technology, more information, more extracurricular options—and absence in others: fewer neighbors of the same age, fewer local employers, fewer shared spaces that bring everyone together at the same time.”
These were places where civility, working for the common good, and compromise were instilled.
If families, neighborhoods, or communities can’t instill the norms required for a civil society, educating others falls increasingly to individuals willing to stand up and point it out.
We need to stop being so hesitant in letting people know they are disturbing the peace of others. We must do it politely, even in the face of rudeness in return. At least we made the effort, and others may start to speak up.
