Let's Find Common Ground - The Soul of Civility

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

The state of public discourse is often dire and includes insults and threats. We assume the worst of the other side and are not afraid to call them out publicly, especially online. Our guest on today���s show says this behavior isn’t just rude. It’s uncivil. And that civility - not politeness - makes a real difference in how we think about ourselves and treat each other. Our guest, Alexandra Hudson, is the author of the new book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. She grew up in a family where manners mattered. When she went to work for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in the Trump administration, she thought good manners would help her navigate a hostile work environment.   But she failed to thrive, despite putting politeness and friendliness into overdrive. She left politics deflated. Still, her experience got her thinking about true civility and how it can help us find common ground.  As the holiday season begins, we explore the difference between civility and politeness, how loneliness and isolation contribute to an uncivil society, and the important part hospitality plays in being genuinely civil.

All too often, the state of our public discourse is dire, and that includes public insults and threats. We often assume the worst of each other, and call people out publicly, especially online. Our guest on today's show says this behaviour isn't just rude, it's uncivil, and that civility, not politeness, makes a real difference in how we think about ourselves and treat each other. That human dignity, that high view of humanity in the human person, that is my moral foundation for civility, this mode, that actually respects others, enough to tell hard truths, to break rules, to be impolite. light.

This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Meltaite. I'm Richard Davies, Alexandra or Lexi Hudson. Grew up in a family where manners mattered. And when she went to work for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration, she thought that good manners would help her navigate a sometimes hostile work environment. But it didn't work out that way. Her experience got her thinking about what true civility is

and how it can help us find common ground. She's the author of the book, The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. Rich had kicked off our interview. Most of us don't think much about the difference between politeness and civility. But you certainly have thought a lot about that. You say civility goes much deeper than mere politeness. Discuss the difference and why it's not just a matter of simple

manners. So I came by this, my interest in this topic honestly, and my mother is sitting at the manners and etiquette expert. So I was raised this, my interest in this topic, honestly, and my mother is something of a manor as an etiquette expert. So I was raised in this home very attentive to social norms and social expectations. Yet I always questioned norms. I am constitutionally allergic to authority. I hate rules. I hate being told what to do.

But my mother promised me that following these rules of etiquette and politeness would serve me well in work and life and school. And she was right until I got to federal government and when I was in government I saw these two extremes. I saw on one hand people who had sharp elbows, people who were willing to step on anyone to get ahead and obtain their objectives. On the other hand I saw people who were polished and poised and polite and I was like okay these are my people I can work with these people. But these are the people I quickly learned who would smile at me one moment, stab me in the back

the next. And that perplexed me. My mother had said that manners were an outward expression of our inward character. And here were people I was stranded by who are well-mannered enough, yet ruthless and cruel. And that experience clarified for me, this essential distinction between civility and polinous, that civility is different. So polinous is manners, it's etiquette. It is external, it's behavior, it's superficial. Civility by contrast is internal. It's a way of seeing others as our moral equals,

who are worthy of respect, just my virtue, of our shared moral status as members of the human community. And that crucially, actually respecting someone means being impolite, means telling a hard truth, engaging and robust debate. So we need less focus on politeness, and we need true civility, the actual disposition of respecting others and not just the gestures that pretend to respect people, that their worst can be tools of manipulation. And yeah, for most people, I would say politeness is actually easier. It's easier for people to be polite than it is for them to be civil or cultivate civility. Why is that? Why is it so hard to be civil or cultivate civility. Why is that? Why is it so hard to be civil? People yearn for these neat, you know, simple rules and maxims by which to just live their life.

And the reality is that humanity and human relationships, human social relationships are so complex, far too complex to just be governed by static set-in-stone rules. And that the reality is that actually flourishing, actually having friendship requires breaking these rules from time to time. One example, the story I love to tell is Queen Victoria, when she had the Queen of Persia to her home for a state dinner. She sat down and everyone was about to eat, and the queen of Persia did the unsinkable. She took the bowl in front of her and tipped it to her lips, and the whole room stood and stared. They couldn't believe she had done this because she drank like soup, the finger bowl, the bowl in front of her that was meant for washing hands.

What a queen Victoria do in this instance? She took the bowl and tipped it to her lips as well. You know, this is Victorian England that very much cared about, you know, regimented etiquette and rituals and social norms. This is the Victorian England that John Stuart Mill famously railed against. He hated these norms in propriety.

He thought they were so constraining him and deforming of the human personality, the human social spirit. And why did Victoria break this rule of propriety to make her guest feel at ease, to foster social trust, to foster human relationships, to ensure that she felt comfortable and they could have a nice evening together.

And so people like rules because they're easy. But civility, the decision of actually respecting others is hard, but that's what's really necessary to thrive in flourish. So that example of Queen Victoria is not about her just being polite, but it's about civility. It's about something deeper than just norms and conventions. Looking at politics today, civility is not exactly a word that easily comes to mind. There's been so much anger, so much bitterness in our political discourse. You worked in politics for a while while and I know you mentioned this.

What was your experience? Why did you end up leaving government feeling so disillusioned? I was tired of being manipulated and kind of discarded and undermined. And I tacked really hard in the direction that seemed most suited to success and the one which I was most comfortable with, the polite track. And for me, politeness became a mode of survival. I brought in cupcakes for people's birthdays. I brought in Christmas cards at Easter cards. I invited my colleagues to my home out for lunch to get to know them outside of the office context. These are hospitable, gracious gestures that I

was raised with that I still practiced. But even though they, gracious gestures that I was raised with, that I still practice. But even though they were good gestures, they had a subliminal motive. Like, I hope that they would help me rise above the office politics and make me too well-liked, too beloved, to be fired or to be undermined. It was a tool of survival. And it felt really fake. It felt really constricting that I was doing these things for the wrong reasons that felt really exhausting to my soul. It's because my motivation wasn't the right place.

It wasn't just to love people and know people. It was also to survive and hope that they would help me transcend the bullying and the hostility. And so I was disillusioned by these extremes. I left government and I reflected on this experience. And what I realized was that the extreme politeness and the extreme hostility, they seem like polar opposites, but they're actually very similar.

They're actually two sides of the same coin because both modes see other human beings as means to their selfish ends. They see other human beings as either pawns to be destroyed, that's what hostility does, or pawns to be manipulated. That's what extreme politeness does. And I realized we needed, I hungered for a mode

that was actually respectful, that could transcend and cut through these church streams that were instrumentalizing of the human spirit. And that's how I settled on civility. I thought, you know, what is the bare minimum of respect that we are owed and owed to others by virtue of our shared personhood? And what does it look like in practice, even when we deeply disagree? That is my moral foundation for civility, this mode that actually respects others, enough to tell hard truths, to break rules, to be in polite, to suspend temporarily with rules

of politeness, for the sake of rules of politeness for the sake of the greater good for the project of human flourishing with others. In your argument for civility, you're not asking for more agreement in our conversations, are you? I'm not asking for agreement. You know politeness is what demands agreement or wants to pretend that disagreement doesn't exist. I love etymology and the etymology of politeness and civility supports this distinction. I make about these two topics. So the Latin root of politeness is a word polier, which means to smooth or to polish. And that's what politeness does.

It polishes over at papers over a difference. It tries to diminish that difference even exists. As opposed to giving us the tools to grapple with different's head on, the Latin root of civility is kivitas, which is the root for all words related to city, citizenship, and the citizen, and that's what civility is, it's the tools, and the habits be fitting a member of the city, a citizen in the city. Changing the subject a bit, identity is a really common buzzword in current debates. Do you think we focus too much now on political identity? It's such a great point, it's such a great question. And I argue that as these traditional touchstones

of meaning, family, civil society, community, church, these have been on the decline in recent decades that more and more people have misplaced their meaning from those traditional touchstones of meaning to public and political life. You know, everything has a political dimension now. Where we grow, free shot, what newspaper we read, what neighborhood we live in,

where we send our kids to schools. Not just, you know, the obvious things like who we vote for, but it's like how we live our lives. Everything has a political dimension. We've allowed politics to seep into all aspects of who we are. We can no longer have a rational conversation across difference anymore. It's not just you think one thing about public public policy issue and I think something else. It's now, oh my gosh, I

perceive that that difference to be an existential threat to who I am. It's an assault on my very being, my very identity. And that is bad for our democracy because our free and flourishing way of life depends on deliberative discourse, on rational deliberative discourse, and if we're in fight or flight, if we feel like, you know, our identity is being assaulted by everyone who disagrees with us, at every moment of every day, that's bad for public discourse, bad for our democracy, and so it's kind of ironic that, you know, on one hand, democracy and politics, they are a good thing, But the problem is when political discourse breaks down, violence is back on the table. So it's really bad for democracy, bad for our public life, bad for our social life,

when our discourse, we're not able to have conversations, healthy rational conversations across different, the stakes are really high. So one thing I talk about in order to resolve this issue is to make, relegate politics to its proper place. Politics and healthy proportions is a good thing, but we can't let public issues and political issues and political ideas become our be all end all and seep into all aspects of our lives. We have to relegate it to its proper place and we have to reclaim things in our lives that give us joy, that bring meaning,

that fill our souls, like friendship, like intellectual inquiry and dialogue, like beauty. I talk about the sublime. I talk about having all walks, just encountering beautiful things in nature, things that elevate our minds, that displace the self. And then things that allow us to come back to life with others refreshed.

If we're only talking about the hard things all day every day, having the controversial conversations, we're not going to do them justice. Our podcast is Let's Find Common Ground. And one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to find common ground is perhaps that we're much more likely than previous generations to be lonely, to live independent lives. And you referred to this when you said that, for instance, membership in voluntary organizations, such as churches or clubs, it is much lower than it once was. Do you

think that there's a link here between living independent or even lonely lives and the lack of political civility in our dialogue? Absolutely there is. I mean one of the greatest thinkers, the 20th century, the Jewish German philosopher, Hana Arendt, she observed this too. In her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, she said that personal loneliness and personal dislocation and alienation, that is fertile ground for a tyrant and for a strong man to arise and take advantage of people's loneliness. Give them and out like when people are lonely, they're angry, they're hurt.

There's this cliche that hurt people, hurt people. That's another thing that we have a really hard time grappling with and a sufficiently understanding. Today, there's a lot of viciousness, a lot of savagery in our public world and public life right now. And we're really, we should be critical of that, but what we insufficiently realize and one thing that my grandmother, for example,

was excellent at, was seeing the origins, like the thing beneath the thing. Where is that savagery that viciousness coming from? And for me, for example, I find it so easy when I encounter a rude, discontentous, mean person to tell a story like, okay, they're a mean person. You know, just ended at that. And I think that's really common for people to do.

My grandma, she told instead a story of exoneration. Like, that's not a mean person. That's a hurt person who's having a bad day. And how can I not respond in kind, but respond with graciousness, and respond with kindness in a way that might soften them and elevate their day, because they're already clearly very much suffering and very much alone. And so back to a rent, she realized that hurt people, hurt people, right?

It's a cliche, but it's also true. And so she saw the power of social trust, a friendship, a human social bonds, in supporting a free society, a free and a flourishing society, and as an essential buttress against strong men, against totalitarianism. I'm Richard. And we'd like to politely... And civilly! ...ask you to type the numbers 535555 into your phone, followed by the letters, C-G-C. Texting is an easy way to donate something to support our show. That's 535555 and then CGC for

Common Ground Committee. Conflict and division always grab the headlines. The painstaking work of building bridges and finding common ground? Not so much, but we think it's vital. That's why we bring you this podcast every two weeks. Help us to continue to get the word out about the good work being done by common grounders all over the country. Again, that number is 53555, followed by the letters CGC. And thank you. Now back to our conversation with Lexi Hudson. We are coming up to Thanksgiving and a lot of us will be hosting friends and family and maybe even a neighbor that we don't know very well

because we're being hospitable and it's holiday time, talk a little bit about the part that hospitality plays in civility. Unfortunately, today when people hear the word hospitality, they think of hotels and fancy trips to Italy and plain rides. There's a whole industry called the hospitality industry. When people get a degree in hospitality, that's what they're being trained to do, to be a service worker in this big hospitality industry. But there is this hidden history of hospitality, of showing kindness to the stranger, of welcoming the outsider, to become an insider,

that we actually find this ethic of welcoming the stranger across history and across culture. We see it in Hebrew Bible, Hebrew, I'm showing kindness to the strangers who are angels and disguise. And so I think it's important to elevate and reclaim this hidden history and forgotten history of hospitality because it is an incredibly powerful tool to heal our very broken world. People rarely hate people that they share a meal with.

They share a conversation with, that there's like beautiful and forgotten about that power. We're so sick as a society right now. We long for a relationship and for community. But there is this power, this transformative power of hospitality to create healing. For most of us, Thanksgiving involves not strangers, but welcoming family members and friends to our tables.

And yet many families are broken apart, are wounded or damaged in some way. Maybe they are also politically at odds. What are some ways that people can heal one another in this time of year? Well, one thing I think is so important is to remember what the purpose of that dinner table is. It's to come around, around shared bonds, I'm shared history history to give gratitude for all

the blessings in our lives. So I've heard these heart wrenching stories of family relationships breaking down, family members not talking to one another anymore decades long lifelong friendships ending over political difference. And that's a prime example. That's a symptom of the way in which we've misplaced our meeting in politics and allowed a very important political public questions to become the most important things when they're not.

The most important things in life are sacred. The bonds of friendship, the bonds of family, those are beautiful, those are treasures to be to be guarded and to be preserved. The Thanksgiving dinner table is not a university classroom. The university classroom, for example, or the floor of Congress, the purpose there is, at its best, the collective pursuit of truth, where you do, where you should debate.

You should be able to freely voice differences of opinion and converse across dialogue and across difference. But a Thanksgiving dinner table is not that. You don't have to talk about the COVID vaccine and the presidential election and all these hot button topics that are bound to upset people. They're bound to get people's blood boiling.

Just make it a controversy free zone. That's okay. It's okay to say like, I value this relationship so much that I'm not gonna introduce really controversial hot button issues. And I think we should absolutely talk about politics less if we want to flourish, and if we want these social relationships to be vibrant and sustained.

We do, of course, end up talking about politics a lot on this show. I was just wondering if there's anything else you'd like to say about how civility can help us find common ground. Absolutely. My philosophy of civility is about personhood and that as we appreciate our own humanity, that we appreciate the humanity and dignity and personhood of others as well,

even those, especially those that we disagree with. When the stakes are high or feel really high, in times of war, in times of political elections, where it feels like an existential threat. It's very tempting and very easy to dehumanize the other, degrade the dignity and humanity of the other, because then it's easier for us to justify doing and saying whatever is necessary in order to win. And so how can civility help us find commonality across difference?

What we need right now is a radical reorientation of our values towards preserving and elevating personhood and human personality. This is what Dr. King called for throughout his life's work, but also in his letter from a Birmingham jail that we need to be willing to dispense with norms, practices, rituals that are degrading of the human personality and do whatever we can to uplift a firm, elevate human personality and human dignity. I think that common humanity, disposition, that approach, that's the disposition of civility that we so desperately need right now. I wanted to touch on the digital world, which is something that we that comes up from

time to time on this show. Some of us are going to be, you know, possibly contributing to the less savoury side of online life, even if we don't mean to. How do we take a step back from this digital brink? You know, I think, I think history is both a caution and a comfort to us. It's a caution because history has been really bad before. This question of how might we flourish across deep difference? This is the most important question of our day, but it is also a timeless question. Yes, you point out that George Orwell was worried about the radio back in the 1913. That's exactly right. The Hebrew Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes, says there is nothing new

under the sun. And I think that's especially true as we look at the history of technology, that people have been worried about the way that normal technologies are disruptive and foster trust and mistrust in one another and institutions for a really long time exactly or while was worried about the radio and how it was going to corrupt society and then degrade social trust. People were absolutely terrified of an invention, a technological invention that is now today considered the greatest invention in human history. The Gutenberg printing press.

But that invention of the printing press similarly, so mistrust in society, in institutions, and in political authorities, and religious authorities. And it is really interesting, I think, to see how history retells itself. The story of history tells itself differently with time. So yes, we're in this age of disruption right now, where we are rightly worried about how these technologies

are affecting our social bonds. And we should be skeptical and critical. We should never be on thinking and embracing it. And on questioning how we embrace new technologies. But also at the same time, I think it's helpful. It's healthy to be a student of history and realize that we've been here before. But however, it can feel really overwhelming

to look out around us and say, you know, what can be done? And what I've instead tried to do instead of focusing on what other people can change is focusing on what I can control. And I've chosen to wield how I engage on these platforms with a certain ethic, the ethic of civility I've chosen to what I call cultivate my digital garden, making what I can control, my little corner of the internet, a little bit better, a little bit more beautiful,

a little bit more filled with grace than maybe that the median place in the internet is. So I've created my newsletter called Civic Renaissance, and it's an intellectual community of people dedicated to beauty, goodness, and truth. And I've grown it to about 50,000 people. And that's small, but it's growing. And because people are hungry for this, they want that.

And that's the beautiful thing about this digitally connected world that you can find, people like mine, that care about these issues. Like I'm sure that you've found the same with the community that you've created around common ground and dialogue across different, that it might feel small, but our actions have great power. They can create a ripple effect for good. We do have far more power to be a part of the solution than we realize. Lexi Hudson, thanks very much. Thank you both for having me.

Lexi Hudson on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard, I really liked her focus on the unsung benefits of hospitality because I don't think a lot of us think about this. And I know a church where every Thanksgiving they put on a free dinner for anyone in the community who's alone or can't afford to have a Thanksgiving meal. And I think the best thing about this is the feeling of fellowship you get when all these people, mostly strangers, sit down together to have this incredible meal that's been cooked and served by all these different people from the town.

It's really lovely and it feels like a true coming together. It sounds great and there are many similar efforts all across the country. I've been working with a group called Interfaith Volunteers in New Haven, Connecticut, and a local soup kitchen, days of preparation for a project called Thanksgiving for all. The goal was to deliver over a thousand fresh meals on Thanksgiving morning to older residents in houses and homes where they live. Many people live alone and they rely on their neighbors for help. And I think Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude

and a good holiday to resolve, to be helpful and also the theme of our podcast today, civil. And kind of strangers. That's our show for this week. I'm Ashley Meltaite. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.