Who amongst us does not genuinely want to be treated with kindness and respect? It is the whole principle of the Golden Rule. Be nice to others and others will be nice in return; choose for others what they would choose for themselves; put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and so on. I allege that this kind of civility represents the actual quality of our behavior. Civility requires us to control our impulses for the sake of others, freeing ourselves from self-centeredness, putting ethics into practice in our day-to-day encounters. Civility is, in a sense, ethical glue.
Civility represents a long tradition of moral virtues. Virtues like kindness, empathy, humility, integrity, honesty, and respect for others are standards of being good humans in open engagement. Without civility a society can erupt into verbally abusive, accusatory, and offensive attacks on one another, which is the way things appear to have been headed in the U.S. for quite a few years.
During the 105th Congress in 1997, Peoria’s then member of the United State Congress, Ray LaHood (R-IL) and then Congressman David Skaggs (D-CO) hosted the first “Civility Retreat” for their fellow members, designed to restore a bit of fellowship to a Congress whose poisonous partisanship had reached what was considered then to be a critically destructive level. That year, two hundred Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 165 spouses and 100 of their children, attended a three-day gathering to seek a greater degree of civility, mutual respect and, when possible, bipartisanship, proving that debate and mutual respect could coincide. Building relationships, developing trust, mutual respect and fostering civility really mattered to Representatives LaHood and Skaggs, both of whom have long since left public life.
Realizing that putting effort into creating civility is an idea whose time has come around…again: it can only help us, as a nation, reclaim the honorable high ground. It goes without saying that all levels of government could benefit, but so could communities at large, the workplace, schools, and especially social media where so much discord seems to be born.
Last year, the Center for Prevention of Abuse’s (CFPA) outstanding Prevention Education team taught important lessons to 41,599 students in nearly 150 schools and other educational settings. CFPA offers plenty of essential age-appropriate, evidence-based, comprehensive courses on things like body safety, healthy relationships, anti-bullying, and peaceful conflict resolution. This important programming encourages civility and ways to stop abuse before it starts. We want everyone to feel safe and secure in their relationships, in all settings, in all circumstances. At CFPA we believe this learning should start at an early age so that young people grow up to understand healthy boundaries and how to keep themselves happy and out of harm’s way while working to help others achieve the same.
When one person is rude, others tend to follow, creating a society that does not care about the well-being of others. For the same reason, when one person is kind and thoughtful, others tend to follow, encouraging a caring culture. According to a recent study by the American Bar Association, 85% of U.S. residents believe civility is worse today than a decade ago. Can civility still be found? Of course it can. And if we really want it, we can rebuild what we have lost at a remarkable rate of speed. The first step to righting such wrongs starts in our own homes, and we must work to grow it where we can. We are in control of our own actions, and we can all play a part in creating a more civil and desirable society. This can only benefit our common humanity. It starts and ends with us.
