Do We Suffer From An Excess of Civility?

[Jcrowley]

Arundhati Roy made an observation that non-violent resistance is becoming symbolic and that governments have simply learned to wait it out. "Unless civil disobedience becomes real, not symbolic, there is very little hope for change" and very little chance to do damage to empire. (Roy, The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile, 2004)

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-Why do massive demonstrations (Feb 15, 2003 for example) seem to end with people walking away, planning the next event, and feeling re-energized?

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I think that the answer -at least in part- lies in the shallow North American notion of decency, morality and civility. We have, in some ways, gone from being citizens to consumers, and lost a meaningful connection to deeper issues, particularly those that don't appear to impact us directly.

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Is this civility? In this harsh new world we are putting politeness and decorum above substance. Our attention is focused on how the homeless person smells, as opposed to looking at the issue of affordable housing. Sure, we can send books and care packages to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but we cannot call the Bush administration a pack of liars for manufacturing their case for the invasion. For days last month, the image of a U.S. soldier holding a blood-soaked Iraqi child made the media circuit, but no such image of an Iraqi parent with their blood-soaked child is appropriate material. It is clear that we can tolerate a bland John Kerry or a challenged George Bush, but not an emotional Howard Dean.

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North America has shifted so far to the right on the political spectrum, while our notions of what is civil and what is extreme have moved right along with it. This change has caused many of us to back away from provocative tactics and principled stances that might disrupt traffic flow. Progressive groups are left struggling for ways to reach the North American multitudes without overly offending sensibilities, feeling that the average citizen is looking for any reason to tune out. This is not about tossing a brick through a Starbucks window, nor is it about "re-branding" ourselves to make social movements more palatable. This is about slicing through  expectations from our shifting society and hungry news channels and acknowledging the difficulty in making activism and resistance more than symbolic.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7930

[Swamp Rat]

1. No, we suffer from an excess of 'morality' imposed on us by 'morans'

Concerning our current foreign policy, we are highly uncivilised.

[Jcrowley]

3. And yet that thing

we call "civilized" in every instance I can think of is stained with copious amounts of bloodshed and the blood invariably pours from the "uncivilized savages." The civilizing mission sure has little to speak for itself except exploitation and mayhem.

I believe it was Mark Twain who called civilization "An endless series of unnecessary necessaries" or something like this. All the while keeping proper table manners and outward appearances of cool, calm and collected.

Maybe our current foreign policy is highly civilized indeed just not in the way we've been conditioned to consider the term.

[Swamp Rat]

6. Amen

I love Mark Twain :)

[enlightenment]

7. I would suggest that it is because we have lost the

original meanings of the words. Politeness and civility, as you pointed out, became external behaviors unrelated to internal beliefs by the end of the 18th century, but at the beginning of that century they were very different ideas. A "polite" person was polite because he (women, of course, were rarely included in this discussion) had internalized the virtues that defined what it meant to be polite. The outward manifestations of this internalized belief were pretty simple -- and very real.

We rarely practice "politeness" anymore, because most people don't understand what it implies. Instead, we have "manners" that can be learned from a book -- but are virtually meaningless. We teach our children to smile at someone they despise, because that's the "polite" thing to do, but if you hate someone, how honest is it to pretend you don't?

I'm not suggesting that we should practice complete honesty; that corollary, "civility," needs to come into play as well or "civilization" will tank completely (imo). Still, if we were to stop "acting" and start "being" polite, it might change the dynamic.

[donsu]

2. it's cowardice

and it's a perverse faith in gods who will fix everything one of these days

it's the love of kool aide

[rock]

4. No. You can be civil while

placing the noose around bush's ... er, I mean someone's neck.

[Forrest Greene]

5. It Might Have A Little To Do With

...the demonstrated willingness of this government to use military firepower on groups of its own citizens, should they become too disruptive. Or is that what the poster above meant by "cowardice"?