Civility and Righteousness

[Oexmelin]

I have been reading about civility in history these days (GEE I WONDER WHY).

Perhaps this essay will be of interest to some of you:

https://aeon.co/essays/whats-the-difference-between-being-righteous-and-being-rude?fbclid=IwAR3MKq9wFumlrrTJzKOntvnOljyOInB7he6Npzeam7pJbw79hInQ1rD8oqU

If I in fact refuse to shake your hand, I won't just be rude: I will take myself to be righteously rude. I disrupt the usual civil patterns because I morally judge they need disrupting, whether because integrity demands it or because some greater social good is won by it, or both. This pattern of reasoning is one we certainly need, lest we become unthinking conformists to superficial forms of niceness that would sacrifice higher values.

[The Brain]

What is the main point made in the essay?

[Admiral Yi]

Read about half

[Valmy]

I mean sure, if some big offense needs redressing. But I am not going to do it simply for having bad ideas.

[Berkut]

What is the main point made in the essay?

1. Being civil is good almost all of the time.
2. Sometimes being uncivil is justified, and is in fact good.
3. It's hard to really be sure you are being justifiably uncivil, or just giving in to your own desire to be an asshole.
4. A big part of this problem is that the feedback we get is almost always misaligned.

[Berkut]

Some really good stuff here Oex. Really like this:

"Those who aim for virtue try to steer away from vice. 'Pursue the good, avoid the bad,' we tell ourselves, but bad will sometimes look like good. The good can have what Buddhaghosa, the Indian Buddhist philosopher from the 5th century CE, calls 'near enemies'. Virtues, Buddhaghosa argues, do not simply have corresponding vices, they also have near enemies – seductive, plausible counterfeits that closely resemble the virtues but are nonetheless distortions of it. This is why, he explains, we can mistake indifference for equanimity, or attachment for love. These can look alike, and the risk is that we aim for one but hit the other. Worse still, because of their resemblance, we can call a bullseye when we miss. I can think I have achieved the unperturbed poise of equanimity when in fact I simply fail to care enough – I enjoy the dubious peace that indifference to the world and all its woes can bring. The near enemy is a far more subtle form of error than plain vice, for it is moral failure taken as success" (my emphasis)

[Berkut]

I doubt I can enumerate what genuinely righteous incivility would require, though I still believe it to exist. I doubt that it will match what I am often like when I think my rudeness righteous.[/i] I doubt it will be joyous or triumphal, that it will summon up attention and approval, or that it will show up dressed in self-valorising, violent language. I doubt it will find satisfaction in the pain and shame provoked in others. Most of all, I suspect it will involve regret.

Truly righteous incivility would issue from a deeply moral wish against its own necessity. It would come about as forced, a sorry step one feels reluctantly obliged to take. Morally good people want to respect others – they want a world in which we can, in all good conscience and effect, treat each other humanely and kindly. They do not want to signal disrespect even when they see they must. They are people who perceive a moral need to be rough and inconsiderate as distressing or at least a disappointment. Perhaps my disappointment in myself, in my too-eager impulse for the punch, can be used to turn me toward this better form of disappointment.

It is a really thoughtful essay, and worth the time to read through. This probably sums it up best for those unwilling to do so.

[Oexmelin]

You may also enjoy this: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9961.html

It got published too early.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm trying to think of examples of incivility changing behaviors or attitudes, on a noticeable scale.

[Oexmelin]

I'm trying to think of examples of incivility changing behaviors or attitudes, on a noticeable scale.

Part of the point is that this is the wrong scale to think with.

[grumbler]

I'm trying to think of examples of incivility changing behaviors or attitudes, on a noticeable scale.

Sitting at lunch counters where you won't be served because of the color of your skin, and denying people who could be served because of the color of their skin a chance to sit there.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Aren't US Southerners the masters of incivil civility? That "oh bless your heart" stuff?

[Eddie Teach]

Aren't US Southerners the masters of incivil civility? That "oh bless your heart" stuff?

No.

[DGuller]

I'm trying to think of examples of incivility changing behaviors or attitudes, on a noticeable scale.

Sometimes polite civility lends legitimacy to people that don't deserve it.  That legitimacy then allows those granted it to change things that they normally wouldn't be able to change.