One of the many important lessons I learned from sports was to maintain civility and respect for others even in heated competition. This lesson was reinforced when I competed in debate and by gaming hobby. When I became an academic, these lessons served me well by allowing me to easily behave in a professional manner: respectfully disagreeing with my colleagues.
While civil behavior is generally respected, I have taken some criticism in the past for being too civil and respectful—even when people are rude or awful to me, I rarely abandon my commitment to the social rituals of respectful and civil behavior. I will, however, admit that one reason why I do this is that I believe that honorable behavior in the face of rudeness demonstrates good character and shows the failings of the one who descends into rudeness. As such, I do hold to a moral foundation for civility as well as a bit of pride—not descending to the lower level is a point of honor for me.
Since I am a professional philosophy, I approach political differences as I would any theoretical dispute about values. That is, I maintain my professionalism even in in nonprofessional contexts. This serves me quite well in maintaining friendships with people who have vary different political values. For example, I have various running friends who are very conservative politically. However, we get along quite well even though I hold to many liberal and even anarchist positions in politics.
Because of my views of civility, it might be expected that I would roundly condemn the apparent incivility shown to members of the Trump administration, such as Sanders. After all, as you might infer from the above, I endeavor to avoid descending into incivility. Despite this, a case can be made that morally justifies such incivility.
I do believe that by default each person should be treated with basic civility—that is the starting point. People can, by their actions, change the level of respect they deserve. For example, people who treat others with respect are thus entitled to that respect in return. As another example, someone who is abusive and disrespectful reduces the respect they are due. Morality is also a key factor here—goodness is to be respected and evil is to be shunned.
In the case of political disputes, I do not assume that a person who disagrees with me must be evil and thus has no claim to respect or civility. If the person shares enough of the essential core values with me, I can accept that while we disagree they are a good person (or at least not evil) who is worthy of respect and civility. For example, while I disagree with my conservative friends on various issues, we still share essential core values about honesty, kindness, fairness, justice, democracy, and dogs. To use a specific illustration, my conservative friends and I both believe that people in need should not be abandoned to their fate. I tend to favor social programs that address this matter, while they tend to prefer a somewhat different approach. However, we agree with the basic ethics of the parable of the good Samaritan. So, my general point here is that civility is owed to those who have morally good core values even when there are heated disputes over political matters. Roughly put, the decent are entitled to decency.
In the case of people who are deficient in the core values and act in accord with their moral defects, they earn the disrespect of others. For example, someone who lies repeatedly and acts in other awful ways forfeits the claim to civility to the degree they are awful. As such, being uncivil to Sarah Sanders would be morally acceptable to the degree that she lies—which is regularly and extensively.
Another key part of civility is reciprocity. People merit civil treatment by being civil; they merit uncivil treatment by being uncivil. As such, people who are insulting, rude, and disrespectful have no right to expect others to treat them with civility and respect. Trump, for example, exemplifies uncivil behavior and hence has no right to expect civility from others. While he no doubt expects the respect due the office, my view is that the idea of respecting the office despite the behavior of the person in that office is absurd—on par with asking people to respect an ass in a nice car because the nice car is nice. A person is, rather, obligated to act in accord with the respect the office is supposed to command, otherwise it is they who are disrespecting the office and not those who disrespect the disrespectful occupant.
Thus, civility is only owed to those who are good (or at least not evil) or those who act with civility. Those who claim that the evil or uncivil should be treated with civility are in error, though people are free to be more civil than they are morally required to be.
I believe this focus on the do’s and don’t of civility is misplaced, at least for philosophers. Instead of a relentless focus on who owes who what kind of respect in what kind of circumstance etc etc, philosophers should be asking why we require respect from each other.
To be clear, I am not referring to any issue covered by the law. If someone breaks the law at our expense, such an event surely merits a response. I’m not talking about physical violence, or anything like that.
What I am referring to are the words we use in conversation. As example, why is it SO VERY IMPORTANT!!! that you not call me an idiot, a fool, a jerk, a low down nobody and so on? Why is that so important to us? This is what philosophers should be focused on investigating, and here’s why.
We all wish to experience a measure of inner tranquility, a worthy goal indeed. The question I am asking is, what is the most rational way to approach this goal?
On one hand, we can try to control everyone around us, we can try to manipulate their words to our liking through various techniques like guilt, shame, etc. This is an essentially irrational strategy because there are a seemingly infinite number of people who are prepared to say inconvenient words to us. We could spend every day of our entire lives trying to manage the endless army of annoying people, and never come close to taking control of the situation. But yet, this is what we try to do, and this is typically what philosophers try to teach us to do.
The rational approach would be to instead shift the focus from those saying the disrespectful words to we who are hearing them. Now we have only one brain to understand and manage, which quite conveniently happens to be the one brain we have the most access to.
I’ve typed this sermon on about a hundred philosophy blogs and none of the “experts” ever get it, because they are far too concerned with following the group consensus herd and playing the role of imaginary priest.
There, I’ve said some disrespectful words. So what will you do now? Will you put your focus on me, something you have no hope of controlling? Or will you put your focus on how you hear these disrespectful words, and why you are experiencing them in whatever way you are?
Will you be a moralist, a victim?
Or will you be rational?
Why do philosophers consider this subject of our personal feelings to be so important, whereas they almost never find the time to reflect upon things like the thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed at our heads? Why is what I’m feeling or not feeling in regards to what some stranger said or didn’t say so much more important than the real world fact that civilization could vanish at any moment? I truly do NOT understand why this choice of focus is considered rational, or why I should consider those who make such a choice to be experts.
You raise some very good points. I would suggest that the hypersensitivity in many (not all, but many) of these instances reveals the underlying drive/psychology of such a philosopher, or lawyer, or politico, or whomever, being focused on the self. The argument isn’t being made for the sake of seeking truth or solving a problem. The argument is being made for the purpose of drawing attention to, and thus to glorify, the self. Thus also the obstinance of such people.
One thing I see more and more of lately in discussions/arguments is the use of ad hominem. This fallacy is becoming one of the most misused of objections. The use of the specific term ad hominem in the context of a discussion or argument is to address a logical fallacy. It is not to portray oneself as a victim of a personal attack, thus changing the subject from the argument to the self, to discredit entirely the point being made, and thus claiming some sort of advantage or victory. The way it is so often used, it has become a form of ad hominem itself. An ad hominem should not be synonymous with “insult” or used as a fancy way of objecting to a characterization, be it valid or invalid. It specifically applies to logical argument.
Hi WTP, you put it well when you said…
“.. isn’t being made for the sake of seeking truth or solving a problem. The argument is being made for the purpose of drawing attention to, and thus to glorify, the self.”
This is of course true, and a subject I am, well, um, let’s just say, quite familiar with from personal experience.
I would agree that an investigation in to our relationship with self would be entirely appropriate for philosophers. So if an article about respect was the opening chapter of such an investigation, I would not whine, but celebrate. And in the case of this page that may turn out to be true, so we can keep an open mind about that.
Such investigations do often come with a price tag however. Shifting the focus away from what the other person should do to what we ourselves can do can be more than a little unpopular.
I think the 2012 election was pivotal. Romney was the target of vicious, underhanded attacks, and he was too much of a gentleman to fight back in the same way.
GOP voters saw how Romney was treated, and went for Trump because he fights back.
Dems created Trump because of the unethical way they treated Romney.
That seems implausible; but if you are right then Romney should win, in part, because of how mean Trump has been to him.
It is not at all implausible. As I remember, you were one of the ones piling on Romney, making a big deal over some stuff Romney did in high school.
Why is it implausible for GOP voters to pick a fighter the next time, having seen how low the Dems go?
Certainly not impossible; can you link to any analysis that lays out the evidence for this suspected causal factor?
What kind of evidence would you accept?
Clearly something in the GOP psyche changed between 2012 and 2016.
Survey data would be a good start.
Trump’s superpower is his ability to bring out the absolute worst in his opponents so that he really doesn’t look so bad in comparison.
Mike, Obama claimed publicly that he did not know about Hillary’s private server, but it turns out he emailed her on that server using a fake name. Care to comment?
My comment is that the email server issue died when Hillary lost and the investigation ended.
But, if you want to push the matter, Trump is essentially 1,000,000 email server scandals in a sack.
Touche! Or, rather, tu quoque!
Also, you need to put “investigation” in quotes.
So the logic here is that if you are running for President any crimes you committed become irrelevant once you lose. Even if those crimes involved mishandling classified information, quite possibly damaging national security and/or putting agent and informers’ lives at risk. And the reasoning being, because Mike thinks so. Because he teaches logic and ethics and gots hisself a PhD.
You have just written nine paragraphs patting yourself on the back for being civil, and offering a justification for the self-righteous to sit in judgement of others. I think this self-righteousness is at the core of our domestic division today.
Sounds right.
Why do we require respect from each other?
To narrow the question, we might focus on online conversations with strangers over the Internet. I would agree that offline real world face to face is a more complicated question.
Why is it important to us that some anonymous person somewhere in the world who we don’t know and most likely will never meet calls us a name, questions our character or ability etc?
I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do, who is guilty or not, and so on. Don’t care about that.
I’m asking why do we have the experiences that we have?
We can agree that a certain level of harmony is necessary to have a productive conversation. But that doesn’t automatically equal the solution being a focus on somebody who said something defined as rude. The focus could also be on somebody who read something and decided to take offense. Note the word “decided”.
To try to begin an answer…
We all have a story about ourselves. In my case, I am the most brilliant blog comment writer of all time. But you say that’s not true, that I’m really just a bored old blowhard with too much time on my hands and a rich fantasy life. My story is interrupted, disputed, in chaos. I get mad and challenge your story in turn. The anger cycle begins, and spins out of control.
What if I didn’t have a story?
Then no one could touch me, eh?
This post has nothing to do with morality. I’m asking instead, what’s the smart thing for me to do? What’s the rational action?
Your point is somewhat similar to how I feel about on-line discussions. Or at least the value of them. Once we are but pixels on a screen, all that really matters is the idea/ideas being communicated. Now should someone reveal something personal about themselves to further their understanding of an idea or such, that personal detail or collection of details become relevant, but only in the context of thoughts or ideas presented. They don’t apply to the individual as a whole even as they do inform as to the place the individual is coming from. There are plenty of people, relatives, coworkers, former classmates, etc. with whom I would never discuss these sort of issues, especially not to this level of detail, for various reasons, to keep the peace and get on with things. But in the abstract of the internet and ideas and such, well this is the last place to do so.
Bleeding two things together here, but I feel much of the sensitivity factor we see today both online and off is due to a very bad turn society took 40-50 years ago that made discussion of politics, religion, etc. forbidden in polite company. This led to an inbreeding of ideas such as we have today where people only whisper to close confidants what they truly believe. As with inbreeding of genes an inbreeding of ideas amplifies the abnormal and recesses the normal. At the same time, the Narrative has taken over what is acceptable to say publicly on these matters and one must not contradict Teh Narrative, lest ye be cast out and a Scarlett R stamped upon thine forehead. The Rule of Teh Narrative has reached a point where so much is beyond the pale such that even asking for a straw in certain restaurants can earn you the evil eye.
Powerful stuff. People may finally be waking up.
https://youtu.be/4Pjs7uoOkag
Trump’s superpower is his ability to bring out the absolute worst in his opponents so that he really doesn’t look so bad in comparison.
I’ve sat out this series. Anything I add would be in quite a different direction.
But I just want to pay tribute to this as the best and truest comment about Trump I’ve seen since “seriously, but not literally”.
P.S. I swear that I replied directly to TJB’s comment just now, but it ended up as a separate comment rather than threaded.