海角大神

Clay Collins: 鈥奌ow much of a difference in the world could the spread of civility make? And what is true civility 鈥� as opposed to just transactional politeness?聽

For writer Alexander Hudson, it is, 鈥渁 disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our moral equals and worthy of respect because of our shared dignity as human beings.鈥澛�

That definition, which Ms. Hudson explores in her book, 鈥淭he Soul of Civility,鈥� was discussed in her recent interview by Stephen Humphries, the Monitor鈥檚 chief culture writer.听

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Collins: 鈥奣his is 鈥淲hy We Wrote This.鈥� I鈥檓 Clay Collins. Stephen joins me today. And most of this episode will be a deeper follow up conversation between Stephen and Ms. Hudson.听

Welcome back to the podcast, Stephen.

Stephen Humphries: Thanks so much for having me, Clay.

Collins: 鈥夾 return appearance for you! You joined us in mid-September to talk about a TV show about a sports team with a storybook storyline, but really to talk about a Welsh community鈥檚 come-together moment there in Wales.

Humphries: Yes, and I鈥檝e been following the Wrexham football team in Wales. In fact, it鈥檚 fall, so I can now wear the Wrexham scarf that I bought, finally.

Collins: Nice. You had it on with a T-shirt when we had [that] last conversation.

Humphries: Yeah!

Collins: Your story choices, Stephen, show some real breadth and depth. I wonder if you could describe for us the landscape of your culture-story hunting grounds.

Humphries: My beat encompasses everything from pop culture to the culture wars. And, in fact, the word culture is derived from the Latin word, and I鈥檓 sure I鈥檓 going to pronounce this wrong, 肠耻濒迟奴谤补, which really means cultivating something. So I like to think of it as covering a wide range of issues and ideas that are shaping individuals and communities, looking for the fertile ground where good things are happening. And sometimes where there are weeds that need to be plucked out. I鈥檝e written about, for instance, [everything from] how today鈥檚 parents might be coddling their kids to a story about estrangements within families to a debate over fairness in sports when transgender athletes are competing. I just like to be where conversations are happening.

Collins: 鈥奩eah. Your author Q&A with Alexandra Hudson got you thinking, it seems, in a way that overlaps with a number of big international exclusive-identity stories and empathy stories (or lack-of-empathy stories). There are all these camps of ideological foes, and you can鈥檛 fake respect for other viewpoints.听

Ms. Hudson talks about a 鈥渉umanistic manifesto,鈥� she talks about curiosity about others and about something she calls 鈥渞adical hospitality.鈥� As someone who watches the culture, do you see signs of people coming out of their corners and signing on?

Humphries: You know, I do. And in fact, in our interview, Lexi Hudson said she did too. For example, there鈥檚 the organization Braver Angels, which holds workshops and debates and other events in which people from the red team and blue team come together to find common ground and to understand each other. That鈥檚 a growing and burgeoning movement. And you know, that鈥檚 something we like to track in the Monitor, too.

Just recently, we ran a piece on the rise of antisemitism in the United States written by my colleague Harry Bruinius. His story ended with an anecdote about a Muslim student association and a Jewish student union at a Brooklyn high school. The two groups got together and they hashed out a statement focusing on their common lives. In the statement, the two groups agreed that they disagree with the spread of antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination of any kind. Instead, they wrote, we aim to emphasize the importance of humanity.

Collins: 鈥奣hanks so much, Stephen. I want to let listeners sit in now on your interview with the author of 鈥淭he Soul of Civility.鈥� So, thanks for your reporting, and again, for being a return guest.

Humphries: Thanks so much.听

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Humphries: Today I鈥檓 talking to Alexandra Hudson, author of 鈥淭he Soul of Civility.鈥� Thanks for joining us, Lexi.

Alexandra Hudson: Thanks for having me, Stephen.听

Humphries: I鈥檝e been talking about the book here in 海角大神 newsroom, and one of the things we鈥檝e been discussing of late is what we鈥檙e calling 鈥渢he empathy gap.鈥� People celebrating and cheering the deaths of those who are ideological foes. There was a progressive activist stabbed to death in New York City a couple of weeks ago, and some on the right were really gleeful because he was one of those sort of defund-the-police guys and, in a cruel irony, that murdered activist had also used his social media to cheer the death of Rush Limbaugh, you know, from cancer. We鈥檝e obviously seen that happening in the war between Israel and Hamas, And it got me wondering what accounts for that human connection being severed?聽

Hudson: One thing I talk about in the book is that this is not a new phenomenon. It鈥檚 really easy and tempting and seductive to dehumanize the other. Because it makes it easier to do or say what鈥檚 necessary in order to win. It鈥檚 hard to look someone in the eye while we鈥檙e dehumanizing them, harming them.

But if in our minds, we tell a story where they鈥檙e not fully human, or they鈥檙e so bad that we鈥檙e doing a positive good by harming them, that our goals are so worthy that anything we do along the way is justified, that makes it easier to do and say horrible things to other human beings. We have an insufficiently high view of the gift of being human.听

Humphries: In your book, 鈥淭he Soul of Civility,鈥� you write that one of the challenges of our current moment is that we鈥檝e lost a shared vision of the common good. How would you define that common good?聽

Hudson: In America, in the democratic context, the common good is a commitment to a set of ground rules, and a set of values. The values are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, fundamental human equality, equality before the law. And that applies to everyone, not just those that agree with us. The shared set of values, today, also include a commitment to our institutions, to due process, to free and fair elections. As institutional trust is on the decline, as trust in our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens are on the decline, the shared commitment to these goods, these values, it has waned, which is a problem to the survival of our democracy.

Humphries: Speaking of democracy, one of the things you observe in the book is that the vacuum of common good has often been filled by politics. Is that a bad thing?

Hudson: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. You know, [Karl von] Clausewitz said that politics is war by other means. Like we have political processes in place to help us navigate deep differences without resorting to violence.

But it becomes a bad thing when we overdo it. As these traditional touchstones of meaning in life, family, faith, friendship, community, have been on the [decline] in recent decades, more and more people have found their ultimate meaning in public life, in political issues. That is bad for our democracy because it鈥檚 no longer the case of two people having an intellectual disagreement about a matter of public policy. Now it鈥檚 easy for people to feel like their very identity is being assaulted because of that disagreement, because their identity has been misplaced in a public and political issue.听

Democracy depends on reasonable, deliberative discourse and conversation and debate. And if people are constantly being thrown into fight or flight mode, we鈥檙e not doing our public issues well, we鈥檙e not doing democracy well. We鈥檙e not doing life together very well. Politics has invaded virtually every aspect of our lives. Where we live, where we send our kids to school, where we grocery shop, how we grocery shop. Like everything has a political valence to it. We need to push politics back into its proper place. And we need to recover things in our lives that are more ennobling, more refreshing of our soul, of our spirit. Our friendship, especially friendship across [differences] and friendship around shared love, shared ideas. Intellectual curiosity. Being curious about the differences between us and other people as opposed to assigning value to them and saying, OK, 鈥渄ifference鈥� is necessarily worse.

Humphries: You鈥檝e got this concept in your book. You talk about how we should try to cultivate hospitality towards strangers, how do you go about doing that, can you expand on that idea?聽

Hudson: Yeah. So, when I moved from a very divided government in Washington, D. C., to Indianapolis, Indiana, where I now live, I didn鈥檛 have many friends. And someone came up to church, um, after church one day and invited us, made a curious invitation. She said, 鈥淗i, I鈥檓 Joanna Taft. Would you like to porch with us sometime.鈥� And I never heard the word 鈥減orching鈥� used as a verb before. But we were curious. So we went to her home that afternoon and I realized that she is staging this quiet revolution. From the vantage point of her front porch. She鈥檚 curating people across race, politics, geography, in order to inhabit a shared space and form friendships across 鈥渄ifference.鈥澛�

We hunger for [a sense of] relationship. We are deeply lonely. And we are divided. There鈥檚 no question about that. And what鈥檚 powerful about what Joanna and, as I discovered, others are doing, is that they鈥檙e saying, I can鈥檛 control what鈥檚 happening in Washington, D.C., or the world around me. But I can control what was in my sphere of influence and I鈥檓 going to make my community better and stronger and more connected and vibrant. There are people across the country who hold court in coffee shops. They use their front lawns. It鈥檚 not a physical place, it鈥檚 a lifestyle, the lifestyle of civil front-porching.听

Humphries: But Lexi, this all sounds like so much work. I mean, it鈥檚 so much easier just to sit back at home on the weekend and watch Netflix.听

Hudson: You鈥檙e right, there are many aspects of modern life that are different. It鈥檚 easier to go about our lives and not encounter people that we don鈥檛 want to encounter. It鈥檚 easy to go from our office, to our car, to our home and back again, and get food delivered, groceries delivered. You know, we don鈥檛 even have to leave our house to the movie theater because you said we have Netflix. You know, it鈥檚, it鈥檚 鈥� it takes work to go out of your way to encounter people across divides and to reach out.听

But there鈥檚 power in that and democracy depends on that, on reaching out to the stranger, focusing more on what we have in common as human beings and as Americans with a shared commitment to a set of values.

Humphries: There have been a lot of instances in which people have broken off friendships and even relationships within family over politics. But you talk about nurturing these relationships in a way that isn鈥檛 about glossy politeness, but actual civility. For instance, you write that true friendship requires civil truth-telling in love, not patronizing politeness. So how do you successfully nurture those deep relationships when there is that divide?聽

Hudson: You鈥檙e right, I鈥檝e read stories and I know people who have cut off or been cut off by family, by long time friends, over political differences. And that I think gets to this idea of misplaced meaning, where these public political issues are becoming ultimate sources of meaning for us. And that鈥檚 a tragedy. People and friendships, they鈥檙e too precious to be discarded over political differences.

My book argues that there鈥檚 an essential distinction between civility and politeness. And I learned this in government. I was at the United States Department of Education as a special assistant. And then I was in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services for six months. When I first got to government, I was surrounded by these two extremes. On one hand, there were people with sharp elbows, who were hostile, who were willing to do and say anything to get ahead. On the other hand, there were people who would smile at me one moment, and stab me in the back the next. I realized that these two modes are actually very similar. They see others as means to their selfish ends, as opposed to beings who are inherently worthy of respect in and of themselves.听

Civility is a disposition of the heart that sees others as beings who are worthy of respect. And that sometimes actually respecting, actually loving someone requires being impolite. It requires engaging in robust debate, telling hard truths.听

Humphries: You talk about this concept of 鈥渦nbundling,鈥� which means that if someone has a flaw or they make a misstep, sometimes we need to have a little bit of graciousness and understanding that human beings are complex, and that if you just cut someone off because of some transgression, then perhaps we鈥檙e missing the fuller picture of who they are.

Hudson: That鈥檚 right. We live in this era of a strange perfectionism. We take one aspect of who a person is and extrapolate that: 鈥淥K, that鈥檚 all I need to know about who you are and what you stand for.鈥� But that鈥檚 so reductive and it鈥檚 degrading to the dignity of the human person.

Unbundling people is seeing the part in light of the whole, seeing someone鈥檚 mistakes even in light of the dignity and an irreducible worth they have as human beings. I had experience doing that with two intellectually formative people in my life. One was Jean Vanier, one was Socrates. So Socrates is someone who taught me the beauty of the philosophic life, the beauty of ideas, just so inspiring to me and ennobling to me. And yet, he鈥檚 someone who has a lot of problematic views. He鈥檚 a proponent of eugenics, according to his student Plato. He wanted to abolish the family, wanted to abolish art and music. And as a creator and artist, as a mother, I oppose all of those. But I鈥檝e chosen to unbundle him. I can see the good in his ideas and thinking, and disagree and discard the bad, we ought not let the part define the whole.

Humphries: Well, I think my final question is: Are you at all optimistic that we can move toward a greater civility in today鈥檚 society? And are there any grounds you see for hopefulness?聽

Hudson: I am hopeful. Because I鈥檝e spoken to thousands of people who are working to be part of the solutions in their every day. And I hope that my book reaches thousands more and encourages other people who are similarly frustrated by the divided and rancorous status quo. To encourage them that their everyday, small, microinteractions are powerful. We can reclaim the soul of civility and heal our broken world.听

Humphries: That鈥檚 a great note to end on. Thanks so much for chatting, Lexi. Looking forward to chatting about your next project whenever that comes about.

Hudson: Thanks for having me, Stephen.

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Collins: 鈥奣hanks for listening. You can find links to this story and to Stephen鈥檚 other work in our episode show notes at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. Please rate and review this podcast if you listen on a platform that allows that. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Jingnan Peng. Mackenzie Farkus is also a producer on this show. Our sound engineers were Tim Malone and Alyssa Britton. Our theme music is by Noel Flatt. Produced by the 海角大神 Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.