Should We Be Civil?

When being nice is productive and when it isn't.

Twitter’s mascot. Source: Unsplash. Author: Mariola Grobelska.

Whenever the news picks up on a sensitive subject of mass interest, some part of our attention turns to discussions of civility — or a lack thereof. Are we being nice? To whom are we being nice? Are we being nice enough? Is it too soon to bring up, well, the awkward, perhaps embarrassing details? Does surfacing controversial facts or perspectives undermine the goals of collective discussion? Does aggressive chatter shut people out of conversations?

These conversations happen day to day, too, online and offline. Our preoccupation with talking about how we talk to one another forms a topsoil upon the discourse of the day. It’s very meta. Talking about talking.

On the one hand, our talking endlessly about civility distracts from substantive considerations — it’s not that you said it, but how you said it, or when you said it. On the other hand, incivility can drive well-meaning participants from the public sphere, turn discussions and debates and deliberations inward, or shut down communication all together while driving partisans to their corners, entrenching their positions and prejudices in the process.

When’s the right time?

Last week, former prime minister Brian Mulroney died. Tributes followed. A tweeted headline noted that Mulroney was “controversial” and drew ire. It was soon deleted. I found the use of the word “controversial” less offensive than unnecessary. It was trite. Of course Mulroney was controversial. Every prime minister is.

Yet as critics of the Mulroney years pointed out concerns well within the public interest — his handling of the Oka crisis, his botched constitutional reform attempts, selling off crown corporations, running up the national debt, and so forth — there were cries that such behaviour is uncivil, that it was ‘not the time’ to talk about these things.

The thing about timing is that it tends to be a fleeting resource. Whenever there is a tragedy or historical moment of interest — the death of a public figure, a school shooting, a natural disaster — there is always a cadre of observers who’ll claim in good faith or bad that it’s just not the time to talk about the bits that make us uncomfortable, no matter how relevant they might be. Of course, once the heat of the moment cools, once people turn their attention to the next thing, we lose the immediate salience that tends to focus otherwise disparate discussions and open a channel for critical, mass communication on a topic.

The time to discuss something is when it’s front of mind, since tomorrow what’s front of mind will almost surely change. And that’s not to say that such a phenomenon implies the subject must not have been very important in the first place. Given attention spans, media incentives and pressures, and the structure of online communications technologies, even the most important subjects can be fleeting if there isn’t some force that renews our interest in and attention to them day after day.

Why is it mean to be mean?

Beyond timing are the effects of what we say when we seize the moment to discuss some matter or another. Harsh, aggressive words may reflect anger, frustration, even hopelessness. Voicing those feelings in uncivil ways can be counterproductive, alienating would-be allies and turning off the median participant who, quite frankly, feels they have better things to do than be berated and belittled. That’s not a normative judgment about whether it’s right or fair to do so. It’s a point about what happens when we hurl insults.

The uncivil approach also risks a backlash or return in kind. If someone calls me an asshole (fair comment or not), my immediate inclination is to respond likewise. I might know better, but sometimes my mouth or keyboard proves to be faster, propelled by my lizard brain, than the years of training that have taught me that such responses typically produce a net loss. We’re people. We get angry when someone comes at us. We react.

What civility hides and what it makes possible

Nonetheless, civility politics can mask or enable repression and injustice, forming a thin veneer of ‘decency’ upon layers of gross indecency. A politician might be beloved because of their charisma, their charm, their kind words to those within their class and even those outside it, but what to make of the effects of their policies? If a politician’s actions produce suffering or entrench injustice, what’s civil about that? One might be forgiven for thinking that such acts are indeed uncivil, even if they’re delivered with a smile or a wry remark as a good natured jab at one’s political opponents.

Mockery, which is typically uncivil, can be an effective tool that rebalances to some degree the disparate distribution of power between the few and the many. In the 1960s, protesters held signs of Lyndon B. Johnson with his face turned upside down in a show of disrespect for the president and outrage at, among other things, the brutality of the Vietnam war. Years later, in France, protesters did the same for president Emmanuel Macron as they called for better policies for workers and the planet. Political satire also aims to bring the powerful down a notch, caricaturing them to emphasize a point. Upside down faces on signs may be tame stuff in the grand scheme of things, but proof of concept. Disrespect and incivility can amplify voices that are otherwise quiet, so dampened that they are not heard.

When civility is used to create a space where people are met and treated as equals to discuss, deliberate, and debate important matters, civility is a public good. When civility is used to police exchanges among non-equals, to shut down struggles for justice and equality, or to keep perspectives, individuals, or groups with fair grievances or concerns from gaining a discursive foothold, then it becomes a tool for repression. The ends of civility matter. Whether you think of it as a good in and of itself, for political purposes it’s always a means to an end.

It's so easy to be mean

Discussions online tend to incentivize incivility because digital technologies permit anonymity and distance. You can hide behind a keyboard removed from the immediate consequences of your actions, from the look on someone’s face when you attack them, from the physical or emotional or verbal responses of those around you when you go on the offensive — an unwelcome and uncomfortable change of energy at the table or in the room. The internet encourages a kind of sociopathy at distance.

On top of the distance, online pile-ons draw on a psychological need to be welcome as part of a community, the need to belong, and to be welcomed into an in-group. It’s all too easy to go with the flow once the attacks start, never stopping for a moment to think about what you’re saying or why you’re saying it or whether it’s fair or right or just. The dunks and inventive-laden quote tweets may well be warranted and righteous, punching up or protecting the vulnerable from attack, but spend a few minutes online and you’ll notice the logic of the pile-on isn’t inherently grounded in the struggle for justice.

The owners of social media platforms also love digital donnybrooks. It’s good for business. The design of sites – see quote tweets as an option – and algorithms are meant to support whatever keeps eyeballs glued to screens and the apps open. The longer we spend online pounding the stuffing out of one another – driven by emotional loops – the more money these folks make. Anger is good for business, even when it’s not good for better politics.

So, should we be civil?

You might call it a cop-out and I wouldn’t blame you, but I think the question of whether or not we ought to be civil online or offline depends moment to moment. The decision asks us to do what Aristotle might have counselled as the right thing, in the right way, for the right seasons, at the right time — what we call practical reason. That’s easier said than done, plainly. But the goal is a good one, to think about what we want to say, how we want to say it, and why we want to say it.

Civility can be an essential tool for building communities, bringing people together, and solving problems. It can also be a tool of repression, masking heinous and deleterious politics, encouraging the powerful and comfortable to scold the oppressed and their allies for daring to be bothered by that oppression. The best way to know the difference is to pay close attention to conversations and their contexts, to interrogate how ends and means work together, to look beyond the words, to question the motives of speakers, and to give yourself a few extra beats to think before passing judgment and committing to one approach or another. That might be asking a lot in the internet age, but it’s worth a shot anyway.