"Death of Caesar" by Vincenzo Camuccini |
Civility is a tightrope walker. It’s a word that connotes the
kind of obligatory manners that are tantamount to hiding the truth or it can be
an overarching principle that transcends subjectivity and that has its own
epistemic truth. For instance, shock jocks like Howard Stern claim to be saying
what everyone's thinking. That’s the same tune Donald Trump is playing. When
he talks about keeping Muslims out of the country until further notice, he's merely iterating what others are too afraid to express. When he throws out
insults about women nursing babies, having periods or using the toilet, he's simply indulging in harmless bathroom humor. However, what's missing in these
kinds of outbursts is civility. From the point of view of cognition, civility is a
concept that allows us to give even our foes and opponents full breadth as human beings--despite the fact that they may have opinions which differ from our own. You can
win the battle and lose the war (as we well know from Iraq). Denigration can indeed reduce an opponent’s power, if it is done artfully, in a
debate. But at the end of the day, we exist in a polity—a country, city or
state that reflects the fact that we’re social animals. That’s where the word
politician comes from. Thus if we continue to seek feelings of triumph and
power, placing civility to the side, then we have made our own bed and must
sleep in it. Caesar sought triumph over accommodation and even his close
friend, the thoughtful Brutus, eventually turned on him.
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