About Civility Dynamics™
Civility Dynamics™ is an action-oriented website, devoted to doing something about the incivilities you see about you, whether they be small and personal, as when a person cuts in line in front of you, or significant, as when you uncover prejudice in a beloved social organization.
Civil action begins with the self, and so I have formed Civility Dynamics™ as my way to go about addressing the issues that incivility raises.
Adopting a civil attitude has helped me solve personal problems and manage difficult relationships. I was fortunate to have a mother who modeled civility in most of the difficult and stressful turns she confronted.
I bring to my endeavor years of studying our great writers, and appreciating especially those whose civil tone resonated throughout their writing, for example,the poets Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Studying America's great novelists taught me about the power of point of view in telling our stories and interpreting them--theirs and mine. Setting, or place, also works as a powerful element in fiction, as it does in our own real-life stories of (in)civilities. To say nothing of the themes of civility that permeate their stories.
I am also a lover of language, and so I have studied the western world's great rhetoricians, with particular interest in how writing, and, in fact, communication in general, works--how the speaker or writer engages an audience about a subject (I to you about it). Certainly this I-you-it relationship is at the heart of (in)civility. Other rhetorical concepts also help us understand the setting in which (in)civilities occur: context, constraints, purpose, and exigence. The study of literature and rhetoric, I have found, offer insights for building a civil society.
Civil action begins with the self, and so I have formed Civility Dynamics™ as my way to go about addressing the issues that incivility raises.
Adopting a civil attitude has helped me solve personal problems and manage difficult relationships. I was fortunate to have a mother who modeled civility in most of the difficult and stressful turns she confronted.
I bring to my endeavor years of studying our great writers, and appreciating especially those whose civil tone resonated throughout their writing, for example,the poets Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Studying America's great novelists taught me about the power of point of view in telling our stories and interpreting them--theirs and mine. Setting, or place, also works as a powerful element in fiction, as it does in our own real-life stories of (in)civilities. To say nothing of the themes of civility that permeate their stories.
I am also a lover of language, and so I have studied the western world's great rhetoricians, with particular interest in how writing, and, in fact, communication in general, works--how the speaker or writer engages an audience about a subject (I to you about it). Certainly this I-you-it relationship is at the heart of (in)civility. Other rhetorical concepts also help us understand the setting in which (in)civilities occur: context, constraints, purpose, and exigence. The study of literature and rhetoric, I have found, offer insights for building a civil society.
So civility depends on you and me interacting (in a kind of weaving, to push the metaphor), with others in the place where you live, most immediately, your neighborhood, broadening to your town, city, and state. I to you about it, in a particular place.
Civility Dynamics™ offers programs to strengthen the civility cradle.
Good manners are crucial but I don't focus on teaching them. Emily Post's endeavor, now piloted by her family members, with her etiquette manual now in its 18th edition and addressing life in the digital age, teaches etiquette better than I could hope to. Nor do I teach rules. P.F Forni's two excellent little books, which I heartily recommend (see bibliography), offer rules and suggestions for dealing with rude behavior. I leave mediation and conflict resolution to program specialists.
At this point, my endeavors, as laid out in Creating A New Civility, have two goals:
(1) defining civility, which includes understanding what it is and consciousness raising about its significance; and
(2) offering best practices for achieving civility.
Best practices includes a focus on listening and quiet; on identity and its companion place (or setting, as I have referred to it above); and on connections, or caring relationships that nurture civility. On what impedes them, and how, working optimally, they offer a possibility for peace, wrought small and large.
A word about how I go about my work. I believe civility begins with me, with us. Our bodies first, experiencing the urge, then, in rapid succession, our minds. The tension in our shoulders, neck, spine that evokes the urge to dodge into another lane in heavy traffic, causing a near miss. Almost as if the bodily urge ruled without the better judgment of the mind. Impatience with the person in front of you at the grocery checkout line, fiddling to find coupons for various items, again a bodily reaction that overrules your belief in the wisdom of coupon-cutting and use. (Hurrying and crowds are often the culprits of incivility.)
My approach is steeped in mindfulness practice, on developing mindful techniques to focus in the present moment, and on reflecting before reacting to the evolving dynamic. This approach includes developing a civility awareness and nourishing a civil presence, with nuances that pervade a life.
In sum, I advocate civility writ large, from the personal and practical to the political and theoretical. I imagine civility as a social phenomenon that moves us to embrace a better and larger sense of ourselves, living with its wisdom permeating our lives, personal and political, private and public. I take heart in social changes that have made our lives safer, fairer, and hence more fulfilling: the required use of seatbelts, the elimination of smoking in public places, the growing legislation of legal rights for our LGBT population. I know such changes take time: in a clear case of gender and class discrimination, my high school counselor channeled me into a typing and office machines class instead of physics, my sex and large-family farm background precluding a college education. How short-sighted he was!
I continue living the civil life, with Civility Dynamics riding a crest of public interest in civility that arises from too much trash talk, rudeness, bullying, political high-handedness, and negative advertising. I welcome your participation in the civility endeavor. In the words of civility scholar Mark Kingwell, it is as simple as taking "the leap of faith required to view the 'other' as a person, as someone worth caring about."