Is "civility" a mere belief system?

[Fellowship]

Human rights, generally accepted behaviors of civility, kindness, maturity, taking the high road, are all of these merely a belief system akin to that of believing in a creator / God?

Some would argue that the US in Iraq is all about "securing American interests in the gulf"

Perhapse to secure oil supply for the future of American consumption.

This begs the question,,, have we to some degree lost our civility in exchnge for brute force and a raw "survival of the fittest" mindset?

Are we really acting as humans ought or are we leaning to our animal instincts?

Has culture been broken down by dumbed down pop- culture, right wing radio, and being just too busy and or distracted to care?

Are we just trying to get by rather than having the luxury of being cultured and thinking things through such as how we treat others?

Please weigh in,,

What is civility?
Have we drifted away from it?
Is civility tied to culture which can be manipulated by commercial forces?

Fellows

[segovius]

Civility or civilization ?

Civility is mere politeness and etiquette, is culturally determined and is in no way an absolute.

Civilization is something else again.

A man or nation who cannot laugh at himself/itself can never be civilized.

[e1618978]

Fellows

I think that you have bought into the "fallen from grace" thing. Things are much better, more civil, more peaceful than ever before.

There was no golden age in the past that we have fallen from - we pulled ourself out of the shitty mud, and are crawling up onto the beach into the sun. There will always be people who say it was better back there in the mud, but when they think that way, they are only thinking of the lives of rich people in the past, not the whole population.

[JimDreamworx]

Things are much better, more peaceful, and more civil (hello, Cheney!) thanks to the Bush Presidency!
;)

[segovius]

Originally posted by JimDreamworx
Things are much better, more peaceful, and more civil (hello, Cheney!) thanks to the Bush Presidency!
;)

It's true - I for one cannot find adequate obscenities to describe them at all.......

[dmz]

What is civility?
Have we drifted away from it?
Is civility tied to culture which can be manipulated by commercial forces?

I'd say that civility is treating your neighbor as yourself.

The drifting away is such a loaded question --- are we 'civil' to lock people in cages for crimes, 'civil' to the unborn, 'civil' to have a death penalty, 'civil' to allow peadophiles to prey on our children, 'civil' to support a billion-dollar pornography industry, 'civil' to depersonalize our political opponents? Are we 'civil' to leave politics to the aristocracy, and live under a media filter, when our representatives are literally a couple of keystrokes away?

The issue with commercial forces only feeds back into the second question. Like P.J. O'Rourke said:

"Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

I think the same can be said doubly for commercial interests.

[New]

Some one once asked Gandhi what he thought of western civilization.

"That would be a good idea!" he replied...

[Immanuel Goldstein]

Originally posted by Fellowship
Human rights, generally accepted behaviors of civility, kindness, maturity, taking the high road, are all of these merely a belief system akin to that of believing in a creator / God?
Human rights are normative rights accorded to all human beings irrespective of cultural or social contexts, agreed on through common debate between individuals and societies, and then hopefully legislated and enforced as they should.
Civility is acting with common decency and respect toward one's neighbour, according to what the surrounding society considers decent and respectful. Civility should not be legally enforced, if you ask me.
Believing in one all-powerful creator is generally a part of (at least in the case of most Levantine forms of monotheism) believing that some teachings and traditions were revealed by said creator to humanity (whether to individuals or to groups), and handed down through the generations via means of culture. Belief should not be legally enforced, if you ask me.

Some would argue that the US in Iraq is all about "securing American interests in the gulf"

Perhapse to secure oil supply for the future of American consumption.
Inexpensive supply of oil from Iraq would have been secured more easily and more cost-effectively by buying it from Iraq, even a relatively hostile Iraq.

It seems to me it that because the U.S. was hit and humiliated in 2001, it decided to get rid of a weakend hostile character rather than leaving him the opportunity to hit and humiliate them in a similar manner.

This begs the question,,, have we to some degree lost our civility…
If by “we” you mean your country, the United States, observing it from a several decades' perspective, you seem to have gained much in the civility department in the last forty years. Your current overseas adventures are quite tame to the kind you had in South-East Asia back then, for example. Not that long ago, some of your states still had in theier books some nasty backwardly degenerate racist laws, according to which I was considered of a certain “race” category, and even of a different one from some people of my own family. Needless to say, my encounter with your country at the time was not entirely pleasant.

…in exchnge for brute force and a raw "survival of the fittest" mindset?
You used to me far more merciless a century ago, when “survival of the fittest” was much closer to be an official ideology.

Are we really acting as humans ought or are we leaning to our animal instincts?
We should strive to act as humans ought to be, without being ruled by our animal instincts and without ruling them out either.

Has culture been broken down by dumbed down pop- culture, right wing radio, and being just too busy and or distracted to care?
It seems to me that high-culture (along with intellectual rigour, integrity, rational thinking, and things of that nature) is less sought after than I remember, on the other hand it is far from gone, and has become more easily accessible to more people.

Are we just trying to get by rather than having the luxury of being cultured and thinking things through such as how we treat others?
While many are fortunate enough nowadays to be relatively affluent so not to “just trying to get by” and so it is easier for them (a form of luxury) to strive to be cultured, civil, and civilised, it comes down to personal choices.

What is civility?
I suppose I touched that earlier.

Have we drifted away from it?
While current societies in developed countries are less formal than they used to, they have grown more civilised than a hundred years ago. However, those things tend to ebb and flow, and it is far easier to be civil, tolerant, and open-minded on a sunny day. And the present days are, shall we say, slightly less sunny than those which immediately preceded them.
On the whole I find it more bearable than when I was younger.

Is civility tied to culture…
Civility is indeed tied to culture, which is why one should inquire beforehand about the manners of civililty in a given land where one wishes to travel.
…which can be manipulated by commercial forces?
I don't understand precisely what you mean “commercial forces”. If you refer to undue influence over culture and society by those weilding substantial economic power, that has somewhat increased in the last twenty years, although it is far from the dominance it had around 1905.

So while there is cause for concern I don't think there is cause for alarm.

Even with this whole “transition to Intel” thingee.

[pfflam]

Originally posted by dmz
I'd say that civility is treating your neighbor as yourself.
You mean an ethics based on self-regard first? . . . a kind of self-first then others next?
;)

no, but seriously, back to topic: I think that civility can be a political tool when the word is thrown around etc . . .

But in a real sense, civility is an ethics, much like DMZ points out by quoting that famous Jewish mortal guy.

But it can also be seen as an Ethical mode of being: to be civil towards one another can arise out of a primordial respect for the profound otherness that each individual sentient being is, how each other being suffers itself for its whole span, and is itself infinitely complex and inconfigurable . . . . that sort of thought sparks an interest in beng compassionate for others rather than merely thinking about ones' one gain in relation to others . . . .

and of course we understand ourselves due to our relationships with others and otherness in general . . . so when we respect others for their alterity it reflects back on us: mirroring our self out of others' infinite otherness
. . .
so, instead of starting with my self-interest and moving to others, civility can be a profound ethics based on an unselfish regard for otherness first . . . .

[pfflam]

Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
We should strive to act as humans ought to be, without being ruled by our animal instincts and without ruling them out either. Now that is more that just a sig-worthy phrase!

[dmz]

Originally posted by pfflam
You mean an ethics based on self-regard first? . . . a kind of self-first then others next?
;)

no, but seriously, back to topic: I think that civility can be a political tool when the word is thrown around etc . . .

But in a real sense, civility is an ethics, much like DMZ points out by quoting that famous Jewish mortal guy.

But it can also be seen as an Ethical mode of being: to be civil towards one another can arise out of a primordial respect for the profound otherness that each individual sentient being is, how each other being suffers itself for its whole span, and is itself infinitely complex and inconfigurable . . . . that sort of thought sparks an interest in beng compassionate for others rather than merely thinking about ones' one gain in relation to others . . . .

and of course we understand ourselves due to our relationships with others and otherness in general . . . so when we respect others for their alterity it reflects back on us: mirroring our self out of others' infinite otherness
. . .
so, instead of starting with my self-interest and moving to others, civility can be a profound ethics based on an unselfish regard for otherness first . . . .
Yes, but without a common ethic or basis to relate, things stay impossibly impersonal and abstract.

(Unless, of course, these 'ethical' considerations are all part of the show, then none of this matters anyway.)

[Placebo]

Politics and world events are the last place you should go to judge civility.

[spindler]

People today are so disgustingly uncivil that they are not even aware of what civility is. They are not even aware of the most basic requirements of human decency that were considered MANDATORY BEHAVIOUR just back in 1983. Between 1985 and 1995 the media flooded people with so much garbage that garbage became normal. Right was no longer consider beautiful and wrong just ugly and evil. Now they are side by side simply for amusement.

I was born in 1970. When I was growing up, tragedy was tragedy. There was a simple rule. When a person dies or has something terrible happen to them, you are supposed to consider the cost to the person and the person's family, and that's all you do. You consider how important life, health, family, or justice are. You don't make jokes about Bill Clinton cheating on his wife. You don't make go on late night TV and make jokes about a woman who has just been murdered or people who just lost their life savings in the Enron scandal.

Death and tragedy had real meaning because we are all born with some pretty intense feelings towards life and towards justice. Now when a person is killed, instead of really FEELING the value of life, the majority of people will trivialize the whole thing into gossip just to find out the dirty details of how the person died. They are so desensitized they don't even know what the real feelings they are supposed to have are.

Now everyone is going to come in here and say that I'm making all this up. In Orwellian fashion, they will claim that there never were any good times and things were never different. They will attempt to erase the norms of behaviour from 1776-1985. But you could get everything shown on ABC, CBS, and NBC before 1985 and you won't find aggressive celebrity gossip, voyeurism, exploitation of murder and child molestation cases, jokes about tragedy, etc. Get a copy of People magazine from 1982 and it's basically just nice stories about stars living their lives and inspiring stories of everyday people. It was celebrating the GOOD about people back then. Now it's just a vile piece of shit to thrill people with every horrible thing that happens to anyone.

I could go on and on but few young people today even remember or know about this because their parents were too lazy to do anything about it and too lazy to teach them any real values. But if anyone wants to challenge this, I'll carefully explain ONE HUNDRED different PRINCIPLES of behaviour that thinking people were expected to hold and that are now pissed on all day long on television.

[SDW2001]

Originally posted by Fellowship
Human rights, generally accepted behaviors of civility, kindness, maturity, taking the high road, are all of these merely a belief system akin to that of believing in a creator / God?

Some would argue that the US in Iraq is all about "securing American interests in the gulf"

Perhapse to secure oil supply for the future of American consumption.

This begs the question,,, have we to some degree lost our civility in exchnge for brute force and a raw "survival of the fittest" mindset?

Are we really acting as humans ought or are we leaning to our animal instincts?

Has culture been broken down by dumbed down pop- culture, right wing radio, and being just too busy and or distracted to care?

Are we just trying to get by rather than having the luxury of being cultured and thinking things through such as how we treat others?

Please weigh in,,

What is civility?
Have we drifted away from it?
Is civility tied to culture which can be manipulated by commercial forces?

Fellows

Oh look, another anti-war thread disguised as something else.

[segovius]

Originally posted by SDW2001
Oh look, another anti-war thread disguised as something else.

Anti war ? ANTI-WAR???????? That ****ing **** ***@#@$%#$@ - God, and to think I've been reading this stuff.

Thanks for the heads-up SDW. You just can't believe these people are on the streets can you?

I'm off for a shower then I'm gonna phone the feds......

[SDW2001]

Originally posted by segovius
Anti war ? ANTI-WAR???????? That ****ing **** ***@#@$%#$@ - God, and to think I've been reading this stuff.

Thanks for the heads-up SDW. You just can't believe these people are on the streets can you?

I'm off for a shower then I'm gonna phone the feds......

Fellowship Wrote:



Some would argue that the US in Iraq is all about "securing American interests in the gulf"

Perhapse to secure oil supply for the future of American consumption.

No, no anti-war commentary there by Fellows. You're just pissy because you were told to knock off the persistent anti-war threads.

[segovius]

Originally posted by SDW2001
Fellowship Wrote:

No, no anti-war commentary there by Fellows. You're just pissy because you were told to knock off the persistent anti-war threads.

Some people obviously don't do irony.

Maybe someone should start complaining to the mods about anti-anti posts.

Just in the interests of balance.

[dmz]

....and I'll bet there's a subtle Homeland Security tie-in there too.

http://www.t-shirthumor.com/Merchant2/graphics/fullsize/duck_lg.gif

[segovius]

Oh how we laughed....

:rolleyes:

[pfflam]

Originally posted by spindler
People today are so disgustingly uncivil that they are not even aware of what civility is. They are not even aware of the most basic requirements of human decency that were considered MANDATORY BEHAVIOUR just back in 1983. Between 1985 and 1995 the media flooded people with so much garbage that garbage became normal. Right was no longer consider beautiful and wrong just ugly and evil. Now they are side by side simply for amusement.

I was born in 1970. When I was growing up, tragedy was tragedy. There was a simple rule. When a person dies or has something terrible happen to them, you are supposed to consider the cost to the person and the person's family, and that's all you do. You consider how important life, health, family, or justice are. You don't make jokes about Bill Clinton cheating on his wife. You don't make go on late night TV and make jokes about a woman who has just been murdered or people who just lost their life savings in the Enron scandal.

Death and tragedy had real meaning because we are all born with some pretty intense feelings towards life and towards justice. Now when a person is killed, instead of really FEELING the value of life, the majority of people will trivialize the whole thing into gossip just to find out the dirty details of how the person died. They are so desensitized they don't even know what the real feelings they are supposed to have are.

Now everyone is going to come in here and say that I'm making all this up. In Orwellian fashion, they will claim that there never were any good times and things were never different. They will attempt to erase the norms of behaviour from 1776-1985. But you could get everything shown on ABC, CBS, and NBC before 1985 and you won't find aggressive celebrity gossip, voyeurism, exploitation of murder and child molestation cases, jokes about tragedy, etc. Get a copy of People magazine from 1982 and it's basically just nice stories about stars living their lives and inspiring stories of everyday people. It was celebrating the GOOD about people back then. Now it's just a vile piece of shit to thrill people with every horrible thing that happens to anyone.

I could go on and on but few young people today even remember or know about this because their parents were too lazy to do anything about it and too lazy to teach them any real values. But if anyone wants to challenge this, I'll carefully explain ONE HUNDRED different PRINCIPLES of behaviour that thinking people were expected to hold and that are now pissed on all day long on television. You have a completely illusory image of how it used to be. . . . I chalk that up to your being a young person still . . . even if your 35 . . .

There has always been uncivility . . . look for the book Wisconsin Death Trip . .. it basically catalogues all of the strange and horrible news stories in upper Wisconsin in the 1880-90s . . . lots of murders, arsons, rude and insane behavior . . . . not just a little: a LOT!!

What is unreal is the mediated image of the 50s and early 60s. Images that were born from a concerted effort to re-orient the behavior of the average American, WW2 vet and family, and domesticate them and turn them into a Nuclear-unit Consumer . . . . images like Leave It To Beaver etc.

ANd BTW, people have always dealt with death and tragedy through rumor: in fact it may very well be that rumor IS the most basic and important aspect of Civility . . . . it is news through word of mouth it is the network of human relationship through casual unforced discussion

WHen you do away with rumor then watch out for what replaces it . . .

[spindler]

pfflam wrote:

"You have a completely illusory image of how it used to be. . . . I chalk that up to your being a young person still . . . even if your 35 . . . "

I'm going to have to disagree with you here, and I'd be interested in debating this. First of all, I am not naive at all. I realize there have always been dysfunctional, nutty people. But I certainly believe that the top two thirds of the population was above sleeze and hardcore gossip. I lived through this for the first fifteen years of my life, so to deny this is to deny reality.

First of all, I believe that the marketplace will supply what the public demands. In the 1970s there were not voyeuristic shows going into every detail of celebrities lives. Why not? If the public wanted it, why wouldn't it be delivered? Cheryl Ladd was on David Letterman and she said that in the seventies if you went to the beach, and were with your kids, you could ask for the photographers to leave you alone. They were not like the animals they are today. So why not? Seems like we had a far less cutthroat society then, even in the most naturally cutthroat world of Hollywood.

When I was in the sixth grade and someone said something inappropriate, like making a joke about a crime that happened yesterday, the girls would make a sour face and say "That's not nice to say". if you kept going, they would say something like "Can we change the subject? Why are we talking about this?" I didn't dream all this up that people had real standards.

Here's a related example. Nowadays they sell these really, really low class greeting cards. This store I worked in had hundreds of cards about fart jokes, or fat people bending over, Bill Clinton's infidelity, etc. There was one with two 50s era looking women and it said "Don't worry honey, once you're married you can eat all you want and let your ass grow fat". That's a typical joke. I'm not saying these jokes are immoral, but they are just so taseless that no one should like them. Maybe you have seen them and I'm sure you thought they were too stupid to even read. Well, wealthy Yuppies would read them and laugh and buy them as if they were George Carlin or Mike Meyers. Now go back to the seventies, when most humor was actually funny. You just won't find low class stuff like that in the mainstream. If you gave one of those cards to a worker of family member you would have just been considered trash. I just don't remember any of that least common denominator humor. There were no comedy shows that were as stupid and awful as stuff on the Comedy Channel like "Reno 911". Now I know you can name like one single thing, like Whoopie Cushions, but it just was not an everyday thing. I never saw Lenny Bruce, but they say he was pretty rough. But there were not like hundreds of shock jocks like Howard Stern.

Now if people had wanted that vulgar crap in the seventies, someone would have supplied it. If people had always wanted their news really sleazy, someone would have supplied it. There were standards back then that people were supposed to follow and I do not believe they were following them but didn't believe in them.

[spindler]

"There has always been uncivility . . . look for the book Wisconsin Death Trip . .. it basically catalogues all of the strange and horrible news stories in upper Wisconsin in the 1880-90s . . . lots of murders, arsons, rude and insane behavior . . . . not just a little: a LOT!!"

OK. Well this is interesting that there was something so outright sleazy back then. The question then is who read it? Was it something that educated people were passing around and discussing and laughing at or was it an underground thing that only the rough people on the bad side of town had?

There's a really big difference. I realize that on the bad side of town there are people who get together and have there pitbulls fight for money. The question is whether educated people want to have the dirty details of it all day long on CNN or whether they simply consider it barbaric and don't want to knwo any more.

[pfflam]

So what you are really lamenting is the loss of upper-class boundaries?

I think they still exist . . . most 'educated' people simply do NOT watch TV, not do they read tabloids

The 'Educated' class seldom cares about Cheryl Ladd

[spindler]

First of all Pfflam, let me commend you as you are the first person I've ever debated with who didn't simply tell me that all this didn't matter or that I just dreamed it all.

"So what you are really lamenting is the loss of upper-class boundaries?"

Well, I doubt that this was something that just upper class people knew about. But I am lamenting a lot of things. Every person should have an idea of what normal standards are like and if lower class kids can't get it from their ignorant parents, at least they should get an idea that things can be better from watching Eight Is Enough or Walter Cronkite or Family Ties. Culture has always been used to highlight the differences between good thinking and bad thinking.

I knew this teenager who was a smart kid and his parents were both lawyers but he didn't see much wrong with sleaze TV. He didn't actively watch it, but he didn't see much wrong with watching Jerry Springer or something like that. Now to me the basis of all morality is too strictly separate right from wrong and good thinking from weak minded thinking, so I don't see this as a good sign when even smart kids don't understand that morality is based on strictly applied principles.

I am also lamenting the fact that I and other people can't separate ourselves from this shit on TV. And TV is a major part of our culture and collective experience so I don't think it's too much to want to watch good shows like the Simpsons without having to see shows that come on before or after it. The commercials for trash are mixed in with the good shows.

I also doubt that there are very many people, especially below age 20, who don't watch TV. I've heard the average person watches like 5 hours a day. I doubt there are a lot of people who don't watch TV, although a lot obviously just watch the few intelligent shows.

[pfflam]

Remember the Mort Downey Jr show?

in the 70s, complete uncivility and proud of it . . . and quite popular too.

[e1618978]

So what you are really lamenting is the loss of upper-class boundaries?

Yes.

If you travel on Quantas to Australia, you will notice right away that the Stewards and Stewardesses from Australia are way nicer than anybody that serves you on an American Airline.

You notice the same thing at the doctors office, the dentist, and anywere (except pubs) that people serve you.

Australia has a larger social difference between rich and poor (I'm not talking about financial inequity - I am talking about formality and behavior differences). I think that this behavior difference somehow (I am not quite clear how) results in more civility.

[spindler]

pflam wrote:

"Remember the Mort Downey Jr show?

in the 70s, complete uncivility and proud of it . . . and quite popular too."


Well, if anything this proves my point. First of all Morton Downey Jr. had a TV show, but it was in the late 80s, early 90s, and it was trashy and over the line. It was a pioneer in that, but on the other hand it was about politics where it is natural to have strong opinions.

If you are saying Morton Downey Jr. also had a show in the 70s, though, that would completely prove my point. If there was just one guy that was crazy then, that would show there was very little market for that, because if that one guy was successful, why not have another twenty five copycats of him?

It's like the music industry. If you listen to rap music today on the radio after 8PM they have dirty versions of the songs that are really sexually explicit. I am not judging the morality of this, just using an example of how people's tastes have changed. Now back in the 1970s, Teddy Pendergrass had some explicit soul songs that basically went "We had a hard day at work. Let's take a shower together, and get it on" But Teddy had a really good personality and the dirtyness of the songs went natuarlly with who he was. Yet you didn't have 50 different Teddy impersonators all writing dirty lyrics. There wasn't really a market for dirty lyrics unless it was someone like Rod Stewart or some sex symbol who had the charisma to back it up.

[spindler]

e18181818 wrote:

"If you travel on Quantas to Australia, you will notice right away that the Stewards and Stewardesses from Australia are way nicer than anybody that serves you on an American Airline.

You notice the same thing at the doctors office, the dentist, and anywere (except pubs) that people serve you."

I've thought about how Americans really are not very welcoming in general, except when I was in Minnesota, where people were really nice. I don't think there is anyone to blame except for the rise of youth culture. Young people today are more "cool" with each other and politeness just doesn't fit very well with a rock and roll lifestyle. So it's not that people are trying to be mean, it's just that formalities don't fit very well with today's lifestyle. Also, if you are a waitress running back and forth, you just don't have the time to make small talk. That is a big problem too. Things are too fast paced, at least in metro areas, to talk to the cashier while you are on line, etc.