THE FORGOTTEN VIRTUE
by James Hankins
At present there is a great deal of handwringing about civility. On campus, students in screaming packs set upon speakers or professors who have said things that the earnest young have been taught to find offensive. Other students are encouraged by university administrators to act as spies, handing in anonymous denunciations of teachers whose words are felt to harm their self-esteem. In the public sphere, certain politicians can be counted on to set off Pavlovian reactions among the online arrabbiati. The enraged believe that Hitler has returned to cumber the earth once more, this time as a blond, and that the best response is to rush into the streets, block traffic, march about dressed in simulacra of female body parts, and denounce public servants during the soup course. Partisan mobs send up chants calling for leaders in the opposite party to be jailed. The expression “objective journalism” has begun to sound quaint or naive in our ears. The republic is in danger; the social fabric is fraying; the dark night of fascism is about to descend.
Cynics, who still predominate in the media, see things differently. Outrage is good for business. The merchants of wrath on social media, only some of whom are Russian, generate clicks and raise funds. Apparently there really are people so little in control of their impulses that they can be induced by the injudicious tweeting of buffoons to give out their credit card details to buffoons of the opposite tendency. Supreme Court nominations are gamed on the basis of which nominee is likeliest to generate the most intemperate outbursts, raising funds for one side and losing votes for the other. It is the new technology that has made us more uncivil.
Others go deeper and explain the loss of civility as the result of underlying social and cultural changes. The most compelling empirical analysis of these changes was offered by the sociologist Charles Murray in his 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. On the left Murray enjoys a reputation just below that of winged Beelzebub, prince of demons, but those willing to peek into prohibited books will find much illumination in Murray’s. Things have only gotten worse since country singer Merle Haggard hymned the “Okie from Muskogee” in 1969. The college dean is no longer respected. America is now divided into two sociocultural camps, or rather suburbs: Fishtown and Belmont. In Fishtown, people eat deep-fried cheesecake and drink beer, join the army, believe intermittently in God, and are addicted to opioids. In general they are depressed and broke. In Belmont, people eat yakitori and drink Montrachet (the t is silent), consume expensive forms of education and real estate, worship Angela Merkel, and believe in diversity and implicit racism. In general they are anxious and in debt. Fishtown and Belmont are sealed off from each other socially and hate each other. Each town tries to use politics to force its own preferences on the other. Hence the loss of civility.
Are we really less civil than we used to be, then? People of riper years tend to be laudatores temporis acti, in Horace’s phrase, “praisers of time past,” and like to claim that things were better when they were young. Sadly, that option is foreclosed to my generation of oldies, who were young during the 1960s and 70s. In fact, we are rather sniffy about the incivility of the present. “Incivility?” we say, a senile quaver in our collective voice. “Ha. In my day, young woman, bomb-throwers actually threw bombs!”
Historians, too, can always be counted on to dismiss the idea that there is anything new, or worse than before, under the sun. That’s what we historians do, and we are right. Yes, incivility is distressing and makes constitutional government more difficult. No, it is not worse now, not from a wider historical perspective. For most of European history, a call for greater civility would have been slightly beside the point, since Europeans were intent on killing one another in large numbers in wars or murdering one another in the streets. The latter was an activity particularly popular during the period I study, the Italian Renaissance. Shakespeare was not making it up about the Montagues and Capulets.
We historians also make short work of the technological and sociological explanations for the present increase of incivility. Few of us would accept that social media and the twenty-four-hour news cycle have made incivility significantly more intense than in earlier societies. Before modern times, most political life took place in very small cities (by modern standards), which were face-to-face societies. The level of paranoia was generally much higher. The man you hated was your neighbor, who had bad breath, and his client the grocer had knowingly sold your wife moldy tomatoes while his cousin had done your cousin out of a job. The personal may not have been the political, but the political was definitely personal.
Nor is the sociological explanation adequate. In most premodern societies, the cultural gap between elites and non-elites was huge. It began from the rather salient differences that the elites had enough to eat, had more than one suit of clothing, and could read. In the grand sweep of history, what was truly exceptional was the relative homogeneity of social mores in the America of Tocqueville. The view that modern Americans are more socially polarized than the vast majority of our ancestors is just another case of historical shortsightedness.
Machiavelli—who was a wicked counselor of princes and a second-rate historian, but a shrewd observer of humanity—had an explanation for why people think things used to be better. History is written for the victors, and writers who seek reward will celebrate the winners’ deeds and conceal their infamy. Our passions are involved when we observe the actions of our contemporaries because they affect us; not so with actions in the past. The news makes us angry and fearful by turns, while we view the past through a golden mist of memory. The great men of the past are safely dead and do not threaten us. In fact, says Machiavelli, human behavior is a constant, and there has always been about the same amount of goodness and wickedness in the world. It may well be that things are better now than in the past, but we can’t tell that. In retrospect we can see that first the Assyrians had virtù, then the Medes, then the Persians, then Rome. If we lived in one of those empires on the rise and believed the past was better, we would be wrong; if we lived in a time of decline and held the same opinion, we would be right. But in the present, we can’t tell where we are in the cycle. Machiavelli confesses that even he himself might be wrong in his belief that he lived in a time of decline. Since he in fact lived in a period when Europe was on the brink of dominating the rest of the world, one has to concede his point.
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Read more: www.firstthings.com
At present there is a great deal of handwringing about civility. On campus, students in screaming packs set upon speakers or professors who have said things that the earnest young have been taught to find offensive. Other students are encouraged by university administrators to act as spies, handing in anonymous denunciations of teachers whose words are felt to harm their self-esteem. In the public sphere, certain politicians can be counted on to set off Pavlovian reactions among the online arrabbiati. The enraged believe that Hitler has returned to cumber the earth once more, this time as a blond, and that the best response is to rush into the streets, block traffic, march about dressed in simulacra of female body parts, and denounce public servants during the soup course. Partisan mobs send up chants calling for leaders in the opposite party to be jailed. The expression “objective journalism” has begun to sound quaint or naive in our ears. The republic is in danger; the social fabric is fraying; the dark night of fascism is about to descend.
Cynics, who still predominate in the media, see things differently. Outrage is good for business. The merchants of wrath on social media, only some of whom are Russian, generate clicks and raise funds. Apparently there really are people so little in control of their impulses that they can be induced by the injudicious tweeting of buffoons to give out their credit card details to buffoons of the opposite tendency. Supreme Court nominations are gamed on the basis of which nominee is likeliest to generate the most intemperate outbursts, raising funds for one side and losing votes for the other. It is the new technology that has made us more uncivil.
Others go deeper and explain the loss of civility as the result of underlying social and cultural changes. The most compelling empirical analysis of these changes was offered by the sociologist Charles Murray in his 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. On the left Murray enjoys a reputation just below that of winged Beelzebub, prince of demons, but those willing to peek into prohibited books will find much illumination in Murray’s. Things have only gotten worse since country singer Merle Haggard hymned the “Okie from Muskogee” in 1969. The college dean is no longer respected. America is now divided into two sociocultural camps, or rather suburbs: Fishtown and Belmont. In Fishtown, people eat deep-fried cheesecake and drink beer, join the army, believe intermittently in God, and are addicted to opioids. In general they are depressed and broke. In Belmont, people eat yakitori and drink Montrachet (the t is silent), consume expensive forms of education and real estate, worship Angela Merkel, and believe in diversity and implicit racism. In general they are anxious and in debt. Fishtown and Belmont are sealed off from each other socially and hate each other. Each town tries to use politics to force its own preferences on the other. Hence the loss of civility.
Are we really less civil than we used to be, then? People of riper years tend to be laudatores temporis acti, in Horace’s phrase, “praisers of time past,” and like to claim that things were better when they were young. Sadly, that option is foreclosed to my generation of oldies, who were young during the 1960s and 70s. In fact, we are rather sniffy about the incivility of the present. “Incivility?” we say, a senile quaver in our collective voice. “Ha. In my day, young woman, bomb-throwers actually threw bombs!”
Historians, too, can always be counted on to dismiss the idea that there is anything new, or worse than before, under the sun. That’s what we historians do, and we are right. Yes, incivility is distressing and makes constitutional government more difficult. No, it is not worse now, not from a wider historical perspective. For most of European history, a call for greater civility would have been slightly beside the point, since Europeans were intent on killing one another in large numbers in wars or murdering one another in the streets. The latter was an activity particularly popular during the period I study, the Italian Renaissance. Shakespeare was not making it up about the Montagues and Capulets.
We historians also make short work of the technological and sociological explanations for the present increase of incivility. Few of us would accept that social media and the twenty-four-hour news cycle have made incivility significantly more intense than in earlier societies. Before modern times, most political life took place in very small cities (by modern standards), which were face-to-face societies. The level of paranoia was generally much higher. The man you hated was your neighbor, who had bad breath, and his client the grocer had knowingly sold your wife moldy tomatoes while his cousin had done your cousin out of a job. The personal may not have been the political, but the political was definitely personal.
Nor is the sociological explanation adequate. In most premodern societies, the cultural gap between elites and non-elites was huge. It began from the rather salient differences that the elites had enough to eat, had more than one suit of clothing, and could read. In the grand sweep of history, what was truly exceptional was the relative homogeneity of social mores in the America of Tocqueville. The view that modern Americans are more socially polarized than the vast majority of our ancestors is just another case of historical shortsightedness.
Machiavelli—who was a wicked counselor of princes and a second-rate historian, but a shrewd observer of humanity—had an explanation for why people think things used to be better. History is written for the victors, and writers who seek reward will celebrate the winners’ deeds and conceal their infamy. Our passions are involved when we observe the actions of our contemporaries because they affect us; not so with actions in the past. The news makes us angry and fearful by turns, while we view the past through a golden mist of memory. The great men of the past are safely dead and do not threaten us. In fact, says Machiavelli, human behavior is a constant, and there has always been about the same amount of goodness and wickedness in the world. It may well be that things are better now than in the past, but we can’t tell that. In retrospect we can see that first the Assyrians had virtù, then the Medes, then the Persians, then Rome. If we lived in one of those empires on the rise and believed the past was better, we would be wrong; if we lived in a time of decline and held the same opinion, we would be right. But in the present, we can’t tell where we are in the cycle. Machiavelli confesses that even he himself might be wrong in his belief that he lived in a time of decline. Since he in fact lived in a period when Europe was on the brink of dominating the rest of the world, one has to concede his point.
..............
Read more: www.firstthings.com
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