MORE THAN CIVILITY

WILTON S. DILLON

Preventing daily hurt is one way to promote a civil society.

T .V. Smith, a Texan philosopher from the University of Chicago, made a memorable point in Tokyo in 1946 as one of 30 members of the US Education Mission to Japan. Members were debating what to do about the Japanese curriculum on etiquette, which the US government believed to be tainted by the warrior ethic of Bushido. The Potsdam Declaration required us in the Occupation to demilitarize Japan: disarm the military; smash a cyclotron; and reform the education system from top to bottom. Etiquette instruction was believed by some Americans to foster the kinds of blind obedience to hierarchies that suppressed independent, creative, critical thinking and democratic initiative. “Wait a moment,” cautioned the philosopher as we sat in a “chat” room of the Imperial Hotel. “Let us remember that the Japanese have spent centuries evolving rules of behavior designed to prevent daily hurt.”

Isn’t preventing daily hurt a useful way of thinking about civility? Preventing daily hurt through social relations is still a worthy aim for citizens in all professions and callings. It is not a panacea for troubling personal or cultural relations. Of course, Japanese etiquette courses did not restrain Japanese soldiers in the Rape of Nanking. And in our own military, all kinds of ceremonial politesse—salutes and regimented forms of address—are learned by people also trained to kill.

Civility to ensure respect and line-of-command structures is situational as one moves from the barracks to the battlefield.

Although a major one, civility is only one point on the spectrum connecting war and peace. Its social function is to prevent or restrain hostility within one’s group, as well as externally. Another function is to improve the love of life. And being civil may mean no more than that the requirements are met, in a situation where etiquette camouflages anger that would be reciprocated if expressed.

Caring for the feelings of others or sparing others from daily hurt provides an essential lubricant for a whole range of interpersonal, inter-group, and international relationships. Plays, novels, court cases, books of history, poems, and operas could illuminate any or all of these relationships, and many already have. Recall, for example, Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, the “Pineapple of Politeness” in Sheridan’s The Rivals, and what Oscar Wilde warned about frightening the horses.

GREASING THE WHEELS OF CIVILITY

Lubrication as a social metaphor, taken from oiling a machine, also has analogues in botany. The water relations of plants are comparable to civility in social systems. Plants need water inside and out; human groups need civility. Comparable to oil or Vaseline or ball-bearings, civility makes social structures work. Hate and fear, in contrast, are not good lubricants.

Interestingly, the dynamics and civility patterns of human organizations are profoundly influenced by gift exchange. How gift-giving and reciprocity are handled in different historical and cultural settings is a vital clue to promoting a civil society and to successful relations between one culture and another.

But here is a key question: Does civility as a lubricant depend on how people remember and handle their gifts, debts, and obligations? The assumption is that reciprocity is an essential ingredient of civility. Could it just be possible that gift exchange among humans, if properly managed, might help deter violence and promote civility as an alternative? “Everything is stuff to be given away and repaid,” Marcel Mauss wrote in his classic essay, “The Gift,” now translated into English from his famous 1927 essai sur le don. The problem is discovering to what commodities of exchange both parties, or several parties, attach value. And it bears remembering that a gift can be tangible or intangible.

The simple act of consultation may function as a gift—and its absence can be seen as a slight. In Washington, Mayor Anthony Williams was criticized recently for not consulting various constituencies regarding his budget proposals; in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah suffered a coup d’etat for not following Ashanti rules for consulting elders. On the global stage, Americans are frequently criticized as arrogant for not consulting with allies. Giving, receiving, and repaying are universal processes, but cultural differences color and influence whether such exchanges produce harmony or antagonism in families, tribes, friendships, nations, and political and international alliances.

Take a mundane example from our daily lives in Washington. We all push through doors ahead of someone else. Do we all look back to see who may be behind? If we are followed, do we hold the door for them? Who returns the “gift” with a word of thanks? Civility should require no differentiation between a male, female, senior citizen, or teen. Revenge against those failing to offer the return gift of a polite response might be a mumbled “you’re welcome.” This is a sanction against daily irritants, if not hurt. One need only mention road rage, and the dangers of incivility in Washington auto traffic. More often than not, courtesy breeds courtesy. In the utter absence of courtesy—and civility—road revenge can produce a vicious cycle of dangerous retaliation.

Indeed, not all reciprocity is benign. Revenge is an exchange relationship, as is love. Stimulus-response studies by psychologists and interaction research by industrial anthropologists add to our everyday insights of observed behavior involving “tit for tat.” Eliot D. Chapple’s measurements of human interaction rates reveal biological and cultural conditioning as factors in civility in conversations. Our nervous systems may partly explain patterns of dominance, submission, or a rhythmic exchange, independent of the content of what is being said. The Biblical “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” sums it up smartly. Civility can help “turn away wrath,” but not always, as witness the recent tire-slashing revenge taken by the driver of a minivan made unhappy by a Herndon motorist near Dulles Airport who had to switch lanes in a hurry, without taking the time for a civil head-nodding or hand-waving request.

But history is equally full of examples of civility acting as a deterrent to such acts of violence. In this light, the history of Switzerland is most instructive. Switzerland was once a hotbed of hostilities between warring cantons. The late Louis J. Halle, a Washingtonian who lived for years in Geneva, described Switzerland as “an extraordinary paradox.” He noted that the Swiss constitute a nation that, culturally and politically, is deeply divided; that the last intercantonal war, waged in 1847, has been replaced by “good manners that substitute for love.” In a Smithsonian symposium on aggression, he concluded, “It is the consciousness of how easily the nation could fall apart that makes the Swiss so moderate, so considerate, and so courteous in their dealings with one another.” This, too, is a form of gift exchange, finding civility a commodity to which all parties attach value, a blessed trade-off. That is why the Bosnian ambassador to the United States, a fellow Club member, was urged recently to dispatch some of Bosnia’s multi-ethnic leaders to Switzerland for some inspiration in civility. Is it too late for Kosovo? To the consternation of the Swiss, some thousands of Serb and Kosovar workers now living in Switzerland might be exporting their Balkan wars to Swiss soil if they were not restrained by Swiss police.

Closer to home is the Society of Friends in Washington, representing a non-violent people by socialization and by religious belief. Some Quaker code words are reminiscent of Japanese etiquette. For example, when asked to recommend someone for a job, one might hear “you know, it never would have occurred to me.” Such an expression is considered a classic substitute for negative comments about an individual. Insiders know that this is an effective Quaker put-down. Another memorable phrase: When one of the faithful ladies at the Florida Avenue Meeting House was asked why Richard Nixon was not hanging on the wall alongside a picture of Herbert Hoover, she replied: “Poor Richard; he needs our tender loving care now more than ever.” Ambiguity can serve as a gift. Others might regard such ambiguity as avoiding true statements, or practicing hypocrisy. This is not the case if you know the buzzwords and their intended meanings.

Contrast Quaker civility with the mainstream cultural habits described in Deborah Tannen’s latest book, The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue:

[There is] a pervasive warlike atmosphere that makes us approach public dialogue...as if it were a fight....Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention—an argument culture...an adversarial frame of mind...the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done.

Her observations resonate with those of Daniel Yankelovich in his book, The Magic of Dialogue:

I am troubled by the growing power of the forces dividing Americans from one another, fragmenting our culture....[A] certain kind of dialogue can counterbalance the worst effects...create better understanding among people with divergent views...create new possibilities in personal relationships and community.

Advocating dialogue falls nicely into the gift-exchange metaphor. Partners in a dialogue, coming out of fiercely partisan positions, in government, business, academia and the media, may learn to reciprocate with “gifts” offered for the common good. In academia, civility standards may vary widely, as one anecdote suggests. Margaret Read, a grandmotherly British anthropologist, full of good cheer and courtesy, once told George Peter Murdoch, a giant in 20th century American anthropology: “Pete, that last book of yours, People of Africa, is a scandal. How did you ever allow your name to be attached to it?” She was offering him a compliment by Oxbridge standards requiring colleagues to be critical of each other’s work. He was so stricken by the remark that he might easily have burst into tears. Her “gift” was not appreciated.

The real rub in advocating dialogue, a great way to practice civility, is a profoundly strong American suspicion of gifts. Has any other society developed such copious rules and laws governing “conflict of interest?” We seem to abhor any form of indebtedness. Public servants, especially elected officials, are constantly exposed for having incurred debts to lobbyists. Accusations of bribery and corruption flow from each published list of political action committee contributions. Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, though now redeemed, lost a big chunk of his life as punishment for the suspicion that he had been corrupted by gifts. Internationally, this may explain why we Americans rarely ask for advice or gifts from other nations, and are not always gracious when they are forced upon us on the world stage of giving, receiving, and repaying.

REVENGE ON BENEFACTORS

In the wake of the Marshall Plan, the phrase “the Gaullist effect” was coined to refer to revenge taken on benefactors who are not sensitive to the desire of indebted nations to return a gift to which both parties attach value. Implicitly, what we wanted in return for our helping French and European reconstruction were: 1) gratitude; 2) permission to station troops; and 3)anti-communist votes. Admission of self-interest is a given in France, but we failed to tell the French how we would benefit by making those investments. We preferred to act as the donor and teacher, asking for nothing in return.

For many in France, Charles de Gaulle symbolized salvation from that humiliation of dependence and the reversal of France’s historic role as donor and teacher—the mission civilizatrice. We charged him with ingratitude because be became more openly critical of us than the Soviets, or so we thought. What we failed to realize was the familial intimacy of his candor: He was treating us en famille. He was Oncle Charles and John Kennedy was his young nephew in need of counsel. His behavior toward the Soviets was formal and cool. Even when he exploded an atomic bomb in the Sahara during Khrushchev’s 1960 visit to Paris, he thought he was doing us a favor by demonstrating to the Soviets that we did not have satellites in Western Europe, as the Soviets did in East and Central Europe. Of course, this was a form of revenge, too, for our having failed to share atomic secrets with the French, as we did with the British.

Under de Gaulle, France felt less squeezed between the US and USSR. When he fell from office, French patterns of reciprocity and notions of grandeur did not retreat. Giscard, Pompidou, Mendes France, Mitterrand, and Chirac, in their different ways, continue to remind us of our historic debts to France—from the Battle of Yorktown to the Statue of Liberty—and their own efforts to find peace in the Middle East (in ways we do not always appreciate). As the oldest nation-state, France engages in age-grading of other nations; despite our world-power status, we are adolescents still in need of being taught good manners.

To equate good manners with morals rings true, perhaps. Civility is a gift increasing in value by the scarcity of ways and means of preventing daily hurt. Civility can help launch non-vicious cycles of trust, dialogue, and cooperation. Do we not have a moral obligation to practice self-interest by offering kindness (civility) to all in the hope that we shall get some kindness in return? The Golden Rule can be translated into many vernaculars, including “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours,” “Turning the other cheek,” “Going the second mile,” or “He always returns his calls.” It is blessed to give and it is blessed to allow others to give something back—for the common good of families, workplaces, tribes, nations, and alliances. Not to accept graciously can deeply offend and create resentments, and even abiding hatred in some cultures.

But reciprocating civility does not mean glossing over differences, ignoring injustice, playing Pollyana, or avoiding confrontation. We need a repertoire of behaviors ranging from acting like a pussycat or snarling like a pit bull. An archaic dictionary definition of civility reminds us that civility is “polite education, hence good breeding.” While devoted to the idea of a biological basis for culture, I reject the genetic connotation of the phrase “good breeding,” and translate it into advocating modern education in the classics and exposing children to good examples.

Where does that leave our society, as we leave behind a century fraught with wars? Civility, like war, is a learned behavior—or at least the fine-tuning of biologically driven behavior. A curriculum for the new millennium could include George Washington’s rules for civility, and William J. Bennett’s Book of Virtues, but I especially respond to the words of the Martyr (A.D. 100), Timothy, son of a Greek father and Jewish mother, and friend of St. Paul, who wrote:

Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels... And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

Recommended Readings:

Chapple, Eliot D. Culture and Biological Man. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
Dillon, Wilton S. Gifts and Nations: The Obligation to Give, Receive, and Repay. The Hague and Paris: Mouton and Ecole Pratique de Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne, 1968.
Halle, Louis J. “International Behavior and the Prospects for Human Survival,” in Eisenberg, John F. and Dillon, Wilton S., eds. Man and Beast: Comparative Social Behavior, pp. 360-361. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York: Time-Life Books, 1998.
Yankelovich, Daniel. The Magic of Dialogue: The Art of Turning Transactions into Successful Relationships. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.

Wilton S. Dillon (CC ‘85) is senior scholar emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution. For more than 30 years, he has been responsible for the Smithsonian’s international, interdisciplinary symposia series. He is currently writing a book on the intellectual history of the Ripley administration of the Smithsonian Institution.

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