Tag Archives: culture

In the Interest of Civility

comment_latest by Rob McMahon, used under Creative CommonsKaren and I have always watched a lot of British television, largely because we both grew up with PBS as a fixture. Thus, our childhoods established a fairly high standard for quality television. This was actually a really good thing for us in terms of shared interests when we met, because there was already commonality in programs like (small surprise here) Dr. Who.

While the repertoire has expanded over our decade of marriage, the love of quality has remained the same. Karen tends to enjoy a broader range of British programs than me (Jane Austin, while I respect her as an author, does little to hold my attention, I’m afraid), but something of this nature is frequently playing in the background.

Over dinner a few nights ago, we were discussing something that she had recently watched, and the phrase of greeting used when someone knocked on the door in the program. The conversation, I think, was involving our daughter and polite greetings to use with people in conversation. Karen landed upon the phrase, “Do come in,” when inviting someone to enter your home as one having a particular ring of civility and decorum.

From my vantage point, I love the poetry of this use of our language, but am not particularly hung up on formality.

The word used in that conversation for this sort phraseology, however, works against my dislike of formality: “disarming.” Karen settled upon the phrase, stating that these sort of greetings are “disarming” in their politeness.

When I think of our current state of public discourse in America, civility is not a term that springs to mind, and I’m not surprised because it is a reflection of our current state of interpersonal communication. We’ve lost tolerance for those with differing viewpoints from our own. We’ve lost interest in hearing other perspectives. Our accepted mode of debate is to talk louder than the other party so that their perspective cannot be heard, and, failing that, to openly insult others while on the public stage. Think of your mindset when a dinner conversation turns to one of “those” topics that you wish everyone would just avoid at family gatherings (the most obvious example currently being politics). We are immediately in a defensive posture when someone raises certain subjects, and move quickly to assume the offensive posture. We’re simply culturally conditioned to do so.

The thing about politeness, however, is just what we discussed over dinner that night: it is disarming. Politeness…treating the other party with a deferential respect and courtesy…brings down barriers to communication. It establishes a common ground immediately, removing the need for offense or defense. It allows the exchange of ideas and viewpoints in (at least initially) a mutually respectful atmosphere.

I think that a huge part of why our nation (and not only our nation) has grown so intolerant and closed-minded is because we assume that a given interaction will not start with a tone of civility, but rather be primed for confrontation. That assumption, after all, has been proven correct more often than not.

The challenge is that beginning an interaction with politeness takes courage. After all, there’s a chance that it might not be reciprocated. What it will always be is disarming, acting to lower the potential friction point of anything from welcoming someone into one’s home to launching into a debate on presidential politics.

The concept of being disarming is difficult in a culture marked by the desire…and propensity…to always carry a bigger proverbial stick than the other person. Our national identity, after all, is a sort of swagger that comes with being powerful. Something that simply doesn’t compute in our modern American mindset is that civility and politeness mean lowering one’s guard, placing oneself at an intentional disadvantage to the other person.

Sort of like how the fastest way to calm down someone who is angry is to lower your own voice so that they have to pause to hear you.

If nothing else, if we can muster no other form of civility than this, I think that all Americans would benefit if we would simply lower our voices.

There would be something remarkably disarming about that.

Image attribution: Rob McMahon under Creative Commons.

Glimmer of Hope

I’ve had a long-standing rule that I don’t write about politics in this space. I’m not going to violate that tonight. Sometimes, though, politics intersect with culture. It’s the culture that I’m writing about, so don’t find that off-putting.

A week ago was Halloween. I’m honestly not a big fan of Halloween, but I am a big fan of cosplay, and it’s fun to watch our oldest daughter pick out her costume and get excited each year, so I’m at least tolerating it for the time being. Last week, Karen and I decided to divide the responsibilities. She took our daughter around the neighborhood, and I stayed at home to hand out candy to the other children. There were some excellent costumes (my favorites were a Nightmare-Before-Christmas guy and goth Raggedy Ann couple), but what struck me was how, in true New England fashion, everyone was so polite.

We ran out of candy early. I had to tell one group approaching the door that we were out just before I extinguished our porch light. They smiled and thanked us before moving on.

Everyone was happy. Everyone was getting along.

The election season of 2016 has taken something ugly and brought it to the surface. I don’t believe for a moment that this election created our hatred…it was festering well before the likes of Trump whipped it into a fever pitch. Unfortunately, it has brought it to the surface. Sure, we’ve seen the footage of violence at rallies from both sides, but there are more anecdotal experiences, as well. I’ve seen people stop speaking to each other. One of my dear, long-standing friends told me succinctly during a Twitter debate to leave America. I’ve heard fear about today, election day…fear of intimidation, fear of sabotage. I’ve had more than my share of tense family conversations.

Certainly, I’m watching the news with much trepidation as I write this. I arrived at my polling place early this morning, though, with even more trepidation.

What I found surprised me.

The people in line were joking and laughing. People holding signs were thanking others for coming out to vote. A police officer was present. He was greeting those in line, and assisting those with disabilities that prevented them from standing for an extended time (it was a long line) to the front. Police officers are always so much more respectful in New England than other places I’ve lived.

At first it was a release of tension, perhaps…I think nearly everyone is tired of the hatred that has been passed around liberally over the recent months. Ultimately, though, it was more than that. There was civility, regardless of which political direction was going through any of our minds. There was a sense that we were in this together.

Just like last week, when the entire neighborhood…and those from surrounding neighborhoods…were so polite and kind to each other. Perhaps moreso, as today there were no masks behind which to hide.

This gives me hope.

Because after all of the ill intent that has been spoken and acted leading up to today, there is something after. Whatever happens tonight as votes are tallied, there is a life beyond. And, when the dust settles and the cults of personality fade away…whichever way this election goes…we must all still live with each other. We must find a way to be colleagues, co-workers, neighbors, fellow church-goers, again. We must heal from the hate.

We’re all still citizens of the same country, but we’re also all human beings. There’s so much more that we have in common than divides us.

From this small experience this morning, I’m hopeful that we’re beginning to remember that. I need that hope.

We all do.

Raising the Space Bar

Photo-Jul-09-11-03-58-PMA couple of years ago, I had a debate with a colleague about a comment that I made. The comment was that “our generation” had arguably seen the most significant technological change of any generation in history. He disagreed, feeling that the industrial age had brought more. Whichever side of the debate you might fall on, my rationale was that my grandmother, when she was still alive, seemed to somehow experience an arresting of her ability to grasp technology more advanced than a land-line telephone.

When I was young (and hold on, because I’m about to date myself), my family had a “party line.” That is, we shared a telephone line with my grandmother. If she was using the phone from her home miles away, and we picked it up to make a call, we could hear her conversation, and knew we had to wait until the line was free.

I had my first mobile phone when I was college. It was one of those huge bag phones that went in your console and connected to an antenna on the exterior of your vehicle. 60 free minutes was a big deal then, and I’m still in the realm of ancient history for many of you. I remember my grandmother calling that number and being baffled by the concept of voicemail. I would have messages from her asking if I was there.

When I was very young, I typed DOS commands into a huge, clunky computer in my bedroom. Now, the phone that I carry in my pocket has more processing power than computers that rendered the original Star Wars films.

My point is that, more than an explosion of technology, people of my age have seen an exponential increase of information, and a fundamental change in how we access that information. We forget what it was like “back then.” The idea that we used to keep a hand-written address book for all of our contacts is foreign, the fact that I went through undergrad taking notebooks to class for note-taking bewildering.

Karen and I got rid of cable almost immediately after we married, because there were just too many other ways to watch what we wanted to watch. As such, our daughter has grown up her entire life with no idea of television being anything other than a streaming video service (she knows the difference between Netflix and Amazon). And, yes, I understand that her entire life has been five years, but this has still been her entire life. When we were setting up utilities for this new apartment, however, we got a good deal by agreeing to subscribe to cable also (poor cable providers, struggling so hard to keep an ancient business model alive). We agreed and, for fun, I connected the box, mostly to remember what it was like to watch something on a network’s schedule again.

While we were watching something together a few weekends ago, my daughter and I decided to get a snack during a commercial break. As we got up to go into the kitchen, she pressed the space bar on the computer keyboard to pause the program. It didn’t pause. She pressed it again. It didn’t pause. She gave a confused look.

My attempt to explain the concept of “live TV” to her failed in almost every way, as there is no reference point for her, no scaffolding upon which she can build the idea in her head. It’s amazing to me to think of the lightning-fast pace at which our concept of “normal” accelerates, of how easily we forget…forget in a way that my grandmother, I think, did not, because we forget even the foundation upon which is built our current state of “normal.”

I wonder what our daughter will consider normal when she is my age? I wonder how antiquated the idea of streaming episodes of her favorite programs on Netflix will seem then?

I wonder if that memory will even exist outside of an entry in an external storage device.

I wonder what we will have lost with all of that progress.

Reflections from a Sugar Bowl

A little over a year ago, I inadvertently created a Saturday morning tradition of making pancakes with our daughter. It has become something that she looks forward to eagerly each weekend, despite my zombie-like state (which doesn’t break until at least after my first cup of coffee) in which I attempt to assemble what is needed for such an endeavor in the kitchen. I am not a morning person, and I have no business making food. Yet, our daughter loves this time together. So, pancakes it is.

At some point in the last year, we acquired a kitchen cart…sort of a mobile counter space on wheels that can be positioned wherever you need the extra space while cooking. On my rare adventure into the kitchen, I find it extremely useful. As our move back to New England was abrupt, we’re apartment-dwellers again for a while, and this particular piece of furniture is being used for more storage than it had previously in its lower cabinets. The end result of this is that it rolls much more sluggishly. Its wheels also tend to grind to a halt as you’re pushing it, which can result in it tipping forward if you’re not careful.

“Not careful” being synonymous with “not nearly caffeinated enough to function.”

You see where this is going, right?

Just before the crash, there was this sort of slow-motion, surreal moment in which Karen screamed and I lurched forward in an attempt to catch at least one piece of the various items that flew from their now-unstable resting place. Miraculously, we only lost one as it burst into small shards upon contact with the floor. Sadly, it was a sugar bowl that had been given to Karen by my grandmother before her death.

There are times when you feel clumsy, and times when you feel much, much more self-deprecating. Sadness doesn’t quite describe the loss of this item, now irreplaceable.

After a moment of quiet, we attended to the business of sweeping the floor and making certain that small, sharp slivers were not left lying around for children to step on, and our daughter, in her uncertain but beautifully kind-hearted way, was trying to console Karen.

“Dont’worry, Mommy.” she stated matter-of-factly. “We can always get another one on Amazon.”

Besides being disturbed by the commonplace consumerism that is already edging its way into my daughter’s mind, I’m torn a bit here, because, while I want to impress upon her the concept of an irreplaceable, valuable object, I don’t want to encourage more materialism. We are, after all, trying to trim down the toy collection, not embrace a philosophy that would add to it. I want her to appreciate things that she will be given, that she will inherit, things that may serve to remind her of us when we’re gone, as that sugar bowl reminded us of my grandmother. Not the most poignant reminder, but it made a connection. I want her to do this, though, without idealizing the item itself. In short, I want to impress the differentiation between a sign and a symbol, which is likely a bit too ambitious for a five-year-old.

You can’t blame me for trying, though.

Earlier this year, while we still lived in North Carolina, we had the adventure of a weekend power outage caused by an ice storm. While we stayed with friends who had warm living rooms for two nights, I went back home to check in on things during the day.

Our daughter has a beta fish named Charlie (For the record, I thought it was a bad idea). We tried our best to wrap his tank in towels and insulate him against the cold, but on the second day of the house hovering in the low 40’s, Charlie succumbed to the temperature. I found him floating that morning. After discussing this with Karen, we decided that we were in no way prepared to have that conversation with our daughter. So, on our first night with restored power, after we had brought in our overnight bags and the kids were in bed, I went back out to a local pet store. With much searching and assistance from the kind (but slightly bemused) girl minding the store that evening, I located a red beta that looked almost identical to Charlie, and to which Karen and I jokingly referred as “Charlie Mark II.”

Our daughter never knew the difference, and I’m content with that.

As we settled into this new apartment which will be home for a few months, I fed Charlie one night while Karen and the kids were out of town. I talked to him just as I had the first beta named Charlie, and realized that I had just connected to two, that the replacement for that tiny little creature had merged with the original in my head as though it was nothing more than a replacement phone after you’ve dropped and cracked the glass on the first.

A tiny little life, so easily replaced by a simple drive to a place of retail.

And I suddenly wonder if I’ve any place to discuss the merits of a lost sugar bowl at all.