Civility Discussion

 One of my top twenty characters of history is George Washington.  I admired the guy because he spent an awful lot of time....thinking and reflecting upon things.  Unlike Jefferson who spent a fair amount of time reading through books....Washington had a lot of conversations with people (chats).  His perceptions in life were built upon these chats.

At some point, he wrote this list of 'rules', and it had to do more with civility than anything else.  

For the past year, I've reflected a lot over the loss of civility in society, and how a fair number of Americans are not able to sit in the same room with various people because they are 'different'. 

So I pulled out the 110 rules that Washington wrote down.  Some of them are interesting to review, and some might be worth remembering.

Example: Drink not too leisurely nor yet too hastily. Before and after drinking, wipe your lips; breathe not then or ever with too great a noise, for its uncivil.

Example: Speak not evil of the absent for it is unjust.

Example: Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth thereof. In discoursing of things you have heard name not your author always a secret discover not.

Example: Go not thither, where you know not, whether you shall be welcome or not. Give not advice without being asked & when desired do it briefly.

The chief problems in this modern era?  After a fair amount of pondering over the past year, I'd say we have four basic issues, which would need a lot of repair....because of our frustrations.  The four?

1.  Too much is going on without people having a face-to-face communication. You have some idiot on Twitter who goes off to insult 800k people, and if they'd had to face each of the 800k....they probably would have soften the insult by 90-percent.  

2.  People with the behavior-level of a 5th-grade kid....are trying to pretend they are mature enough or adult enough....to carry on a crusade or 'drama'.  Their audience attaches themselves to the crusade for a while....then realizes the fakeness or poor maturity, and then the whole thing collapses in a matter of days or weeks.

3.  Bullying is national trend.  You could be standing in the aisle of Piggly Wiggly grocery, and have some childish behavior occur, and suddenly there's a five-star act of bullying going on.  You could be sitting in a church group, and suddenly find your minister behaving more like a bully than an actual minister.

4.  With the amount of drama now put into serious chatter....if you asked enough questions, you'd find the guy in front of you with the serious mindset....really doesn't know that much about the topic.  He's standing there with a 3x5 inch index card of information.  So a lot of this missing civility....is due to people marginal information?  I would bet on half of society falling into this category.

We are messed up, but I don't see how the landscape changes for the future.