Promote Civility

6. Civic Knowledge and Skills

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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Civility is an important but often misunderstood idea. For some people, the word sounds like a demand that angry people become quiet, polite, and easy to ignore. Others worry that calls for civility impose one group’s communication style on everyone else. Those concerns are real. “Civility” can be misused as a way to avoid painful truths, silence protest, or make legitimate anger seem improper. But that is not what constructive civility means. As BI’s essay on the meaning of civility explains, civility is not the suppression of conflict. It is a way of engaging tough issues without turning opponents into enemies.

At its best, civility asks people to express their anger, fear, and disagreement in ways that others might actually be able to hear. This does not require cold politeness or emotional restraint that feels false. Some communities argue vigorously, interrupt frequently, or use expressive language as part of normal interaction. Civility should not erase those differences. The deeper standard is whether people are still treating others as human beings who have some right to speak, be heard, and participate in the conversation. The Institute for Civility puts this well: civility means claiming and caring for one’s own identity, needs, and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process.

Civility is especially important in intractable conflict because contempt is contagious. Once people decide that the other side is stupid, evil, or beneath respect, it becomes easier to justify harsh tactics and harder to consider any proposal that comes from them. The BI civility essay connects this problem to the principled negotiation idea of separating the people from the problem. Parties can be “hard” on the problem while remaining “soft” on the people. This means they can criticize policies, expose harms, and demand change without relying on ridicule or dehumanization. In fact, such criticism is often stronger because it focuses attention on the actual problem, rather than on the emotional fight surrounding it.

Civil discourse also requires a willingness to listen and to be challenged. The Ohio State Center for Ethics and Human Values describes civil discourse as public deliberation aimed at expanding knowledge and promoting understanding. That kind of discourse can be uncomfortable. It may require people to hear claims they believe are wrong, unfair, or offensive. It also requires people to defend their own views clearly enough that others can understand them. As the Harvard Kennedy School has argued, civil discourse involves both speaking one’s views clearly and listening closely to others. Listening does not mean agreeing. It means taking seriously the possibility that one’s own side may not have the whole truth.

Promoting civility is therefore not a call for weak or timid communication. It is a call for disciplined communication. People can be passionate, direct, and morally serious while still avoiding unnecessary insult. They can name injustice without claiming that every opponent is beyond redemption. They can protest, negotiate, deliberate, and advocate in ways that leave room for future cooperation. In intractable conflicts, this matters because most groups cannot simply make the other side disappear. They have to share institutions, communities, and futures. Civility helps preserve the possibility that, after the anger has been expressed and the wrongs have been named, people can still work together on the problems that none of them can solve alone.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.