The Art of Manliness - Beyond Mere Politeness — The Art of True Civility

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.260 It often seems like we live in a very inconsiderate, indifferent, and ill-mannered time, and that

00:00:16.660 the cure for what ails our abrasive and disjointed relations is a lot more politeness. But my

00:00:21.500 guess would say that what we really need is a revival of civility. Today on the show,

00:00:25.800 Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves,

00:00:31.720 explains the difference between politeness and civility, and how being civil can actually

00:00:36.080 require being impolite. We discuss how civility ensures the health of democracy, and good

00:00:41.360 government requires citizens' ability to govern themselves and check each other, which may

00:00:45.660 require acting a little like Larry David. We talk about what Homer's Odyssey can teach us about the

00:00:50.920 art of hospitality, the relationship between civility and integrity, and more. After the

00:00:55.840 show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash civility.

00:01:09.680 All right, Alexandra Hudson, welcome to the show.

00:01:12.500 Thanks so much, Brett.

00:01:13.780 You got a new book out called The Soul of Civility, where you explore what it means to be civil.

00:01:18.940 And that's a topic that a lot of people talk about when they see things get acrimonious online.

00:01:25.180 And you started the book off with a story talking about your experience in Washington

00:01:29.640 that led you to take this deep dive into civility. So walk us through that experience. What happened

00:01:34.760 in Washington?

00:01:36.100 Thanks, Brett. So my book is about what I think is the most important question of our day,

00:01:41.860 which is how do we flourish across deep difference? And I think you're right. People

00:01:46.360 see the rancor and divisiveness all around us and intuit that this is a serious problem.

00:01:52.840 I have a unique background and familiarity with this topic. I was raised by Judy, the manners lady.

00:01:59.760 My mother is this internationally renowned expert in etiquette and manners. And actually,

00:02:03.960 while writing this book, I discovered that my mother is only one of four women named Judy,

00:02:09.260 who are internationally renowned experts in manners and etiquette. So my mother is Judith Martin of

00:02:16.240 the Washington Post, who's maybe the most famous. My mother is also one of these figures. So I was

00:02:20.580 raised in this home that was attentive to social norms and expectations. And in addition to teaching

00:02:25.680 manners, my mother really embodied the spirit of grace and hospitality and other orientedness that 0.98

00:02:31.200 is the hallmark of true civility, as I define it. Sacrifice of the self so that the social

00:02:36.100 can flourish in ourselves and society. And one thing my mother always said to me growing up was

00:02:41.820 that manners mattered because they were an outward extension of our inward character.

00:02:47.260 And I have this constitutional allergy to authority. I don't like being told what to do for no reason.

00:02:54.260 And so I always kind of questioned these social norms. Why do we use forks and not chopsticks? Why do

00:02:59.300 we do things the way that we do them? But I always followed them. My mother promised that they would

00:03:03.160 lead to success in work and school and life. And she was generally right until I found myself at the

00:03:09.340 United States Department of Education. So I took this role in government because I love learning and

00:03:14.340 I was raised in this intellectually omnivorous home. And I was confronted with these two extremes

00:03:19.660 in government. On one hand, there were these people who had sharp elbows and who were hostile and

00:03:26.600 willing to step on anyone to get ahead. And on the other hand, there were these people who,

00:03:31.460 at first, I thought were my people. They were the ones with polish and they were poised and they

00:03:36.700 were suave and they knew the rules of etiquette and propriety. But I quickly came to realize that

00:03:42.560 these were the people who would smile and flatter me one moment and then stab me in the back the 0.76

00:03:48.320 next. That their polish, their politeness was this tool to disarm me and others in order to get ahead. 0.69

00:03:53.860 And at first, I thought these were polar opposites. But I realized that these two modes,

00:03:57.380 the extreme hostility and the extreme politeness were actually two sides of the same coin because

00:04:02.900 both modes instrumentalized others. They saw others as a means to their selfish ends, to their goals,

00:04:09.840 whatever they wanted, and saw them as tools to either manipulate or discard. So I left government

00:04:16.260 very disillusioned for many reasons. And one of which was the main reason was this extreme,

00:04:21.760 you know, hostility and rancor and divisiveness. And so I left government and reflected deeply on

00:04:28.480 this question, you know, what does it mean to be a human being? And what is the bare minimum of

00:04:32.220 respect that we are owed and owed others by virtue of being members of the human community and having

00:04:37.520 equal moral worth as human beings? And why does that matter in practice? What does that mean for our

00:04:42.980 deeply divided moment? And one thing that experience helped me realize was that there is this essential

00:04:48.860 distinction between civility and politeness. That politeness is manners, it's etiquette, it's a

00:04:55.520 technique, it's behavioral, it's external, superficial, whereas civility is internal. It's a disposition of

00:05:02.280 the heart that sees others as our moral equals and sees them as worth respecting in light of that. And

00:05:09.340 sometimes actually respecting someone, actually being civil, requires being impolite. It requires breaking

00:05:15.560 the rules of etiquette and propriety and telling hard truths, engaging in robust debate, right? You had

00:05:22.080 a great guest on a few weeks ago about the art of saying no to people. We're deeply uncomfortable with

00:05:27.940 saying no to people, but actually saying no is as a way that we can respect ourselves and our own

00:05:32.420 humanity, our own dignity. And so there is this relationship between respecting others and respecting

00:05:37.260 ourselves. And that sometimes requires, you know, being impolite. It feels impolite to say no to people.

00:05:42.640 It feels impolite to tell them hard truths, but that's a way of actually respecting ourselves and

00:05:46.960 others. Yeah, I think that that's the big theme in your book is the difference between civility and

00:05:51.500 politeness. And your mom wasn't wrong when she said that manners, these outward things are important.

00:05:58.080 Right. They work if the inner part, the civility part lines up. Right. And as you said, sometimes in

00:06:04.720 order to be civil, you have to break the rules of etiquette. And I've often thought of, you know,

00:06:10.100 being civil or even just etiquette, what it means to have etiquette. It's all about making other

00:06:15.880 people feel comfortable in whatever situation you find yourself in. And so for the most part,

00:06:20.800 we had these etiquette rules that say you shake hands this way, you introduce people this way,

00:06:24.640 because it kind of helps smooth out our interactions with human beings. But sometimes in order to make

00:06:29.740 that person feel comfortable, you might have to break the rules of etiquette.

00:06:33.340 Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're right. There is this disconnect between inner and outer,

00:06:38.980 and that sometimes actually respecting people, actually supporting, facilitating friendship

00:06:43.340 requires breaking the rules. And the story I love that illustrates this is the story of Queen Victoria

00:06:48.660 when she was hosting this grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace for the Queen of Sheba as her guest

00:06:54.420 of honor. And the Queen of Sheba at this elegant state dinner did the unthinkable. She took the bowl in

00:07:01.620 front of her and tipped it to her lips and sipped it. And of course, this was a finger bowl meant to

00:07:06.460 wash your hands. So you don't drink the finger bowl. But what did Queen, so the room gasped and

00:07:11.520 watched what the Queen did. And no one could believe what she did. She, Queen Victoria, took the bowl

00:07:16.920 and did the exact same thing and tipped the finger bowl to her lips. Why? You know, she flouted these 0.58

00:07:22.300 rules of propriety in her Victorian England that was very attentive and mindful of social norms and

00:07:27.940 expectations. But she broke them because she wanted to make her guest feel at ease and comfortable.

00:07:32.960 And she wanted to facilitate the friendship and facilitate the trust that is the stuff of the

00:07:37.360 good life, the life well lived. And so you're absolutely right that I think at their best,

00:07:42.840 manners can perfect and politeness can perfect the disposition of civility and facilitate social

00:07:48.380 interactions. But on their own, they're not enough. Politeness alone, just doing the act,

00:07:52.820 going through the actions and following blindly the rules of etiquette and propriety alone,

00:07:57.960 that's not enough to heal our deep divisions and help us flourish. We need the disposition of

00:08:02.560 civility that actually respects people as well. Yeah. And you mentioned that people can use

00:08:08.340 politeness as a bludgeon, right? To knock people over the head and kind of put them in their place.

00:08:13.840 Like, oh, well, you don't know the rules and I'm going to like shove this in your face and make you feel 0.94

00:08:18.900 bad. Yeah. There's this great book I read as part of this writing my own book called Class by a

00:08:24.700 gentleman named Paul Fusel, popular writer in the 90s, 80s and 90s. And he says that America,

00:08:30.960 you know, we like to think of ourself as this classless society where the society where all men 0.98

00:08:35.560 are created equal. And but he says that's not true. Like we were actually a perpetually class

00:08:40.380 conscious society because we pretend that class doesn't exist. And we don't have these inherited

00:08:45.480 things like rank and status and rituals that accord rank and status. We're socially mobile and always

00:08:51.360 trying to get an upper hand and define ourselves by the other. And so he says that the middle class

00:08:57.420 are the most status conscious and they're the most insecure. And the most insecure are the greatest,

00:09:04.060 biggest snobs, the ones that are most fastidious about the rules of others and the social infractions

00:09:10.280 of others. Why? Because if they know the rules, it breeds their self-righteousness. And if you break

00:09:15.740 the rules, it allows them to feel good in comparison to others. And so I think that's such a great insight

00:09:20.780 that the people that are the most insecure are the ones that are most fastidious about the rules of

00:09:25.180 propriety and, you know, tone policing and always surveying, making sure that everyone's doing the

00:09:29.660 right thing, the proper thing. There's this great line I'm paraphrasing from George Bernard Shaw.

00:09:34.480 He says, if you only take the trouble to follow the rules, you can basically get away with murder.

00:09:40.380 Like that, that you, if people think that, you know, you can follow the rules, you can smile,

00:09:44.620 you can have the proper facade, the proper persona, that that's enough. But, and we see that a lot

00:09:49.820 today, a lot of silencing, of tone policing, of people worrying about what people are saying and

00:09:55.400 weaponizing, you know, what's appropriate to say and what's not, as opposed to looking at people's

00:10:00.160 heart. And we should not allow the rules of propriety to get in the way of actually having

00:10:04.860 important conversations and actually respecting others. Yeah. You see that disconnect. I've read

00:10:09.460 just articles in different magazines or newspapers of individuals who maybe came from lower class

00:10:15.520 parts of America, working class. And then they, you know, because they did well in the SAT,

00:10:20.020 they end up at an elite college and they find like the, the fastidiousness about just what's

00:10:27.940 proper. It was mind boggling for them. They couldn't figure it out. And they often felt

00:10:32.640 out of step with everyone else. And then also it's, what's weird is like what they thought was

00:10:37.600 proper, you know, as a working class person, because they kind of grew up by more of a traditional

00:10:42.340 idea maybe of what it meant to be properly mannered. That wasn't the etiquette thing in the

00:10:48.420 upper middle class. And so there's this disconnect and no one really explained it to them. And so they,

00:10:53.860 they had to spend a lot of time just trying to figure out like, well, how am I supposed to

00:10:56.640 act? Like even like the clothes you wear. So, you know, you might, a lot of working class people

00:11:00.540 think, well, you know, I'm at this elite school or at this business, I should wear business attire.

00:11:05.580 Well, now it's more like, well, that's actually gauche. If you wear a shirt and tie and a suit,

00:11:10.820 you need to wear athleisure wear. That's kind of like, you know, subtly shows that you have

00:11:15.340 this distinction. So yeah, it's a example of the stuff that it can be used manners, politeness,

00:11:21.800 propriety can be used to just make people feel terrible.

00:11:25.700 You're absolutely right. It's such a great point that, you know, people today who claim that

00:11:30.480 civility and manners are a tool of people in positions of power to silence or to keep people

00:11:35.880 who are powerless in society powerless, you know, to some extent they're right. And I argue that

00:11:41.400 they're talking about politeness. They're not talking about civility. And you made the great point

00:11:45.680 that the rules of fashion and politeness, like that, that, that the norms du jour, the fashion

00:11:50.300 du jour, those change with remarkable frequency. And we see that across history and across culture.

00:11:58.060 Why do they change? Because the moment that the lower classes in society begin to adopt certain 0.78

00:12:04.580 fashions or certain tastes and certain mores, then that the elites in society have to invent new ones

00:12:10.180 to, to keep ahead. They have to always have ways of distinguishing themselves from,

00:12:14.020 from everyone else in society. Two quick examples of this that I love from history.

00:12:18.320 One is the hidden history of the pineapple. So in England in the 1800s, the pineapple,

00:12:25.220 you know, this, this, this quotidian fruit that we see for 99 cents, you know, at Costco

00:12:29.680 everywhere today, utterly ubiquitous today was this status symbol of like unconscious,

00:12:36.040 like we can't even fathom how desirable the pineapple was. I read one article in the Guardian that

00:12:41.340 estimated that a single pineapple in today's dollars would have cost, you know, 150,000 pounds

00:12:46.400 or something outrageously expensive. It was this elite status. So today the pineapple is like the

00:12:51.220 symbol of hospitality and it has roots in this epoch in English history where the pineapple was just the

00:12:56.580 status symbol of luxury. And, and so people would buy the pineapple and sit at their dinner table and

00:13:01.660 then have these lavish parties right up until the pineapple was like, you know, rotting on their table.

00:13:05.660 But it was this thing that conferred incredible cachet and status on the people who own the

00:13:10.560 pineapple. And so some industrious merchants said, okay, I see an opportunity here. And they started

00:13:17.060 importing pineapples from other parts of the world relatively inexpensively. And then they also

00:13:22.420 started renting out pineapples. So if you're a middle-class person that couldn't afford the

00:13:26.200 exorbitant fee of having your own pineapple, that you could rent one for the evening, still paying

00:13:31.720 out the nose, but you could have that status just for, you know, one dinner party to impress your

00:13:36.360 guests. And then of course, the moment that these very industrious, you know, merchants made the

00:13:41.940 pineapple more accessible, then the pineapple went out of style. And so we, the pineapple, you know,

00:13:47.140 became increasingly ubiquitous and, and it is what it is today, a delicious fruit, but just not the

00:13:51.520 status symbol it was in the, at its peak in English history. The other quick example I'll share is

00:13:57.020 this rule, you know, this rule, you can't wear white after Labor Day. I personally hate that rule.

00:14:02.080 I love monochrome. I wear white all year round. I love, I love my neutrals, but this rule is from

00:14:08.740 kind of the Emily Vanderbilt Gilded Age era of American history, where there were these increasingly

00:14:13.680 baroque rules of etiquette and propriety because the old American money wanted to distinguish themselves 0.91

00:14:20.260 from the new money of the, of the robber barons of the Gilded Age in American history. So that's one

00:14:25.420 hold over today that that particular rule that is emblematic of this era in American history, where

00:14:31.000 rules were increasingly complex to confuse people, that it was a way to distinguish the insiders and

00:14:36.520 the outsiders. So if you were caught wearing white after Labor Day, oh, we knew you were part of the 0.79

00:14:40.380 out-group. You're not part of the old moneyed in-group. So you're absolutely right that norms have been

00:14:44.740 weaponized and they've been this tool to distinguish in-group from out-group for us to feel better about

00:14:50.420 ourselves in comparison to others. And that's part of my project in distinguishing between civility and

00:14:56.220 politeness. How do we just, how do we think about the norms that we actually want in society that

00:15:02.100 contribute to the joint project of human flourishing and the good life? And how do we

00:15:06.740 disambiguate that from the norms that divide and that make people feel poorly and that do oppress, that do

00:15:12.760 marginalize? Because that there is a rich history of that. The people who argue against politeness and

00:15:17.700 civility are not wrong. But my take on that is that we just have to distinguish between civility

00:15:22.820 actually respecting others, seeing them as our moral equals and worthy of respect in light of that,

00:15:27.460 and mere politeness. So you argue that the source of our civility problem is that all of us humans

00:15:34.520 have this tension between self-love and wanting to be part of a group. So how do these competing

00:15:41.000 forces lead to incivility? So I love the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to kind of illustrate this.

00:15:49.620 Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. And the story of

00:15:54.260 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde really embodies that. Dr. Jekyll is this very well-respected physician,

00:16:01.440 and he's repressed these darker aspects of self, these longings, these desires. And he creates this

00:16:08.120 potion that allows him to transform into this insidious Mr. Hyde that goes out and creates

00:16:13.500 mischief and does damage and hurts people at night. And the more he indulges his inner Mr. Hyde,

00:16:19.060 the easier it becomes to transform into Mr. Hyde. And then he finds himself spontaneously transforming

00:16:24.480 into Mr. Hyde. So what became this outlet for him to indulge these baser desires consequence-free

00:16:31.900 while still maintaining his public persona and his great reputation as this prestigious physician

00:16:37.700 ultimately comes to overwhelm him and overtake him. And that's a really interesting point that I

00:16:46.220 talk about how we each, in our nature, we're defined by a deep social impulse. We long to be

00:16:52.620 in relationship. We long to be in friendship with others and community. We become fully human

00:16:56.940 in relationship with others. And yet we're also defined by self-love. And we're morally and

00:17:03.200 biologically driven to meet our own needs before others. An extreme manifestation of our self-love

00:17:09.120 is what St. Augustine, one of my favorite thinkers, called the libido dominendi, the lust to dominate

00:17:14.840 others. And we see this idea in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde too, that the more we indulge that libido

00:17:21.920 dominendi, that selfishness, that manifestation of selfishness within each of us, that the lust to

00:17:26.760 dominate becomes the dominating lust and it dominates us as well. And that's exactly what happened in Dr.

00:17:32.120 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde, the Mr. Hyde within Dr. Jekyll ended up overtaking him and killing him.

00:17:37.900 And so Blaise Pascal, one of my other favorite thinkers, this French polymath and genius scientist,

00:17:43.080 he said that the human condition is defined by the greatness and wretchedness of man. That we have

00:17:49.140 this unbelievable benevolence and capability of doing wonderful things for the world, for humanity,

00:17:54.760 but we're also fallen. And that these two aspects of self are equally part of who we are and what it

00:18:01.000 means to be human. And so which aspect of ourself do we indulge? Do we cultivate? Do we refine and

00:18:08.220 practice? Because that becomes our habits and our character over time.

00:18:13.580 No, yeah, I think you're right. So all of us, we have this desire to be a part of a group. It feels

00:18:18.040 good to be a part of a group. We're wired for that. But at the same time, we also think about ourselves.

00:18:22.920 And when we indulge too much in our wants and wanting to dominate others and put our needs first,

00:18:30.140 that's when incivility rises. That's when the tension in a group starts to rise. So

00:18:35.460 it's this balancing act because you don't want to be completely submissive to the group. You want to

00:18:39.800 still be a self, have boundaries as people talk about these days. But the trick is trying to figure

00:18:45.380 out like, how much do I assert myself and how much do I put others first so we maintain group harmony?

00:18:51.260 That's right. So civility is the art of human flourishing. Politeness wants to reduce human 0.91

00:18:59.620 interactions to a science, to a set of rules. But you're absolutely right that human life, human

00:19:05.520 relationships, human beings themselves, we're far too complex. It's too nuanced to just be reduced to

00:19:11.900 a monolithic set of rules. That we need to have the inner disposition that gives us the wisdom to

00:19:18.800 discern when to break the rules, when to say yes, when to say no, when to contravene norms,

00:19:24.620 prevailing norms of the day in order to support the project, the joint project of human flourishing.

00:19:31.140 So what you do in this book is you take readers on this sweeping tour of writings running from the

00:19:37.120 dawn of civilization until the present age that grapple with this incivility causing tension. It's like,

00:19:43.640 how can we be a self, but also belong in groups that everyone can flourish? What was the earliest

00:19:50.240 civility manual that you found?

00:19:53.300 So the oldest book in the world, Brett, is a civility book. It's called The Teachings of

00:20:01.740 Patahotep. So Patahotep from ancient Egypt, and we get it from 26, 2700 BC. And Patahotep was an

00:20:10.200 Egyptian advisor, so an advisor to the Egyptian pharaoh. And he had reached the pinnacle of

00:20:15.480 political life in Egypt and the civilized world at the time. And he was actually offered to become

00:20:22.340 pharaoh himself. He turned down that offer to power. And after being in the room where it happens his

00:20:28.920 entire life, he chose to retire and he reflected on the stuff of the good life. What are the timeless

00:20:34.380 principles of human flourishing? And so he wrote down these 38 teachings, these maxims that we have

00:20:41.060 today as the maxims of Patahotep. And what is so fun is that if you look these up, they are remarkably

00:20:46.540 timeless. Like they could be in a mismanners column in the Washington Post today. They're very basic and

00:20:52.380 rudimentary things like, you know, be kind to your friends, not just when you need something,

00:20:58.600 but just do it spontaneously. Do it just because they're your friends.

00:21:01.260 Don't be cruel to people who are less powerful than you. Like don't abuse your power. This is a

00:21:07.540 great one when I also saw time and time again, when I was looking at these civility handbooks

00:21:11.900 across history and culture, Patahotep several times in his maxims has several maxims dedicated to

00:21:17.440 do not gossip. He says, don't gossip, don't do it. It undermines trust and it undermines this fragile

00:21:23.260 project of community and civilization. So it's just remarkable how the continuity, you know,

00:21:29.080 he was just a thoughtful observer of the human experience and the human condition and saw that

00:21:34.140 we were prone to act selfishly. And he said, don't, that's not the stuff of the good life.

00:21:39.980 And it was fun to, so it's fun in my, in my chapter two, I start with Patahotep and then trace

00:21:44.820 this kind of ethos of civility as I define it, restraining the selfish aspects of who we are

00:21:51.120 so that the social can flourish. And we see that time and time again, you know, to ancient Greece,

00:21:57.260 etiquette manuals there too, to the medieval period, the Renaissance, to, you know, ancient

00:22:02.640 Indian epics, to modern day American etiquette manuals. So human nature doesn't change. It's

00:22:08.460 an important problem today, but it's one we've been grappling with for a really long time.

00:22:13.440 Yeah. So the Egyptians had the first one and basically it laid the groundwork. It's all about 1.00

00:22:17.700 putting others before yourself and kind of harnessing your selfish desires. And then you just see that

00:22:23.580 throughout the rest. I mean, all of them, what they all have in common, whether it's from ancient

00:22:27.200 Greece, you particularly see this in ancient China with Confucianism, where it's all about the social

00:22:32.660 order. What I love about Confucianism is yes, they have these like strict rituals that you're supposed 0.68

00:22:37.440 to follow in order to, you know, be a good person there. But the underlying principle was it's,

00:22:44.720 it's Aristotelian. It's really interesting. It's very Aristotelian. It's that you have to do the right

00:22:48.620 thing for the right reason at the right time in whatever situation you find yourself in. So it's

00:22:54.520 all about just helping the social order flourish and that you see that in everything. It's not,

00:22:59.720 yeah, they have these, these guidelines and rules that, that are there to help you because they work

00:23:04.380 in most situations. But the underlying thing is like, just do the right thing for the situation

00:23:10.060 you find yourself in, in order to help that social gathering be its best.

00:23:15.540 That's absolutely right. I'm so glad you brought up Confucianism, both the handbook of Confucius's

00:23:21.500 Analects and also the Chinese Book of Rites, which is all these, you know, rituals and decorum of

00:23:27.000 politeness. But central to Confucianism is this concept of Ren, which is a sort of humaneness and

00:23:34.720 benevolence and goodness and love. And so Ren is central to Confucian philosophy and to Confucius's

00:23:41.480 idea of how do we, of the good life, how do we thrive in community with others. And, and what's

00:23:47.600 key is that, you know, people like Ptahotep, people like Confucius, people like, you know,

00:23:53.900 Erasmus of Rotterdam, Daniel of Beckles, these other heroes of civility that I talk about throughout

00:23:58.160 my book from different times and places, they would not have needed to take the time to write these

00:24:03.960 works, these handbooks for their societies. If people had been following them intuitively,

00:24:09.220 right, they wrote them down because they looked around them so that people were falling short of

00:24:13.980 these ideals and said, okay, like, let's think about what we need to, let's, let's reassess and

00:24:18.900 let's put down in writing these principles that can guide us and help us flourish. And it's really

00:24:23.360 easy for people to look around us and feel like we're in the worst era of civility. And a lot of,

00:24:28.020 you know, pundits and commentators, there's a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric around this topic,

00:24:32.800 but I love zooming out and looking to the past and looking across history and culture. Like people have

00:24:37.240 been grappling with this, these questions for a very long time since the dawn of our species,

00:24:41.500 which I think is, is comforting and humbling because it allows us to recognize there are no

00:24:46.680 easy solutions to this. This is the problem of the human condition. It's not a, not a now problem,

00:24:51.020 not an America problem. This is a problem of who we are. And so it's never going to be perfectly

00:24:55.360 resolved, but we each have a role in, in making it a little bit better, or if we choose to a little

00:25:00.980 bit worse. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the

00:25:07.600 show. So etiquette manuals really begin to proliferate during the Renaissance. And there's

00:25:14.020 this sociologist, his name is Norbert Elias, who had this theory about why that is. And we wrote about

00:25:19.980 this, you know, years ago, and it's still an idea that I think about all the time. What Elias said was

00:25:26.220 that the emphasis on etiquette rose in parallel with the emergence of the idea and implementation

00:25:34.440 of democracy, because the citizens of democracy need to have self-control for democracy to function.

00:25:42.440 They need to have it in the sense of using their reason to vote for candidates and not be swayed by

00:25:48.040 propaganda or demagogues. And you have to have the self-control to be able to get along with your

00:25:54.160 fellow citizens. Just because you disagree with someone, you can't punch them in the face, right?

00:25:59.540 And manners are the regular exercise that keep people's self-control muscle in shape. So basically,

00:26:06.480 if you want to have a well-functioning democracy, you have to have a well-functioning culture of manners.

00:26:15.060 It's the laws of nature, right? Like you steal from me, I steal from you, and it's like survival of

00:26:19.780 the fittest. And the whole story of human civilization is saying, okay, we're going to

00:26:25.860 cooperate. We're going to define some rules that we're all going to abide by. That's like, you know,

00:26:30.760 an early form of the rule of law. And we're going to see how we can, see if we can survive a little

00:26:36.480 bit better, maybe flourish a little bit more. And so one thing I conceive in my book is, you know,

00:26:41.060 we're familiar with this idea of the social contract. The social contract is this relationship

00:26:45.640 between citizen and sovereign in the history of political theory that we surrender a few of our

00:26:51.960 rights. For example, you know, someone takes from you, you punch them in the face. Okay, we agree that

00:26:56.340 we surrender our right to punch someone in the face when they steal from us. We surrender that right to

00:27:00.660 the sovereign. Sovereign is going to be the arbiter of justice. They're going to take care of that.

00:27:05.260 And in exchange for that, we get certain protections. Like, for example, there's an agreed upon rule,

00:27:09.940 law, that we don't steal from one another in society. So that's the relationship between

00:27:13.820 the traditional conception of the social contract, that vertical relationship between citizen and

00:27:19.560 sovereign. But there is also this underappreciated horizontal social contract between citizens.

00:27:26.240 It's an unspoken, often unwritten social contract that governs these invisible bonds that are just

00:27:32.700 as essential to supporting the vertical social contract. The vertical social contract, again,

00:27:38.520 which enabled us to come away from this state of nature, where, as Hobbes said,

00:27:42.480 it was this war of all against all. Like, you know, this free-for-all state of nature where

00:27:46.940 we're just constantly in survival mode that we move away from that so we can actually flourish and

00:27:51.320 build institutions and build beautiful buildings and have art and survive and not just be at the

00:27:56.240 level of survival. But that our horizontal, this horizontal social contract is sustained by our

00:28:02.820 social norms, norms that respect one another and that demand that we not just single-mindedly pursue

00:28:09.900 our own interests at any given moment. That, no, we live in society and that means we voluntarily

00:28:15.620 put a natural cap and limit and restrain our desires for the sake of this joint project of

00:28:21.600 living well with others. That is society. Okay. So that's interesting. That's a big argument you make

00:28:26.480 in the book. We do have this formal social contract. We have laws that establish,

00:28:31.700 here is how we are going to behave in certain situations. So instead of you punching somebody

00:28:39.600 in retaliation, you go to the courts, right? You go to the state to mediate your conflict.

00:28:45.520 But you're arguing is that, and what Elias is arguing is that formal social contract relies on a

00:28:52.840 horizontal informal contract. If you don't have that sort of informal codes and manners of what it

00:28:59.520 means to live well with others, then the formal one will just disintegrate.

00:29:04.700 So here, yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And so here's a story that I've been reflecting on

00:29:08.100 recently. So the earliest example of positive law that we have is from ancient Babylon called the

00:29:14.540 Hammurabi Code. I was talking with a friend and my husband recently about the Hammurabi Code. So the

00:29:20.020 king, Hammurabi, you know, decided one day that he was going to enact on stone tablets 271 laws.

00:29:27.460 And my question is, what was going on in ancient Babylon that caused Hammurabi to say, okay,

00:29:34.040 now we need laws, right? Like, is it the case that norms and the ancient Babylonian citizens'

00:29:41.760 decision to voluntarily comply with social norms, had that been sufficient up until that point,

00:29:47.520 and then the norms had degraded and Hammurabi is like, okay, society is going to hell in a handbasket. 0.51

00:29:51.800 Now we need laws with serious consequences, not just social sanctions and not mob violence too.

00:29:58.300 That's another reason for the sovereign that we're not just ruled by mob violence, that we need these

00:30:03.220 laws in place to protect the peace and tranquility of society. And my friend, her name is Stephanie

00:30:10.740 Slade at Reason Magazine. So, you know, classical liberal libertarian. She's like, you know, maybe that's 0.81

00:30:15.360 the case. Or maybe Hammurabi said to himself, you know, these laws, these norms are so widely followed,

00:30:22.260 why not just put them into law? Why not just codify them and make sure that we're all on the

00:30:27.860 same page? My husband offered a third idea that he had been reflecting on recently, that positive law

00:30:34.660 has across history and culture been a power play. It's a way for a sovereign to say, you know, even if

00:30:40.700 there is no problem, no moral or norm degradation to say, you know, I am your sovereign and I'm going

00:30:47.180 to protect you from this possible potential threat. So for example, one of the laws in Hammurabi's code

00:30:52.600 is like, you know, you steal from someone. It's very lex talionis, very eye for an eye kind of

00:30:57.320 theory of justice. Like, you know, you steal from someone, you get your hand cut off. It's pretty

00:31:01.260 draconian. But so we don't know if people stealing, you know, from one another was this rampant issue

00:31:08.160 that Hammurabi decided to enact these laws to prevent against. But it's possible that it was

00:31:14.840 just a way for him to consolidate power. Like, okay, just in case anyone ever steals from you,

00:31:19.660 know that I've got your back and we have these laws in place to make sure that they're punished. So

00:31:23.220 all that to say, yes, the norms that we have as a society, they are what allow a government to be

00:31:30.440 limited in nature, which is a whole argument I make in my book about why civility supports freedom

00:31:36.160 and limited government, democracy, and human flourishing.

00:31:39.460 Yeah. You talk about how that civility and manners are often an informal code that exists outside the

00:31:47.460 law. And it's up to individuals to keep each other in check. But there are times when governments make

00:31:53.960 laws to enforce manners. Like when we don't exercise or like when we don't have individual self-control,

00:31:59.680 if we can't govern ourselves, then we open ourselves up to greater governance by external bodies.

00:32:06.160 Just a few years ago in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg instituted this whole politeness

00:32:11.720 campaign. So if you're a parent at your kid's baseball game and you're too loud and rambunctious,

00:32:16.700 you could find $50. If you are sitting in the movie theater and texting, find $50. If you do

00:32:22.540 something gross, like spit in the street, like gross and rude, right? Find $50. If you put your feet on

00:32:28.620 the subway, find $50. On the subway seat next to you, find $50. And New Yorkers were like,

00:32:33.680 what? Like they did not at all like being civilized by the local politeness police and

00:32:39.460 their city government. So it was totally ineffectual and it didn't last long. It was

00:32:44.400 like, you know, immediately revoked. But the point is the less that we restrain voluntarily our own

00:32:51.000 conduct and interactions with others, autocrats past and present will and have been tempted to 0.73

00:32:57.460 enforce propriety and decorum and basic courtesy for our fellow citizens and our fellow people

00:33:02.880 by law, by fines. And that's not an appropriate use of state action, in my opinion. And I think

00:33:10.960 that most people would agree that we don't want to be micromanaged, have the horizontal, you know,

00:33:15.980 invisible bonds between citizens. Those shouldn't, the state should have nothing to do with that.

00:33:19.620 But that does require that we each choose and volunteer to consider the needs and well-beings

00:33:26.520 of others alongside of ourselves, which is the hallmark of true civility.

00:33:31.260 But what do you do when no one else is doing it? Do we each enforce each other or are we just like,

00:33:35.240 all we do is be an example of good civility, hoping that it'll rub off on everyone else?

00:33:42.180 So this is where the Larry Davids of the world come in. Do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm?

00:33:46.060 Yes. Yes. Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.

00:33:49.680 Pretty, pretty, pretty good. So I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's one of our favorite shows

00:33:55.400 and it's a comedy of manners. And so Larry David, he calls himself, so the creator of Seinfeld,

00:34:00.380 for those of you who don't know, he calls himself in his own show, Curb Your Enthusiasm,

00:34:04.500 he calls himself a social assassin. So he is this, you know, agent out there, always on the lookout for

00:34:10.520 people who are committing social infractions. And he is everyone's inner ego and inner id.

00:34:16.580 We're like, you know, we, we, every day we're out and about, we're in society, we see people

00:34:20.220 cutting people off, jumping in line, just doing thoughtless, selfish things. And normally,

00:34:25.320 like most people, we just, we roll our eyes, but we don't say anything because we're like,

00:34:28.940 you know what? I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to, I don't want that fight right now.

00:34:31.820 But Larry David does all the time. That's all he does. He sees the social infractions,

00:34:36.800 the petty selfishness around him all the time, and he calls people out. So I love the example

00:34:42.220 of the chat and cut, you know, Larry David's in line at a buffet and someone, a woman walks in

00:34:47.600 to the person in front of Larry David and starts chatting up with this person and said, oh, like,

00:34:52.600 remember we met at this place several years ago? And Larry David goes, excuse me, ma'am,

00:34:57.860 like, I know what you're doing. This is a chat and cut. You're trying to rekindle a

00:35:01.680 very tangential relationship with the person that may not exist just so you can cut in line.

00:35:06.720 And, but you see all these decent Americans behind us, like me included, like, we're not

00:35:10.320 going to let you do this. Like anyone else might let you, you know, commit the social infraction,

00:35:14.120 the chat and cut, but not today, not here. And so he makes her go to the back of the line.

00:35:19.380 And so that's where the Larry Davids of the world come in. Like if we don't want Michael Bloomberg

00:35:23.740 and others, like there are other stories I tell in the book of similar campaigns that happen in London

00:35:28.560 and Paris. And so in the last, you know, two decades, so there is this temptation. It has

00:35:35.200 happened in recent history where governments do get involved in politeness and manners if they get

00:35:39.980 bad enough. But if we don't want that, then a few Larry Davids of the world keeping people in check,

00:35:45.020 that's where they come in. I call Larry David, you know, foremost defender of civilization in that

00:35:49.380 way. Okay. So we need some Larry Davids to call people out, but again, you talk about like

00:35:54.520 Larry David doesn't in a way that is incivil, uncivil sometimes. So again, it's just figuring

00:36:00.940 out how to encourage people to be better, but do it in a way that doesn't bludgeon them,

00:36:06.640 right? It maintains their dignity. Right. And that's a, it's a tough thing to balance,

00:36:10.780 but okay. So if your kids are acting, doing things that are not great, call them out. If you see a

00:36:16.800 coworker, maybe take them aside and say, Hey, this is probably not appropriate what you did.

00:36:22.500 And yeah, but it's tricky. It's, it's always tricky to call someone out like that.

00:36:26.920 Yeah. But you're right. Actually calling people out, especially calling your children out,

00:36:30.560 that is a way of respecting them. That's a way of loving them and not indulging them

00:36:35.200 in harmful behavior, behavior that hurts others. And that hurts themselves too.

00:36:40.520 Okay. So civility can allow democracy to flourish without the state punishing us for being incivil.

00:36:46.280 You also talk about how civility can allow us to live a life of integrity. So having a,

00:36:52.500 a civil disposition means making sure you're outward matches the inward.

00:36:58.880 Yes. Right. I think sometimes people discount the role that outward actions can have on your

00:37:04.180 inward actions, right? Sometimes people say, well, you know, I might not be, I might not know all the

00:37:09.320 rules of etiquette, but my heart is good and my intentions are good. That's fine. Sometimes you

00:37:13.380 got to go a step further and be like, actually show what your inner disposition is by your outward

00:37:19.340 actions. And then even if you don't have that inward disposition yet, Aristotle talks about this,

00:37:24.500 you can cultivate that inner disposition by doing the outward things. And the goal is by,

00:37:30.440 by doing virtuous things, you become a virtuous person.

00:37:33.440 You're absolutely right. So integrity is all parts of the self making sense together,

00:37:40.000 the inner and the outer cohering. We hear the word structural integrity and architecture,

00:37:46.060 but we need a soulish integrity where we're being held together. What we do and say externally

00:37:51.400 is corroborated by the, this ideally the disposition of civility of actually respecting others

00:37:57.340 internally. And, and I thank you so much for bringing up Aristotle and his idea of like habit

00:38:03.060 cultivating in the interior. So the story that I love about this is by an English writer named Max

00:38:09.080 Bureborn. He, it's called the happy hypocrite. And he talks about this con artist who is, you know, 0.96

00:38:15.040 vicious in every way and dishonest, but he falls in love with this beautiful woman and he decides that

00:38:20.240 he's going to marry her, but she says, Nope, sorry. I can't marry you because I will only marry a man 0.89

00:38:25.740 with a virtuous face. So what does this guy do? He goes to a mask shop and buys a mask of a man with a

00:38:34.420 virtuous face, puts the mask on and then goes and proposes and marries this woman that the woman he

00:38:40.800 loves. And then something remarkable happens after he put on this mask of a person with a virtuous face,

00:38:46.900 he, he becomes more and more virtuous and being with his, the love of his life makes him better.

00:38:52.420 So he starts acting more virtuously. And then one of his rivals from his prior life comes onto the scene

00:38:59.220 and, and exposes him to his beloved. He says, you know, this man's a fraud. He's actually a con

00:39:04.340 artist. He's a vicious person. He's not who he says he was. And his beloved says, is this true? 1.00

00:39:09.200 Like, show me your real self. And she takes off the mask. And what's behind the mask is the face of a

00:39:15.780 virtuous man. So he had initially, you know, put on the face of a virtuous man as a pretense, right?

00:39:21.180 It was hypocritical because internally he wasn't virtuous. But over time, as he did the actions and

00:39:26.460 practices of a virtuous person, while he was married to his beloved, he actually became

00:39:31.480 virtuous. And that interior quality that, that those external actions formed him internally,

00:39:37.160 and that made him actually a virtuous person. So that, that is a story I love that really

00:39:41.920 illustrates your point that yes, there, there is this disconnect where we can be hypocritical

00:39:46.140 and, you know, do the right things, say the right things and not actually be respecting of others.

00:39:50.860 But the inverse is also true where we can let our virtuous actions form us, form character for us

00:39:56.880 internally, and that our character can be brought into alignment the more that we act selflessly and

00:40:01.780 sacrificially to others. So talk about ways we can revitalize civility in ourselves and in our

00:40:07.540 community. You offer different suggestions, civility, education, bring that back in schools,

00:40:12.520 and also just amongst adults. You talk about Aristotelian magnanimity. But what I want to talk about,

00:40:18.000 hone in on, is reviving the ancient art of hospitality. So how can reviving the ancient

00:40:24.440 art of hospitality, or maybe this is a better question, what can we learn from the Odyssey

00:40:29.040 about reviving the ancient art of hospitality?

00:40:33.600 It's disappointing today that so much, when we hear the word hospitality, we often, our minds

00:40:39.000 immediately go to hotels and fine dining and trips, like, you know, luxurious travel. But there is this

00:40:44.600 rich tradition of hospitality as what I conceive of civility in practice, which is showing kindness

00:40:51.500 to others, showing kindness to the strangers, just because they're people in need. And so I love the

00:40:58.600 story of Eumaeus in the Odyssey. I particularly love Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey. I'm

00:41:04.780 excited. Just a tiny footnote. Her translation of the Iliad is coming out in just a few weeks. I'm very

00:41:10.540 excited about it. But in the Odyssey, when I read it a few years ago, Emily Wilson's translation,

00:41:15.600 it was all about hospitality. It's all about manners. It's all about Odysseus is constantly

00:41:20.620 adapting his conduct to better put the people around him at ease and to survive. Like, he's very

00:41:26.240 much in a survival mode. And so, and it's all about the duties of host to guest and guest to host.

00:41:32.540 But I love the story of Eumaeus that embodies what I love about hospitality and ancient hospitality in

00:41:38.240 particular, which is Odysseus comes home and he's dressed as a beggar, a peasant, and he encounters

00:41:45.120 his prior servant, Eumaeus. And Eumaeus doesn't recognize his master because his master has been

00:41:50.160 gone for many, many years. And Eumaeus is a very poor man. And yet he encounters, he sees someone

00:41:57.320 who's even worse off than him, clearly, you know, wearied by the world and impoverished and in need.

00:42:03.760 And Eumaeus welcomes him into his home, offers him a meal, offers him shelter, offers him a bath,

00:42:10.960 offers him new clothes. And only after doing all of those gracious, practical things for him,

00:42:16.220 asks him who he is and invites him to tell a story. And Odysseus is overjoyed because he has

00:42:22.700 determined his servant's true character. His servant didn't know that it was Odysseus. His servant was

00:42:27.520 just being kind to someone who he thought was in need and clearly in greater need than he was.

00:42:32.000 And so they have this beautiful, beautiful reunion. But there's this trope across history

00:42:37.740 of the strangers in disguise. Like it's kind of a test. So someone who's of very high status

00:42:43.820 is dressed as someone who's a low status just to see, test the true character of the person.

00:42:49.240 Are they going to be kind to me even if they don't think I can ever repay them for their kindness?

00:42:53.720 Or are they going to turn me away because, you know, it's inconvenient for them to show hospitality

00:42:58.000 to me? So this trope of the stranger in disguise and of hospitality to the stranger, hospitality to

00:43:04.320 someone in need just because of who they are as human beings is this beautiful expression of

00:43:08.520 civility and hospitality. And again, civility is about what we owe to others, not just those who

00:43:13.340 can do things for us, not just those who we like or who agree with us, but those who can't do anything

00:43:18.340 for us and those who will never be able to repay us for these kindnesses. And the Homer's Odyssey,

00:43:23.160 and we see this again, this come up in Thousand and One Nights, this collection of Arabian folktales

00:43:29.180 as well. We see this stranger in disguise trope and Sinbad, the character is kind of like this wily

00:43:34.080 Odysseus type figure. And he's always, you know, playing tricks and getting into it and straight

00:43:38.560 with strangers. But again, even in that, you know, distinct and foreign culture, that value of how

00:43:43.360 you treat the other who you don't know, who can't repay you, who you may never see again. That's just a

00:43:48.440 value in and of its own sake by utility. Because at this point in history, we didn't have affordable

00:43:54.880 travel, planes, trains, and automobiles that could get us places safely. We didn't have credit cards

00:43:59.380 and easy, you know, modes of exchange to be able to survive. It's like, you know, often cases, if

00:44:04.580 someone didn't take you in, you would die or brave the elements. And so it really was this sort of milk

00:44:09.160 of human goodness, hospitality, this high expression of civility, of showing kindness to someone in need

00:44:14.540 just because they were a human being like us. Yeah, I think revive. So the Greeks called

00:44:18.300 hospitality zinia. Yes, exactly. And I think that is like the soul of civility, because it's all about

00:44:25.080 putting the other first, right? So I like the idea of, I try to do this in my own life, is in any

00:44:30.940 situation, I try to think of myself as the host. Like, how can I make this person feel comfortable?

00:44:36.660 But what's nice about zinia, not only is there sort of an ethos required, a civil ethos required by the

00:44:42.520 host, there's a reciprocal ethos for the guest. And so if you are being treated by a host, like

00:44:49.460 there's certain things expected of you as a guest, like you're not going to take advantage of the

00:44:53.460 host, you're not going to overstay your welcome, you're not going to, you're going to say thank

00:44:57.360 you, you're going to show some decorum. So I think, I think if we had that zinia attitude in all of our 1.00

00:45:01.860 social interactions with people, it's like, well, I'm going to think of myself as a host, I'm going to

00:45:05.760 make this person feel great. And then likewise, if we're being the recipient of, you know,

00:45:11.320 someone's hospitality or civil behavior, reciprocate, like say thank you. And, you know,

00:45:16.720 don't take advantage of them because they're being civil to you. I think if people just read

00:45:22.220 the odyssey and followed zinia, things would be great. I agree. And so it's interesting though,

00:45:27.600 you know, hospitality is this high expression, noble expression of civility. And it's kind of this above

00:45:33.420 and beyond act of generosity. Like we don't necessarily owe everyone an invitation to dinner at

00:45:41.020 our home, right? Like we, we, there is, are these gradations of response, but it's a, but it's

00:45:44.440 really beautiful when we do do that. But there's a reason why people today, especially are skeptical.

00:45:50.560 And well, I mean, people in all, all human history have been, you know, there's reason to be wary of

00:45:54.580 letting strangers into your home. The root word of guest and host are etymologically linked in Greek

00:46:00.600 and German and old French, because there's a shared fate and a shared vulnerability that comes with

00:46:07.260 the guest host relationship. If you're still going into a stranger's home, you know, you're vulnerable.

00:46:12.200 You could be poisoned or killed in the night. If you're a person letting a stranger into your home,

00:46:17.500 you don't know what they're going to do in the night. Like you, you don't know. It could be anyone.

00:46:21.140 And so there is this mutual vulnerability. And so the Latin word for the root of hospitality is hospice

00:46:27.160 and which is the root of hospitality and also hospital, but it's also the root of hostility.

00:46:34.180 And I think that's really interesting because it gets to this duality, this dual potential outcome

00:46:39.240 of being hospitable to others. Like there's this mutual vulnerability and an act of hospitality

00:46:43.300 could go really well. It could go really poorly. And there are lots of wonderful stories about,

00:46:49.280 and funny stories about hospitality going really poorly. If we have time, I'd love to tell one either

00:46:53.680 between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen or between David Hume and Rousseau. Do any of those

00:46:59.660 interest you?

00:47:00.180 Yeah. Let's do human Rousseau. 0.86

00:47:03.020 Okay. So Rousseau was kind of a mercurial figure. He was kind of known for having a short temper and

00:47:10.500 for being very volatile. He basically had no friends because he would just like turn on people

00:47:16.400 on a moment's notice. And David Hume, David Hume was this Scottish philosopher, absolute genius,

00:47:23.540 and just universally beloved, just a very good, very kind guy. The French loved David. They called him

00:47:29.920 Le Bon David, the good David. Like they just, he was just good and kind. And one of David Hume's good

00:47:36.140 friends in Paris said, look, like Rousseau's in trouble. The King wants to kill him. Like, 0.93

00:47:41.640 can you take him in? And everyone told Hume, don't do it. You know, Rousseau had fights with all of his

00:47:48.480 friends and like had basically alienated himself from everyone. Everyone said, David, do not touch Rousseau

00:47:52.960 with a 10 foot pole. Like doesn't matter what anyone says, don't do it. David Hume did not

00:47:57.180 listen. And he invited Rousseau to, as his guest in England, because he was in trouble for his writings

00:48:03.880 with the French King. And so he invites Rousseau to England and puts him up in a little cottage that

00:48:10.220 he had outside of England, outside of London, sorry. And, you know, pays for his food, pays for his

00:48:15.540 travel, pays for his accommodation, gives him clothes, gives him books, whatever he needs,

00:48:19.060 goes above and beyond to make Rousseau feel comfortable. And almost immediately upon getting

00:48:25.600 to this little cottage, Rousseau starts creating these stories in his head about David Hume

00:48:32.240 conspiring against him. He says, you know what? David Hume only brought me here to embarrass me.

00:48:38.080 This is why he put me up outside of London and not in the heart of the city where I should be,

00:48:42.920 you know, hobnobbing with the great luminaries of the day. He's here to embarrass me. He's plotting

00:48:47.320 against me. And so he, like, accepts and tells himself this narrative and becomes so unhinged.

00:48:52.000 And David Hume starts to panic. Rousseau is the most powerful intellect and writer,

00:48:56.620 like, in the most powerful pen at the time. And so Rousseau turning on someone, like,

00:49:00.660 had consequences. And David was someone who was a good person, and he valued his reputation.

00:49:04.880 So he became increasingly concerned, increasingly worried. And Rousseau started writing these letters,

00:49:09.540 these, like, unhinged letters accusing David Hume of conspiring against him and wanting to

00:49:15.080 embarrass him and this whole plot against him. And it became this whole international incident

00:49:20.500 between the French and the English government because Rousseau was totally unhinged. And so

00:49:24.200 that's just a story that doesn't really have, you know, a very happy ending. Like, poor David Hume

00:49:28.800 was brought to his knees by having this volatile guest that he had gone out of his way to make

00:49:32.760 comfortable and brought into his home and tried to accommodate in every way. But it goes to this

00:49:36.880 duality and this mutual vulnerability in the guest-host relationship that doesn't always go

00:49:42.540 according to plan. When it goes well, it's beautiful. It's like you're bonded by the

00:49:47.220 shared experience, the shared moment in time that you'll never get again. And it's, um, you're brought

00:49:51.000 across, uh, brought across differences. It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But it also has

00:49:55.540 the potential to not go well, which is why I outline in my book several timeless rules of the

00:50:00.140 guest-host relationship that can ensure it does go well and that we do flourish in these kind of

00:50:04.560 environments and it doesn't go poorly as it did for poor David Hume.

00:50:07.320 And then you also, it requires in order to be hospitable because there's a vulnerability that,

00:50:13.920 you know, your hospitality might be taken advantage of. You have to have the courage to

00:50:17.620 do it anyways, right? Cause I think that's like, that's why a lot of people withhold, right? Cause

00:50:22.480 like, well, I'm just going to be a sucker. Someone's going to take advantage of me, but you have to do 0.92

00:50:26.860 it anyways. And that's where, you know, that Aristotelian magnanimity comes in play, right? So you do do

00:50:32.380 good because it is good. You do it because it's good in of itself. And then if someone returns that

00:50:37.780 with, you know, like what Rousseau did to Hume, you just kind of have to be like, well, that's their

00:50:43.680 problem, not mine. It's going to sting. It's going to hurt, but you just have to kind of be stoic about

00:50:49.300 it. Yes. I thank you so much for bringing up Aristotelian magnanimity. So in my book, I have

00:50:55.300 this concept called the mellifluous echo of the magnanimous soul. And this is the story of one

00:51:03.820 person, one great soul man or great soul woman. In my case, I talk about my grandmother who was this

00:51:09.480 magnanimous soul in my life. This potential of one person with their life, their goodness, their

00:51:15.380 kindness, the seeds of life and joy that they sow to make a difference in the world, to make the world

00:51:21.000 a better place, to create what I call a mellifluous echo across time and across place. So often in the

00:51:28.840 news or in, you know, tell all memoirs, we hear these stories of generational trauma, of vicious

00:51:34.420 cycles. I mean, we're very familiar with those kinds of stories of generational trauma and vicious

00:51:38.440 cycles. But what about the inverse? What about the potential of one great soul man or woman to put

00:51:45.960 in play virtuous cycles that reverberate across time and place? So in the example of my grandmother,

00:51:52.020 she was this person for whom no human interaction was neutral. It was always a gift and it was always

00:51:59.280 a joy for her to engage with anyone. Like the clerk at the grocery store, her taxi driver, like a stranger

00:52:05.240 on the street. She was just someone that was so self-confident. Like she, you know, she was gorgeous,

00:52:11.160 she was beautiful, but she forgot about herself, that she could just totally focus on others. And my mother

00:52:16.900 is the same way, that she's just utterly delighting in the relationship with others. She maximized 0.57

00:52:23.180 every single human interaction and saw it as an opportunity to lighten and brighten someone's day,

00:52:27.960 that no interaction was neutral. Every exchange was an opportunity to make the world a better and brighter

00:52:33.400 place. So she created this, wherever she went, like left in her wake, people brighter and better.

00:52:39.140 She did. I will, I will concede. She left a lot of people very perplexed, very confused by her. You

00:52:45.400 know, we're just not accustomed to people walking up and just being overjoyed to see us, but that is

00:52:49.940 just who she was without any ulterior motive. Like she, she was just an ebullient, effervescent

00:52:55.920 personality. So left a lot of people perplexed, but even more, she blessed and she elevated,

00:53:01.360 she ennobled, she made their lives better. And she, you know, we're familiar with the phrase,

00:53:04.880 kicking the dog, right? Like, so a dad has a bad day at work and then comes home,

00:53:09.140 yells at the kids who, and the kid kicks the dog, right? Like, but what is the inverse of that?

00:53:12.860 Where one person's beautiful interaction and kind word, where that creates this ripple effect,

00:53:18.060 this positive, mellifluous echo that reverberates across time and place. And with people like my

00:53:23.800 grandmother, magnanimous souls like her, we'll never know this side of eternity, the good that

00:53:29.460 they've done with their lives because it's invisible. It's unseen. But I trust that, and we each have

00:53:35.020 the power to do that with our lives, like that every single thing that we do can ennoble or debase.

00:53:40.400 It can encourage people to want to be part of this joint project of civilization and human

00:53:45.760 community, or in the case of democracy, self-governance. Or we can, through our thoughtlessness

00:53:51.740 or our malice or, you know, selfishness, we can choose to, our actions can cause people to want to

00:53:58.220 give up on the joint project of living well with others altogether. And so my hope is that sharing

00:54:03.000 the story of my grandmother, that this concept of the mellifluous echo of the magnanimous soul can

00:54:09.480 encourage people to really reclaim their sphere of influence on what they can control and be part

00:54:14.520 of the solution in their everyday of making the world a better and brighter place.

00:54:18.120 Well, Alexandra, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and

00:54:21.320 your work?

00:54:21.720 So please do consider buying the book. I created $700 of free gifts to anyone who purchases the

00:54:28.540 book, and you can get that on my website, alexandraohudson.com, to claim those gifts. And

00:54:33.520 my publication is called Civic Renaissance, and it's about reviving the wisdom of the past to help

00:54:39.040 us lead richer and better lives. So please do consider joining me over there.

00:54:44.460 Fantastic. Well, Alexandra Hudson, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:54:47.040 Thanks so much, Brett.

00:54:47.880 My guest today was Alexandra Hudson. She's the author of the book, The Soul of Civility. It's

00:54:52.560 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about her work at

00:54:56.220 our website, alexandraohudson.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash civility,

00:55:02.060 where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:55:11.880 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:55:16.100 artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:55:20.260 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you haven't done

00:55:24.120 so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or

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00:55:31.960 show with a friend or family member if you think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for

00:55:36.400 the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to

00:55:40.360 AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 11, 2023

Beyond Mere Politeness — The Art of True Civility

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