Beyond Mere Politeness — The Art of True Civility
Episode Stats
Summary
Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, explains the difference between politeness and civility, and how being civil can actually require being impolite. We discuss how civility ensures the health of democracy, and good government requires citizens to govern themselves and check each other, which may require acting a little like Larry David. We talk about what Homer s Odyssey can teach us about the art of hospitality, the relationship between civility and integrity, and more.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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It often seems like we live in a very inconsiderate, indifferent, and ill-mannered time, and that
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the cure for what ails our abrasive and disjointed relations is a lot more politeness. But my
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guess would say that what we really need is a revival of civility. Today on the show,
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Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves,
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explains the difference between politeness and civility, and how being civil can actually
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require being impolite. We discuss how civility ensures the health of democracy, and good
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government requires citizens' ability to govern themselves and check each other, which may
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require acting a little like Larry David. We talk about what Homer's Odyssey can teach us about the
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art of hospitality, the relationship between civility and integrity, and more. After the
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show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash civility.
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All right, Alexandra Hudson, welcome to the show.
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You got a new book out called The Soul of Civility, where you explore what it means to be civil.
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And that's a topic that a lot of people talk about when they see things get acrimonious online.
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And you started the book off with a story talking about your experience in Washington
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that led you to take this deep dive into civility. So walk us through that experience. What happened
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Thanks, Brett. So my book is about what I think is the most important question of our day,
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which is how do we flourish across deep difference? And I think you're right. People
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see the rancor and divisiveness all around us and intuit that this is a serious problem.
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I have a unique background and familiarity with this topic. I was raised by Judy, the manners lady.
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My mother is this internationally renowned expert in etiquette and manners. And actually,
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while writing this book, I discovered that my mother is only one of four women named Judy,
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who are internationally renowned experts in manners and etiquette. So my mother is Judith Martin of
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the Washington Post, who's maybe the most famous. My mother is also one of these figures. So I was
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raised in this home that was attentive to social norms and expectations. And in addition to teaching
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manners, my mother really embodied the spirit of grace and hospitality and other orientedness that
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is the hallmark of true civility, as I define it. Sacrifice of the self so that the social
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can flourish in ourselves and society. And one thing my mother always said to me growing up was
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that manners mattered because they were an outward extension of our inward character.
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And I have this constitutional allergy to authority. I don't like being told what to do for no reason.
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And so I always kind of questioned these social norms. Why do we use forks and not chopsticks? Why do
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we do things the way that we do them? But I always followed them. My mother promised that they would
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lead to success in work and school and life. And she was generally right until I found myself at the
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United States Department of Education. So I took this role in government because I love learning and
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I was raised in this intellectually omnivorous home. And I was confronted with these two extremes
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in government. On one hand, there were these people who had sharp elbows and who were hostile and
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willing to step on anyone to get ahead. And on the other hand, there were these people who,
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at first, I thought were my people. They were the ones with polish and they were poised and they
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were suave and they knew the rules of etiquette and propriety. But I quickly came to realize that
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these were the people who would smile and flatter me one moment and then stab me in the back the
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next. That their polish, their politeness was this tool to disarm me and others in order to get ahead.
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And at first, I thought these were polar opposites. But I realized that these two modes,
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the extreme hostility and the extreme politeness were actually two sides of the same coin because
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both modes instrumentalized others. They saw others as a means to their selfish ends, to their goals,
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whatever they wanted, and saw them as tools to either manipulate or discard. So I left government
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very disillusioned for many reasons. And one of which was the main reason was this extreme,
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you know, hostility and rancor and divisiveness. And so I left government and reflected deeply on
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this question, you know, what does it mean to be a human being? And what is the bare minimum of
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respect that we are owed and owed others by virtue of being members of the human community and having
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equal moral worth as human beings? And why does that matter in practice? What does that mean for our
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deeply divided moment? And one thing that experience helped me realize was that there is this essential
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distinction between civility and politeness. That politeness is manners, it's etiquette, it's a
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technique, it's behavioral, it's external, superficial, whereas civility is internal. It's a disposition of
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the heart that sees others as our moral equals and sees them as worth respecting in light of that. And
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sometimes actually respecting someone, actually being civil, requires being impolite. It requires breaking
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the rules of etiquette and propriety and telling hard truths, engaging in robust debate, right? You had
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a great guest on a few weeks ago about the art of saying no to people. We're deeply uncomfortable with
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saying no to people, but actually saying no is as a way that we can respect ourselves and our own
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humanity, our own dignity. And so there is this relationship between respecting others and respecting
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ourselves. And that sometimes requires, you know, being impolite. It feels impolite to say no to people.
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It feels impolite to tell them hard truths, but that's a way of actually respecting ourselves and
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others. Yeah, I think that that's the big theme in your book is the difference between civility and
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politeness. And your mom wasn't wrong when she said that manners, these outward things are important.
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Right. They work if the inner part, the civility part lines up. Right. And as you said, sometimes in
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order to be civil, you have to break the rules of etiquette. And I've often thought of, you know,
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being civil or even just etiquette, what it means to have etiquette. It's all about making other
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people feel comfortable in whatever situation you find yourself in. And so for the most part,
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we had these etiquette rules that say you shake hands this way, you introduce people this way,
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because it kind of helps smooth out our interactions with human beings. But sometimes in order to make
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that person feel comfortable, you might have to break the rules of etiquette.
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Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're right. There is this disconnect between inner and outer,
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and that sometimes actually respecting people, actually supporting, facilitating friendship
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requires breaking the rules. And the story I love that illustrates this is the story of Queen Victoria
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when she was hosting this grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace for the Queen of Sheba as her guest
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of honor. And the Queen of Sheba at this elegant state dinner did the unthinkable. She took the bowl in
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front of her and tipped it to her lips and sipped it. And of course, this was a finger bowl meant to
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wash your hands. So you don't drink the finger bowl. But what did Queen, so the room gasped and
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watched what the Queen did. And no one could believe what she did. She, Queen Victoria, took the bowl
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and did the exact same thing and tipped the finger bowl to her lips. Why? You know, she flouted these
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rules of propriety in her Victorian England that was very attentive and mindful of social norms and
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expectations. But she broke them because she wanted to make her guest feel at ease and comfortable.
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And she wanted to facilitate the friendship and facilitate the trust that is the stuff of the
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good life, the life well lived. And so you're absolutely right that I think at their best,
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manners can perfect and politeness can perfect the disposition of civility and facilitate social
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interactions. But on their own, they're not enough. Politeness alone, just doing the act,
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going through the actions and following blindly the rules of etiquette and propriety alone,
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that's not enough to heal our deep divisions and help us flourish. We need the disposition of
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civility that actually respects people as well. Yeah. And you mentioned that people can use
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politeness as a bludgeon, right? To knock people over the head and kind of put them in their place.
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Like, oh, well, you don't know the rules and I'm going to like shove this in your face and make you feel
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bad. Yeah. There's this great book I read as part of this writing my own book called Class by a
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gentleman named Paul Fusel, popular writer in the 90s, 80s and 90s. And he says that America,
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you know, we like to think of ourself as this classless society where the society where all men
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are created equal. And but he says that's not true. Like we were actually a perpetually class
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conscious society because we pretend that class doesn't exist. And we don't have these inherited
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things like rank and status and rituals that accord rank and status. We're socially mobile and always
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trying to get an upper hand and define ourselves by the other. And so he says that the middle class
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are the most status conscious and they're the most insecure. And the most insecure are the greatest,
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biggest snobs, the ones that are most fastidious about the rules of others and the social infractions
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of others. Why? Because if they know the rules, it breeds their self-righteousness. And if you break
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the rules, it allows them to feel good in comparison to others. And so I think that's such a great insight
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that the people that are the most insecure are the ones that are most fastidious about the rules of
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propriety and, you know, tone policing and always surveying, making sure that everyone's doing the
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right thing, the proper thing. There's this great line I'm paraphrasing from George Bernard Shaw.
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He says, if you only take the trouble to follow the rules, you can basically get away with murder.
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Like that, that you, if people think that, you know, you can follow the rules, you can smile,
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you can have the proper facade, the proper persona, that that's enough. But, and we see that a lot
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today, a lot of silencing, of tone policing, of people worrying about what people are saying and
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weaponizing, you know, what's appropriate to say and what's not, as opposed to looking at people's
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heart. And we should not allow the rules of propriety to get in the way of actually having
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important conversations and actually respecting others. Yeah. You see that disconnect. I've read
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just articles in different magazines or newspapers of individuals who maybe came from lower class
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parts of America, working class. And then they, you know, because they did well in the SAT,
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they end up at an elite college and they find like the, the fastidiousness about just what's
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proper. It was mind boggling for them. They couldn't figure it out. And they often felt
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out of step with everyone else. And then also it's, what's weird is like what they thought was
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proper, you know, as a working class person, because they kind of grew up by more of a traditional
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idea maybe of what it meant to be properly mannered. That wasn't the etiquette thing in the
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upper middle class. And so there's this disconnect and no one really explained it to them. And so they,
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they had to spend a lot of time just trying to figure out like, well, how am I supposed to
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act? Like even like the clothes you wear. So, you know, you might, a lot of working class people
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think, well, you know, I'm at this elite school or at this business, I should wear business attire.
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Well, now it's more like, well, that's actually gauche. If you wear a shirt and tie and a suit,
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you need to wear athleisure wear. That's kind of like, you know, subtly shows that you have
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this distinction. So yeah, it's a example of the stuff that it can be used manners, politeness,
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propriety can be used to just make people feel terrible.
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You're absolutely right. It's such a great point that, you know, people today who claim that
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civility and manners are a tool of people in positions of power to silence or to keep people
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who are powerless in society powerless, you know, to some extent they're right. And I argue that
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they're talking about politeness. They're not talking about civility. And you made the great point
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that the rules of fashion and politeness, like that, that, that the norms du jour, the fashion
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du jour, those change with remarkable frequency. And we see that across history and across culture.
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Why do they change? Because the moment that the lower classes in society begin to adopt certain
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fashions or certain tastes and certain mores, then that the elites in society have to invent new ones
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to, to keep ahead. They have to always have ways of distinguishing themselves from,
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from everyone else in society. Two quick examples of this that I love from history.
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One is the hidden history of the pineapple. So in England in the 1800s, the pineapple,
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you know, this, this, this quotidian fruit that we see for 99 cents, you know, at Costco
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everywhere today, utterly ubiquitous today was this status symbol of like unconscious,
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like we can't even fathom how desirable the pineapple was. I read one article in the Guardian that
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estimated that a single pineapple in today's dollars would have cost, you know, 150,000 pounds
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or something outrageously expensive. It was this elite status. So today the pineapple is like the
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symbol of hospitality and it has roots in this epoch in English history where the pineapple was just the
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status symbol of luxury. And, and so people would buy the pineapple and sit at their dinner table and
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then have these lavish parties right up until the pineapple was like, you know, rotting on their table.
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But it was this thing that conferred incredible cachet and status on the people who own the
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pineapple. And so some industrious merchants said, okay, I see an opportunity here. And they started
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importing pineapples from other parts of the world relatively inexpensively. And then they also
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started renting out pineapples. So if you're a middle-class person that couldn't afford the
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exorbitant fee of having your own pineapple, that you could rent one for the evening, still paying
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out the nose, but you could have that status just for, you know, one dinner party to impress your
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guests. And then of course, the moment that these very industrious, you know, merchants made the
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pineapple more accessible, then the pineapple went out of style. And so we, the pineapple, you know,
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became increasingly ubiquitous and, and it is what it is today, a delicious fruit, but just not the
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status symbol it was in the, at its peak in English history. The other quick example I'll share is
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this rule, you know, this rule, you can't wear white after Labor Day. I personally hate that rule.
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I love monochrome. I wear white all year round. I love, I love my neutrals, but this rule is from
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kind of the Emily Vanderbilt Gilded Age era of American history, where there were these increasingly
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baroque rules of etiquette and propriety because the old American money wanted to distinguish themselves
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from the new money of the, of the robber barons of the Gilded Age in American history. So that's one
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hold over today that that particular rule that is emblematic of this era in American history, where
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rules were increasingly complex to confuse people, that it was a way to distinguish the insiders and
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the outsiders. So if you were caught wearing white after Labor Day, oh, we knew you were part of the
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out-group. You're not part of the old moneyed in-group. So you're absolutely right that norms have been
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weaponized and they've been this tool to distinguish in-group from out-group for us to feel better about
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ourselves in comparison to others. And that's part of my project in distinguishing between civility and
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politeness. How do we just, how do we think about the norms that we actually want in society that
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contribute to the joint project of human flourishing and the good life? And how do we
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disambiguate that from the norms that divide and that make people feel poorly and that do oppress, that do
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marginalize? Because that there is a rich history of that. The people who argue against politeness and
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civility are not wrong. But my take on that is that we just have to distinguish between civility
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actually respecting others, seeing them as our moral equals and worthy of respect in light of that,
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and mere politeness. So you argue that the source of our civility problem is that all of us humans
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have this tension between self-love and wanting to be part of a group. So how do these competing
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forces lead to incivility? So I love the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to kind of illustrate this.
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Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. And the story of
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde really embodies that. Dr. Jekyll is this very well-respected physician,
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and he's repressed these darker aspects of self, these longings, these desires. And he creates this
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potion that allows him to transform into this insidious Mr. Hyde that goes out and creates
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mischief and does damage and hurts people at night. And the more he indulges his inner Mr. Hyde,
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the easier it becomes to transform into Mr. Hyde. And then he finds himself spontaneously transforming
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into Mr. Hyde. So what became this outlet for him to indulge these baser desires consequence-free
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while still maintaining his public persona and his great reputation as this prestigious physician
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ultimately comes to overwhelm him and overtake him. And that's a really interesting point that I
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talk about how we each, in our nature, we're defined by a deep social impulse. We long to be
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in relationship. We long to be in friendship with others and community. We become fully human
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in relationship with others. And yet we're also defined by self-love. And we're morally and
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biologically driven to meet our own needs before others. An extreme manifestation of our self-love
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is what St. Augustine, one of my favorite thinkers, called the libido dominendi, the lust to dominate
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others. And we see this idea in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde too, that the more we indulge that libido
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dominendi, that selfishness, that manifestation of selfishness within each of us, that the lust to
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dominate becomes the dominating lust and it dominates us as well. And that's exactly what happened in Dr.
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Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde, the Mr. Hyde within Dr. Jekyll ended up overtaking him and killing him.
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And so Blaise Pascal, one of my other favorite thinkers, this French polymath and genius scientist,
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he said that the human condition is defined by the greatness and wretchedness of man. That we have
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this unbelievable benevolence and capability of doing wonderful things for the world, for humanity,
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but we're also fallen. And that these two aspects of self are equally part of who we are and what it
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means to be human. And so which aspect of ourself do we indulge? Do we cultivate? Do we refine and
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practice? Because that becomes our habits and our character over time.
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No, yeah, I think you're right. So all of us, we have this desire to be a part of a group. It feels
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good to be a part of a group. We're wired for that. But at the same time, we also think about ourselves.
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And when we indulge too much in our wants and wanting to dominate others and put our needs first,
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that's when incivility rises. That's when the tension in a group starts to rise. So
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it's this balancing act because you don't want to be completely submissive to the group. You want to
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still be a self, have boundaries as people talk about these days. But the trick is trying to figure
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out like, how much do I assert myself and how much do I put others first so we maintain group harmony?
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That's right. So civility is the art of human flourishing. Politeness wants to reduce human
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interactions to a science, to a set of rules. But you're absolutely right that human life, human
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relationships, human beings themselves, we're far too complex. It's too nuanced to just be reduced to
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a monolithic set of rules. That we need to have the inner disposition that gives us the wisdom to
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discern when to break the rules, when to say yes, when to say no, when to contravene norms,
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prevailing norms of the day in order to support the project, the joint project of human flourishing.
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So what you do in this book is you take readers on this sweeping tour of writings running from the
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dawn of civilization until the present age that grapple with this incivility causing tension. It's like,
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how can we be a self, but also belong in groups that everyone can flourish? What was the earliest
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So the oldest book in the world, Brett, is a civility book. It's called The Teachings of
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Patahotep. So Patahotep from ancient Egypt, and we get it from 26, 2700 BC. And Patahotep was an
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Egyptian advisor, so an advisor to the Egyptian pharaoh. And he had reached the pinnacle of
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political life in Egypt and the civilized world at the time. And he was actually offered to become
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pharaoh himself. He turned down that offer to power. And after being in the room where it happens his
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entire life, he chose to retire and he reflected on the stuff of the good life. What are the timeless
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principles of human flourishing? And so he wrote down these 38 teachings, these maxims that we have
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today as the maxims of Patahotep. And what is so fun is that if you look these up, they are remarkably
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timeless. Like they could be in a mismanners column in the Washington Post today. They're very basic and
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rudimentary things like, you know, be kind to your friends, not just when you need something,
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but just do it spontaneously. Do it just because they're your friends.
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Don't be cruel to people who are less powerful than you. Like don't abuse your power. This is a
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great one when I also saw time and time again, when I was looking at these civility handbooks
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across history and culture, Patahotep several times in his maxims has several maxims dedicated to
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do not gossip. He says, don't gossip, don't do it. It undermines trust and it undermines this fragile
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project of community and civilization. So it's just remarkable how the continuity, you know,
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he was just a thoughtful observer of the human experience and the human condition and saw that
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we were prone to act selfishly. And he said, don't, that's not the stuff of the good life.
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And it was fun to, so it's fun in my, in my chapter two, I start with Patahotep and then trace
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this kind of ethos of civility as I define it, restraining the selfish aspects of who we are
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so that the social can flourish. And we see that time and time again, you know, to ancient Greece,
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etiquette manuals there too, to the medieval period, the Renaissance, to, you know, ancient
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Indian epics, to modern day American etiquette manuals. So human nature doesn't change. It's
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an important problem today, but it's one we've been grappling with for a really long time.
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Yeah. So the Egyptians had the first one and basically it laid the groundwork. It's all about
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putting others before yourself and kind of harnessing your selfish desires. And then you just see that
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throughout the rest. I mean, all of them, what they all have in common, whether it's from ancient
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Greece, you particularly see this in ancient China with Confucianism, where it's all about the social
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order. What I love about Confucianism is yes, they have these like strict rituals that you're supposed
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to follow in order to, you know, be a good person there. But the underlying principle was it's,
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it's Aristotelian. It's really interesting. It's very Aristotelian. It's that you have to do the right
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thing for the right reason at the right time in whatever situation you find yourself in. So it's
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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.
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
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
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,
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
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?
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
00:40:33.600
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
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
00:47:03.020
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,
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
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
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
00:54:21.720
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.
00:54:47.880
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
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