civility

//"Mean People Suck!"// — NOFX

i get in trouble for speaking in favour of civility ...the incivility of "civilizing" and imperialism

rational: acknowledgment of legitimate premises, even when rejecting a conclusion drawn relational: acknowledgment of another's humanity

Bamyeh: //Anarchy as Order: the history and future of civic humanity// Bamyeh: "humanity as a willed practice, not a predefined essence..." (14) "humanity as a state of attention to that which is not yet in it" (8) see Ernst Bloch's "not yet" (anticipatory illumination")

"existence as an project rather than an arrived-at destination" (8) "...our humanity resides in the knowledge that we are who we decide to become." (8) Anarchy is "an intelligent practice of becoming" (8) "Anarchy as a science of humanity" : "a dynamic science of humanity... the principle that any supposedly solid, 'real,' category of analysis, such as //state// or //class//, could become obsolete or less meaningful over time" (10) move to: teleology ?? (juxtapose with Kulka's quote on aesthetic concepts and judgments)...

Similar to Judith Suissa's description of anarchist recursive questioning of context, Bamyeh asserts that, for anarchists, "... citical engagement means thinking beyond that which exists. And that includes not only existing institutions, but also existing categories of analysis and ways of seeing." (13) "[critical engagement] means thinking again and without fear about the most fundamental questions of life. That is, life as a common but negotiated human experiment, and not life as the object of a theory of life." (13) The common thread in all anarchisms: "unimposed order" (22) "The fundamentals of anarchist thought are all ingrained in defining things by their movement. The thing is its exercise." (12)

recognizing complexity promotes civility.

relationship between civility and pluralism.

Rebel Sell: "decline of civility ... has harmed the left more than the right..."

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/business_ethics/41428--jack-layton-and-adversarial-ethics "...he spearheaded an effort to bring [|greater civility] to debates in the House of Commons. ... But some may also recall that Layton was [|declared (by impartial academic researchers) the "least civil"] participant in recent Canadian parliamentary debates. ... the authors of that study rightly [|pointed out] a structural reason for Layton's place in the ranking: Layton was leader of one of the opposition parties, and zealous debate in Parliament is one of the opposition's few tools in Canada's parliamentary system. Canadians would have been worse-off if Layton, in his role as leader of an opposition party (and later as Leader of the Official Opposition), had been more polite. Clearly, the challenge Layton faced—and by all accounts met admirably— ... is how to compete zealously in order indirectly to promote the common good, while at the same time resisting the natural temptation to behave in such a way as to bring the entire endeavour into disrepute."

how to build civility / counter incivility?

importance of empathy

Konrath, //et al.// 2011 in //Personality and Social Psychology Review// 15(2) [] Empathy and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)