From Enmity to Comity: Restoring Civility and Pride to American Life

Let's stop hurting each other. You go first.
- Alta

The Twentieth Century saw many nations consumed by their own enmity. Hatred is inflammatory, and it has now reached a level where to stoke it, from either the Left or the Right, is incendiary. Beyond a certain level, public hatred sours personal relationships. In societies such as prewar Spain, wartime Germany, Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s, hatred in the public sphere had catastrophic consequences in the private.

There are worrisome signs that comity is losing ground to enmity in America. As enmity displaces comity, pride suffers from disunity.

Recently, hatred showed its face in the vituperation unleashed by President Obama's Nobel Prize. Not only did the president's detractors seize the opportunity to revile him; they derided anyone who did not share their contempt. Both the president and those who supported the award were casually compared with the most villainous figures of the twentieth century.

This piece is not about Obama-hatred. The response to his Nobel is merely another sign that hate is out of hand. President Bush was also compared to Hitler and Stalin. Before that, the Clintons were execrated. No one party has a monopoly on malice.

Calls for civility have not worked, either with the public or the partisan commentators who model disdain and contempt for their followers. Why is hate resonating with the American public?

Though its cause appears to lie outside ourselves, hate has a secret accomplice within. Its name is Fear. "Hate is the consequence of fear," Cyril Connolly notes. "We fear something before we hate it."

Anger congeals to hate when people fear domination and experience the indignity of being discounted. No one, conservative or progressive, likes being taken for a nobody. Hatred takes root when fears remain unaddressed and dignity is disregarded. Imagined indignities can feel as injurious as real ones, and suffice to incite people to commit mayhem and murder.

What's needed to initiate the winding down of enmity is for at least one party to the recriminations to stop returning indignity in kind and start allaying the fears of its opposite number. This means talking over the heads of media demagogues straight to those whose fears have left them vulnerable to hate-mongers. The epigram notwithstanding, it does not put one side at a disadvantage to "go first" in extending the olive branch. Then, it must be willing to meet indignity with dignity, for however long it takes, while not subtly compromising the process by taking pride in its own forbearance. Maintaining civility doesn't mean giving in to others' demands, but it does mean dealing with them respectfully.

With even a modest diminution of fear, we re-conceive our enemies as adversaries. With a hint of mutual value, adversaries become rivals--a term acknowledging each party's role as a teacher of the other. Finally, by recognizing their mutual dependency, rivals begin to see themselves as partners. By this time, comity has replaced enmity, and incivility is out of fashion.

A second line of defense against hatred is to recognize that when real indignities do occur -- and they are inevitable -- a flash of righteous anger or a sharp verbal riposte preempts the slow burn of hate. As fear subsides, and we gain confidence to protest against the indignities that befall us and apologize for those we ourselves commit, we deny hate the hothouse required for its gestation.

As we remove hate from the public discourse -- either by eliminating the causes of indignity or by restoring agency to indignity's victims -- we give comity a chance. Nothing we could do, at home or abroad, would do more to enhance our safety than putting the "We" back in "We the people."

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Comments

[Robert Fuller - Huffpost Blogger]

Cocrea -- I hesitated before using the word "pride" because the word has two distinct, almost opposite, meanings in English. In your comment you point to pride in the sense of boastful, feeling better than, superior, etc. The other meaning rejects comparisons, and connotes the belonging and togetherness that a group might have for doing something well.

An example of pride in this benign sense is when the U.S. elected Obama president. Most people, even those who hadn't voted for him, took some pride in the fact that the country had shown itself capable of choosing a person of color for high office. Actually, the world took some pride in Obama's election.

Political disunity is so extreme now as to preclude pride in anything. America's national identity is fractured, and this is dangerous.

I do agree that "pride" in the sense that you use the word -- pridefulness of a person or group in dominating or beating or being better than another group -- is to be deplored. This is pride in causing indignity, whereas the other meaning is pride in shared dignity (at no one else's expense). But I think I will avoid the word in future because of this ambiguity. Thanks for writing. I'm encouraged by your Spiritualwiki.de.
If you want to discuss further, let's use email: dignity4al­l.breaking­ranks.net.

[Cocrea]

Dear Robert Fuller,

thank you for your reply.
on your site http://www.breakingranks.net/weblog/articles i found that you have laid out dignitarian vocabulary. pride - as a state of mind / attitude - is part of the rankist mind-set - according to this quote:

"Dignity is oblivious of relative rank, whereas pride exults in out-ranking others.
Dignity entails a shared sense of worth; pride, a sense of superiority; shame, a sense of inferiority.
Dignity is a creature of mutuality and reciprocity; pride, a feature of dominant-s­ubordinate relationships." source: article "Vocabulary for a Dignitarian Society", pdf

"Pride is an artifact of a stratified society – one in which rank carries the right to marginalize, indignify, or exploit those of lower rank. The right to deny dignity, to non-citizens and to second-class citizens alike, is a residue of a predatory strategy, that, for millennia, has co-existed alongside a dignitarian strategy, but is now, in an epochal transformation, losing out to its dignitarian alternative." source: article "Vocabulary for a Dignitarian Society", pdf

i am happy that the spiritualwiki article on dignity feels encouraging to you.
have added this piece http://de.spiritualwiki.org/Wiki/Wuerde#sWiki.Wuerde_4
Reversing the Somebody ⇔ Nobody mind set --- social business modell by Prof. M. Yunus

blessings, cocrea

[Cocrea]

Dear Robert Fuller,
i enjoy your work on diginity for all a lot. inspired by it i have created this article on dignity on Spiritualwiki.de: http://de.spiritualwiki.org/Wiki/Wuerde

what i do not approve of in your article of comity vs. enmity is the idea of "Restoring Pride to American Life"
pride in itself is weak. it is an energy drain. i see Americans get hateful on the expression "really proud of my country" (M. Obama).

pride is based on ignorance. it is a product of the illusion that there is a personal MYself, a MY country.
pride is a product of duality mode, to exist it requires separation and comparison.
pride feels good only in contrast to the lower levels. it is defensive and vulnerable as it depends on external conditions, without which it can fall in the nobody status. the downside of pride is arrogance and denial.

here is an example how commitment / appreciation was skipped for pride:

Skipping commitment for pride

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks.
By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out.
The first monk said, "Oh, no! The candle is out."
The second monk said, "Aren't we supposed not to talk?"
The third monk said, "Why must you two break the silence?"
The fourth monk laughed and said, "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."

blessings, cocrea

[Bayezid Dawla]

"Hate is the consequence of fear," Cyril Connolly notes. "We fear something before we hate it."... Anger congeals to hate when people fear domination and experience the indignity of being discounted. No one, conservative or progressive, likes being taken for a nobody. Hatred takes root when fears remain unaddressed and dignity is disregarded. Imagined indignities can feel as injurious as real ones, and suffice to incite people to commit mayhem and murder...

Thus Robert Fuller delves deep, detects the logical connections between fear and hate in the hegemonic relations and interactions among the individuals and the institutions, and provides a brilliant analysis of the topic.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller/from-enmity-to-comity-res_b_327308.html