Civility is making headlines again — that lack of it, that is.

Recent surveys by workplace-research firms, such as Sogolytics and the Society for Human Resource Management, suggest that nearly half of Americans have witnessed or experienced incivility at work.

Recent Pew Research Center surveys found that about one-third of Americans say they often encounter rudeness in public life.

The word civilitas — Latin for “the behavior expected of a citizen” — gives us “civility.” In ancient Rome, it meant the conduct that allowed people to live together without chaos.

By the 1500s, the Renaissance thinker Erasmus was teaching civility as moral discipline in his book “On Civility in Children.” His message was simple: manners are what make civilization possible.

A young George Washington embraced civility, hand-copying 110 rules as a teenager in colonial Virginia from a 16th-century French Jesuit manual, “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.”

As our first president, Washington understood that civility was more than politeness. It was the foundation of orderly self-government.
For generations, parents passed those lessons down. My parents surely did.

“Please” and “thank you” weren’t optional — they were mandatory. You didn’t start eating until everyone was served. You held doors open for strangers, waited your turn in line and treated others with the respect you expected in return.

Then came technology and new opportunities to be uncivil.

The telephone made it easy to hang up on people. The answering machine made it easy to ignore them. Caller ID let us screen them. Email made us blunt. Social media made us mean.

Why? A simple lack of looking our fellow humans in the eyes.

Psychology Today reports that a lack of eye contact is a major contributor to “online disinhibition” — the tendency to say things electronically you’d never say face to face.

When you don’t have to look someone in the eye — and live in toxic echo chambers online — you stop seeing others as human beings. The people you disagree with become villains.

The technology-enabled breakdown of civility has consequences. Judith Martin — better known as Miss Manners — warned us about them years ago.

Martin said manners are the philosophical basis of civilization — our shared language designed to keep our impulses in check.

She said that manners evolved to keep peace in close quarters — to prevent daily irritations from turning into altercations.

She warned that when people no longer fear being thought rude, hostility and violence will fill our civility vacuum — from airline brawls to school board melees to mob behavior in our streets and on our college campuses.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope.

Several recent studies show that prompts urging users to pause before posting cut offensive replies by about 6 percent — and that civility training and leaders who model courtesy still set the tone, both online and at work.

That’s a good start.

Here’s another: Let’s follow the “Rules of Civility” Washington copied and lived by almost 300 years ago.

Rule 73 is a good one: “Think before you speak; pronounce not imperfectly, nor bring out your words too hastily.”

If Washington were around today, I trust he’d be admonishing us to take a deep breath before chopping down other people’s cherry trees for the simple crime of disagreeing with us.

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Copyright 2025 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].