The Many Benefits of Being Polite

Endless incivility is the definition of insanity. (DN 4.5)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20 | 2.21 | | Where: 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.5 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 3.10 | 3.11 | 3.12 | 3.13 || Who: 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 4.5

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Note: This is an installment of The Distributed Nation. For installments of The Freedom Scale (book), see here.

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Chapter 4.5
Civility 3: Benefits

When we consider the question of the sorts of values we should model as individuals (and as a new kind of nation), civility ranks high on the list.

We know how much of a challenge it can be, especially in this new frontier of online communication. We know we don’t always succeed. But we also know there are ways to get there, and that the rewards are great. Let’s take a quick look at some of those rewards.

We can reasonably divide the benefits of civility into three categories: Benefits to us internally, as a (distributed) nation and within the freedom movement writ large; benefits to us externally, when dealing with people outside our nation or movement; and a benefits to the species as a whole.

Internal benefits

Setting a human example

Many of you have been part of, or witnessed, the successes we have had by employing a civil approach to communications here at the Freedom Scale. Friends and alliances are being made. What starts out adversarial can be turned into understanding and agreement, or at very least a peaceful acceptance. Civility definitely works.

We have already discussed the problems caused by the facelessness of online communication. I believe that the root of those problems lies in the dehumanizing effect of this medium.

What are we to each other, online, really? We are an avatar (one which may not even show our real face) and our words. The words, and the ideas they convey, become the most real thing about us. That is what others perceive of us. And so, when we interact, we are interacting with the words, and it starts to become easier to forget that those words are coming out of a human person.

If we disagree with the ideas, we may even start to be harshly critical of them…again, forgetting the human behind them. A human with feelings, living in this strange world. A human who might be having a hard day, and doesn’t need this $&#% right now.

Without necessarily even meaning to, we dehumanize the person with whom we are conversing. It’s easy enough to do.

But we should try really really hard not to.

The freedom movement is a human movement. Our nation is, and will be, an earnest and concerted attempt to actuate the highest aspirations of that movement. It will be a human nation. And when we finally declare our independence, it will be a declaration of human independence. As such, we ought to behave with humanity.

The activities of our world today are happening almost as much online as in real-space. That means that half our engagement is occurring in a fundamentally dehumanizing medium. Someone needs to set an example and model some new standards of humanity. Or, if you prefer, someone needs to restore the old ways—the standards that used to apply.

That might as well be us. It should be us.

Making friends and allies

We don’t need the whole world on our side. But we do need our side on our side.

Internecine squabbles are a fact of life within movements. Freud called it “the narcissism of small differences”—the tendency of groups to take their many commonalities for granted and become hypersensitive to their minor differences. It’s a real problem, and somehow, some way, we have to learn to overcome it.

We can discuss the doctrinaire differences between this flavor of libertarianism and that, or between conservatives and libertarians. We can throw the “Who will build the roads” question on the table and pick at that bone all day. It can be fun and edifying.

But when the sun sets each day, we must remember that we’re on the same team. We all want less government (or none at all). We all want individual human sovereignty to be properly respected. Our common goals are meta. Our differences are minor.

We need to grow our numbers, as a movement and within our fledgling nation. And that begins by staying civil and making friends.

Being uncivil virtually never wins anyone over. So what’s the point? To make us feel good. To win some doctrinaire victory? To take out our hard day on someone else?

We can do better. And it is to our advantage, in every way, to do so.

External benefits

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.
—H. L. Mencken

The more time we spend steeping in a nice cup of tea with our fellow freedom-lovers, the easier it is to forget that there is a cold world outside that cup. There are lot of different kinds of people in that world, and they do not all share our love of freedom.

Some don’t think about it much. Some really do prefer security over freedom. Some want to outsource the responsibility for their own lives to authorities and ‘experts.’ Some, as the Covid years made plain, absolutely love complying, and will bend the knee without question. And some—as I discovered more than once—will even deputize themselves enforcers of the state and try to make you bend the knee too.

I am not black-pilled on all of this. More people wake up from their slumber every day. But it’s not a majority, and it is not going to be for quite some time. We have to deal with the beliefs and actions of people who do not share our vision and values.

And being civil is going to help with that.

We have already spoken of this before. In our discussion of noble “houses,” I noted that

We will be seeking greater freedom and independence. We will eventually be insisting upon our right to self-governance and self-determination. Setting aside, momentarily, discussion of the obstacles that lay in our path, what gives us the better chance?

If the people around us look at us, and how we conduct ourselves, and say,
Ugh, what a bunch of low-rent schlubs.

Or, if they say,
Wow, those people are always so decent and upstanding.

Again, I am not talking about salad forks and monocles. I am speaking of nobility in the best sense of the word.

I further reinforced the notion in our discussion of militias and doomsday camo.

We are stuck in, and subjected to, a system of oppression and extraction. It could be worse, of course, but it is not acceptable as it is now either. Setting aside the obvious stuff, everyone who works for the government is involved. City bus drivers and public school teachers are stealing from us. (Don’t even get me started on public schools.) The secretary in the local county clerk’s office is part of an oppressive regime.

But most of them have no clue. They just took jobs that were available to them to feed their families. They have never once considered the morally illegitimate nature of the system, or of their involvement in it. Being uncivil toward them is not going to do us any good.

It is fine—indeed, it is necessary—to tell the truth. But we can do it politely. If we become the crazies shrieking about “sovereignty,” we’re just going to turn off the normies. If we don camo and glower at everyone when we show up in town to buy ammo and beef jerky, we’re just going to frighten the squares.

As

Brett Richards

said recently, “Heterodox ideas are already threatening, so sounding unhinged only makes that worse.”

This has all been tried, and it hasn’t worked, and you know what they say about the definition of insanity. We should try civility instead.

Indeed, imagine if we became known for it. What would that do for our cause?

Species-wide benefits

I don’t think I need to belabor this point too much. How many problems might be avoided if people prioritized civility in their interactions?¹

How many bar fights might be averted. (Real fights are not nearly as glamorous as TV makes them out to be. A single punch can cause permanent damage.)

How many little wars and feuds might have started in the past because of some misunderstanding or perceived slight? Could lives be saved by a conscious focus on civility?

And civility is not just for strangers. How many spats between family, friends, and lovers might be avoided? How many marriages might have been saved by avoiding that one coarse word that set off a cascade, taking things in the wrong direction? How many generations of children were never born because of that coarse word?

You get the idea—we can think of other examples like this all day (and feel free to offer yours, if you think that something bears adding).

I am not just saying that life would be better if people were more civil. That is easy and obvious. I am saying that we should be the ones who set the example.

I know that personalities are involved, and that it is harder for some of us to put this into practice than others. But I believe it is worth the effort, and that we should adopt this as a part of our ethos and culture.

Actual Bad Guys

When this topic has come up in the past, someone usually raises a valid point: some people are so evil that they do not deserve civility. If Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and their ilk really are doing to us what we think they are doing to us, they deserve nothing good. Indeed, they deserve to be locked away for 15,000 years.

Will any of us get the chance to put our civility ethos into practice with these monsters? Probably not. But if we did, the same rules from the External benefits section would apply. Normies don’t know anything about these people and the historically evil wickedness (we strongly suspect) they are perpetrating on the human race. And normies certainly won’t hear us if we shriek about it.

But they might if we tell the truth without ever stirring the surface of our martinis…

Actual Bad Ideas

My focus in the Internal benefits section was on people within the liberty movement. Within our circle. But what about the rank-and-file statists and leftists whom we encounter? What about normal people with truly bad ideas?

I must confess that I find it more difficult to put our civility ethos into practice with socialists and the like. I start out fine, but I lose my aplomb a little quicker and easier.

In my defense, leftism is the ideology that holds that more extraction and more government are actually good things. Leftism’s core premises run counter to the liberty movement’s in nearly every regard. Individual lefties might not realize this, but it’s true nonetheless.

We might also look at just one example of this ideological egregore’s madness…

Leftism, as an ideology, is so desperate to create new grievance groups that it actually manufactured, among its many such groups, something truly insane. Not drag queens, but drag queens who MUST read stories to (or twerk in front of) your toddler, and if you oppose them doing that, then you are committing genocide.

They knew that people don’t generally give drag queens a second thought, so they intentionally went after children, knowing that that would get a response. They are fabricating grievance where none exists, because it serves their political purposes to do so. And they know that a bunch of bored, preening, guilt-ridden white women in the suburbs will go right along, because that’s what bored, preening, guilt-ridden suburban white women do.

The whole spectacle is completely grotesque.

While I long ago bowed out of the partisan, news-cycle-based battles of Team Red vs. Team Blue, I am nonetheless deeply ideologically and philosophically opposed to leftism as an ideology. As such, I simply don’t have much patience for any expressions of boilerplate leftism. Protests to the contrary notwithstanding, every strand of leftism is part of a single tapestry and a single history. The left’s record is an unbroken string of failure, oppression, and nine-digit democide. I know that there are many well-meaning people who incline ideologically leftward, but when it comes to the ideology as an aggregated whole, I want no truck with it.

That all being said, civility ought to be for everyone. You don’t have to spend a lot of precious time trying to convince people who are on the other side of a massive philosophical chasm. But we can still be polite. And we should be.

Our (distributed) nation is not about forcing anyone to do anything. Individuals are free to do as they choose. But we can exhort ourselves, and each other, to try to do good things. To try to do better.

Civility is a good thing, and I want to keep trying to do better.

1. I also play a game in which I speak very politely to animals I meet—calling them “Mr.…” and cordially asking them how their day went. I think they appreciate it 🤣