civil, adjective
… of or relating to the citizen as an individual: ‘civil rights’
… of or occurring within the state or between citizens: ‘civil strife’
… polite or courteous: ‘civil discourse’
— WordReference.com
The word, ‘civil’, obtained an impressive range of meanings during the days of the Roman Empire, when the Latin word civilis meant ‘a citizen of Rome’. Roman citizenship conferred special rights and privileges not available to other subjects of the Empire, and Roman citizens were due a level of respect and courtesy not due, perhaps, to non-citizens. In some usages, civilis held essentially the same meaning as the words liberalis and affabilis.
Back in sixth grade, I wrote a “report” on the American Civil War, based on research drawn mainly from a thick book I’d borrowed from a local library in Oakland, California. My report was profusely illustrated with glossy images clipped from a couple of pertinent National Geographic magazines and pasted onto the blue-lined notebook pages. I titled the hand-written report, The Blue and the Gray, and as I recall, my teacher gave me an “A” on the report. (Back then, you could be sure of bumping up your grade if you used lots of pictures borrowed from National Geographic.)
I don’t remember much about the report, other than the time I spent drawing a detailed map of the Battle of Gettysburg. I also spent time and effort on a pencil drawing illustrating the battle between the Union’s experimental armored vessel, the USS Monitor, and a similarly iron-clad vessel operated by the Confederacy called the Merrimac… or perhaps it was named the CSS Virginia?
My pencil drawing of the naval battle looked nothing like this painting:
Thinking back on that adolescent project, my report was not at all “objective” or “unbiased.” I approached the project from the perspective that the Confederacy had been the bad guys from the very start, and convinced that Lincoln and the Union army — the good guys — had no choice but to attack the evil slavery-supported plantation owners and seek their utter defeat on the battlefield. According to my source materials, Robert E. Lee and the rest of the Confederate generals had clearly been on the wrong side of history, and in the end, the war and all the death and destruction was justified by Lincoln’s glorious Emancipation Proclamation, and by “preserving the Union.”
As a sixth grader, I didn’t grasp the subtle irony, when historians used the word “civil” to label a conflict that resulted in perhaps 600,000 untimely deaths… the subtle irony being, that “civil” also refers to a person who “embraces polite social intercourse and courtesy.”
Almost sixty years later, I’m still writing reports, but now I typically use the word “civil” in the sense of “civil discourse.” Courteous discussions — often, about difficult topics.
There is no way a war can be “civil” in this one particular sense of the word… but we can deal with political conflict in a civil manner. ‘Civil strife’ can be handled in a civil manner. Law enforcement can be handled in a civil manner. Citizen protests can be handled in a civil manner.
Government officials can behave in a civil manner… and so can the media. We can disagree and still be ‘civil’…
…even if we seem to be in the midst of a ‘culture war.’
Here at the Daily Post, I get emails from friends, and from people I’ve never met, wanting to share Internet links, videos, graphs, and personal comments that support this or that view of our current political, social and economic situation in the summer of 2020, locally, and nationally. These communications are nearly always ‘civil’ — polite, and courteous — even when the sender is obviously passionate about the subject at hand.
The subjects vary — mask mandates, claims about how dangerous COVID may or may not be, the wisdom of welcoming tourists into a small mountain town during a pandemic, the reality of climate change, the best ways to get the economy back on track. And although the communications are civil, the viewpoints typically reflect a polarized political landscape.
Typically, folks are either on the right (“COVID is less dangerous than the economic damage from the shutdown policies; climate change is a natural phenomenon; masks should be worn by people who are at risk and want to wear them; President Trump is our only hope for stopping creeping socialism and the invasion of our country by immigrants…”) or they are on the left (“We all need to wear masks and social distance; now is the time to create a green economy to prevent a climate catastrophe; healthcare should be socialized and available to all Americans; President Trump is destroying America piece by piece…”)
Like I said, the communications I’ve been receiving are civil, but they reflect a society that has dismissed compromise as a solution. The most passionate citizens seem to be ‘hard left’ or ‘hard right’.
If we truly wish to have civil discourse, however, and repair the polarization that threatens to rip our country apart, the way forward requires our embrace of compromise.
‘The Middle Way’ is a term used in Buddhism. In its simplest definition, it refers to a balanced approach to life — to the thoughts and deeds that are most likely to create peace and happiness. The religion of Buddhism itself is sometimes called “the Middle Way,” as it seeks always to reconcile opposing viewpoints and maintain balance.
Balance is not the same as passivity, however. It requires continual effort to walk the Middle Way. For one thing, we have to release our psychological attachment to “always being right” and embrace, instead, “always being willing to find a balance.”
“All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”
Edmund Burke said that.