(upbeat music) - Folks, you ever have friends that have different political views than you, or family members, and you don't talk to them anymore?

The author we have on now will help us understand why that's not always the best strategy.

She is Alexandra Hudson, and she has written a compelling, important book, "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves."

Alexandra, you are now gonna be called Lexi, because you told us we could do that, and I wanna make sure we can do that.

Lexi, how are you doing?

- I'm great.

Thanks for having me on, Steve.

- Okay, do this for us, define... We're literally doing this program a couple days before President Trump becomes President Trump, right, before the inauguration.

Define civility, and then I'm gonna ask you the difference between civility and politeness, which you know a little bit about for a reason I'll explain in a moment.

- Civility, Steve, is the art of human flourishing.

It is the bare minimum of respect that we are owed, and owe to others, by virtue of our shared personhood, our shared human dignity.

It's not just about how we treat those that we like, those that agree with us, those that can do things for us.

The test of true civility is what we owe and how we treat those who we may never see again, those that we disagree with, those who can do nothing for us in return.

And as you mentioned, civility is essentially more than mere politeness.

- Okay, so politeness.

Judith Martin is who, to you?

- So Judith Martin is a Washington Post columnist, and as I discovered while writing my book, she is one of four Judiths in the realm of etiquette who are experts on manners.

My mother is one of these Judiths, not Judith Martin, but my mother is called Judy, the Manners Lady.

She's an author, a speaker, - Judy, the Manners Lady.

Was she all about... - Yeah.

- Sorry for interrupting, we're talking about politeness and I interrupted you.

Was she all about politeness, Lexi?

- So my mother, she was about, she embodied true civility for me and my brothers, growing up.

She was unbelievably hospitable.

Our home, growing up, was a revolving door of newcomers to our community.

You know, we had home stays, we had... She would always go above and beyond to make the stranger a friend.

So she embodied the spirit of true civility and hospitality.

But she also instructed my brothers and I in the ways and means of politeness.

I remember, distinctly, growing up, and my mother teaching us, you know, how to shake hands, how to greet people, how to set the table just so, how to cut our food.

And Steve, this may or may not surprise you, I am constitutionally allergic to authority, I hate rules, I hate being told - I read that in the book.

- what to do, and so I always ask my mom, you know, why do we do things the way we do them?

Why do we even eat with forks at all?

Why do we even greet with handshakes when other cultures bow, or, you know, why do we do things the way we do them?

And, you know, she said, "This is just the way we do it," and that never satisfied me, so this book is a product of a lifetime of thought and meditation about the timeless principles of living well together, and our social norms, and their utility, to the extent that they help us do this thing called life together with others.

- Yeah, but Lexi, what's interesting to me is in the book, you not only distinguish between politeness and civility, but you also argue that there are some who are exceedingly polite, who are incredibly divisive and mean-spirited, and are able to do those things under the guise of politeness, and that civility is a much deeper...

It's not just a... You said politeness is a technique They're techniques.

Civility is more to the core of who we are.

Please, talk about that.

- Exactly right, there's this great line from Shakespeare's "Othello" where Iago, the villain of "Othello," says, you know, "One may smile, smile, and be a villain."

And so this gets to the core of what politeness versus civility is for me.

I learned this firsthand when I was in government.

As you mentioned, politeness is a technique, where civility is a disposition of the heart.

When I was in government, Steve, I saw these two extremes.

On one hand, there were people who were aggressive, and hostile, and belligerent, people who were willing to step over anyone to get ahead and get what they wanted.

I needed to stay away from those people.

There was this other contingent, they were polished, poised, and polite.

I thought they were my people, I was like, I can do business with these people, but I quickly learned that these were people who would smile at me one moment and stab me and others in the back the next.

They used their politeness, their pulley test, to disarm, to make us, to make me think that they were my friends, they had my best interest at heart, but the moment I no longer served their purposes, they cast me aside, and I realized that these two extremes, the extreme hostility and the extreme politeness, these are extremes that define, largely, our public life today, and they also have a lot more in common than many people realize.

It's easy to think they're polar opposites.

They're actually two sides of the same coin.

They both insufficiently appreciate the profound gift of being human, and they insufficiently appreciate the bare minimum of respect that we are owed and owe to others by virtue of our shared dignity.

They see others in terms of means to one's own selfish ends.

The hostile sees people as pawns to be steamrolled and silenced, and the polite contingent sees people as pawns to be manipulated and discarded, - But so... - but neither as human beings, first.

- I interrupted you again, I'm being rude, but hopefully, (Lexi laughs) still always civil.

So here's the elephant in the room, at least for me.

I couldn't care less what your politics is, you're watching right now on public broadcasting and other places, part of Donald Trump, President Donald Trump's appeal is that he is the antithesis of civility.

Please explain.

- It's a great point.

I think that the appeal of Donald Trump is people's dissatisfaction, actually, with our culture of suffocating politeness.

People are tired of being controlled, and tone-policed, and told what to think and what they can say, and they like the brashness, they like, you know, they don't- - Do they like the name-calling?

Lexi, do they like the name calling, the mocking, the making fun of people's physical appearance?

Do they...

So that's obviously not civil.

I don't care whether you voted for Trump, or Harris, or whomever, but that appealed to many people, and there's an impact to that lack of civility, whether you like Trump, President Trump, - Absolutely!

- or not, - Absolutely!

that has, because some of my friends will say this, who are very polite, but they will argue that our friendship is strained, our family relationships are strained, because if you don't agree with me, they will literally start calling names of those other people they disagree with, and then it's over, then you can't connect anymore.

I'm off my soapbox.

Go ahead, Lexi.

- No, it's great.

This is the core insight of my book, that, you know, today people think that the brashness, the aggression, the name-calling, the belligerence that, you know, the bullyish disposition or the conduct, they think that's the antidote to the suffocating tone-policing, and politically correct culture and politeness.

- Wokeness, - That's right.

So they go to this other extreme.

But the reality is that that extreme is just as dehumanizing.

It's failing to see the gift of being human and the other.

It's seeing them as, again, a pawn to be steamrolled and silenced into submission, bullied into submission, and I instead argue that we need civility, which is, again, the bare minimum of respect that we are owed and owe to others by virtue of our shared personhood.

It's not succumbing to these two extremes of suffocating politeness or the brazen, dehumanizing hostility.

It's saying, "I see you, Steve, as a human being, just like me, worthy of a bare minimum of respect."

Because I respect you, Steve, I'm gonna tell you when I think you're wrong, but I'm not going to, you know, engage in violence, which is dehumanizing, obviously, I'm not gonna engage in ad hominem attacks.

The means matter, the means and the terms of engagement matter when it comes to civility.

I can't instrumentalize you along the way (indistinct).

- January, January 6th and civility, and by the way, by the way, when we talk about January 6th, the people have different points of view on it, and they say, "Come on, stop.

It wasn't that big a deal and it was a," and then you say, "Well, oh, I disagree," and I wanna be very civil in the way we disagree, but you also realize the lunacy of such talk when there was an obvious effort to overthrow the government and stop the transition, the peaceful transition of power.

Well, let's just civilly disagree, right?

Lexi, can you really interact with folks who are saying, "Stop making a big deal about that," when people were killed, police officers were attacked, members of Congress were fighting for their lives, the vice president, Mike Pence, "Hang him."

Not very civil.

"Come on, we just disagree."

Lexi, how the heck does that conversation take place?

- Steve, there is no question that we live in uncivil times.

There's a reason I wrote my book right now, for this moment, but as I explore in my book, this is not a now problem, this is not an America problem, this is not a Donald Trump problem.

In fact, in original versions of my book, of my manuscript, I didn't mention Donald Trump at all because I didn't, - Really?

- I didn't want people to judge the book based on that.

That's how people are today.

They open it, they see what I say on that one thing, and they would've either embraced it or dismissed it based on that one, on that one aspect of the book, and I didn't want that.

I wanted to zoom out and give us a broader understanding of this topic.

This is actually a timeless question.

It has always been, it has always been uncivil times, and every culture tends to think that they are living through the most uncivil moment.

- Oh, Lexi, respectfully, I'm sorry for being rude and interrupting again, but you're saying you don't think it's worse than ever, as polarized as ever, as uncivil as ever?

Really?

- Much that is the same, much that is different, Steve.

I'm a student of history, I love to look at the wisdom of the past to help us lead better lives today, that's the ethos of my passion, of my work, and history is such a good ballast.

It gives us a grasp of where we've come from to help us...

It's both a caution, I like to say, and a comfort.

As a student of history, I know it's been bad before, not just in America, where we've lived through revolutionary war, civil war.

we've literally subjugated- - How about civil rights, and racism, and segregation?

- Yes, absolutely!

We've subjugated, you know, we've subjugated- - Talk about uncivil, - Absolutely, absolutely!

And taking a long view of human history also gives us comfort, as well.

It's been bad before, it can get bad again, that's the caution, but it's comfort.

We're not really on the precipice of a civil war, thankfully, at this moment of time, as we have been before.

So I liked to say, history is both a caution and a comfort to us in our current moment.

- Before I let you go, you talk about history, you talk in the book about Dr. King when he was in the Birmingham Jail, "Letters from Birmingham Jail," which is a, and he talked about just and unjust laws, and that you can be engaged in civil unrest, - Yeah.

- do it in a civil fashion, but we don't have a responsibility to just be so polite to accept - Yes.

- segregation, Jim Crow, et cetera.

I got a minute left, go ahead.

- I actually reread Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" while I was in government and living through these toxic extremes of suffocating politeness and hostility, and it clarified for me why I was so frustrated, and why true civility grounded in personhood and human dignity was the better, more noble, respectful way.

Dr. King is responding to the suffocating politeness of the white moderate, who is saying, "Dr. King, don't rock the boat," you know, "just be patient.

We will get there eventually."

You know, like... And Dr. King said, "No," you know, "this is about human dignity, this is about personhood.

We're not going to just sit idly by and wait for justice to run its course, and hope that it happens eventually.

The time is now."

And actually, he knew that his protests were actually civil, they were actually respecting the dignity of the other.

Everyone who was part of his peaceful, nonviolent resistance, he had them undergo a training where they forgave them, they cultivated love for them, and it was out of that love for the people who held bigoted and racist views that they protested, that they had sit-ins, that they had letter-writing campaigns.

And so that's a reminder for us today, that disagreeing with others is actually a way of respecting them, and not just sweeping difference under the rug, as politeness suggests.

- That's why it was called civil disobedience.

- That's right.

- "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves," Lexi Hudson, the author, Lexi, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- A pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Hopefully, I'll be more polite in the future and won't interrupt as much.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

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And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by ROI-NJ.

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