‘What Happens Next?’: Can We Learn to be More Civil?

[MUSIC]

Susan Carland: Welcome back to What Happens Next?, the podcast that examines some of the biggest challenges facing our world and asks the experts, what will happen if we don't change? And what can we do to create a better future?

I'm Dr Susan Carland. Keep listening to find out what happens next.

[MUSIC]

Steve Zech: It takes a long time to build cooperation, to open up channels of dialogue, and it just takes a moment to lose it.

Helen Forbes-Mewett: So there's always going to be great challenges with that, but I think we just need to accept the challenge. It's never going to be perfect.

Scott Stephens: Or we've so generalised the idea of harm that it doesn't really cut deep, it doesn't sort of touch the soul.

Susan Carland: Picture this: You're swiping through Instagram or TikTok when suddenly you stumble across something horrible. Someone you follow has posted a video with a real stinker of an opinion.

It doesn't matter what it's about. Maybe it's just Taylor Swift's latest squeeze, or maybe it's a serious human rights issue. On the internet, these things can carry equal weight.

Whatever it is, this opinion is categorically at odds with your own thoughts on the matter. It hurts you to your core. You won't be able to sleep if you don't immediately address this lunacy and stop it from polluting anyone else's feed. So what do you do? How will you handle this interaction?

Last week, we explored the multifaceted concept of civility. More than just the basis for etiquette and social niceties, it plays a crucial role in maintaining a cohesive society. As we navigate the complexities of modern life, nurturing civility is not only a means to tackle interpersonal conflicts but a vital part of sustaining democratic principles and fostering a collective pursuit of the common good.

So how can you and I engage more civilly even when we fundamentally disagree on issues? Even when we're online? Even when someone is wrong about Taylor Swift?

Today, our expert guests are here to guide us into a better tomorrow, one where we can bridge divides, seek understanding, and cultivate civility for a more harmonious world. Keep listening to find out what happens next.

[MUSIC]

Susan Carland: Dr Amanda Stephens is a senior research fellow at the Monash University Accident Research Centre. As she pointed out last week, we don't leave our lives and worries at the car door, which can account for a lot of the uncivil behaviour we've seen on the roads.

And as it so happens, the same strategies we use to stay calm in the driver's seat can help smooth our interactions outside the car too. For example, it's important to be aware of our mindset before we interact with others.

Amanda Stephens: So finding out, well, how can I, A) realise that perhaps my mindset is influencing how I drive?

If I get in and I'm really frustrated and annoyed or stressed, I'm going to be less tolerant to someone who cuts in front of me. I'm going to think they did it deliberately and they were trying to antagonise me.

So it's taking a moment to sort of check yourself and think, “Okay, how am I going to be as a driver today?”

Susan Carland: What do you think would help to improve rudeness or aggression on the road? Is it advertising? I mean, do policies change anything? What do you think would be effective?

Amanda Stephens: I think everybody has the ability to find their own way to deal with their anger and aggression on the road, because often you can't change what other drivers are going to do, but you can change how you deal with that.

So for some drivers, it might be you might get particularly angry if you're running late or you have to deal with traffic. So think about ways you can plan your journey to avoid those situations.

For other people, think about what makes you angry while you're driving. Is there a way to avoid that situation?

If there isn't, find a way to stop that anger becoming aggression. So perhaps rethink it. Try to personalise that driver. It could be your mom, it could be your kids or your boss. Or find a way just to tell yourself to let it go. It doesn't matter.

Susan Carland: I think the boss example is one that I use a lot. If someone cuts in front of me and I want to get angry, I think if that were my boss and I was really aggressive with them now, I would regret that.

[LAUGHTER]

Susan Carland: Why do I feel that my boss deserves better behaviour on the road than whoever this poor person is?

The other thing I do that I think is very useful for me is a lot of karaoke in the car. It's hard to be mad when you're singing along to RENT: The Musical, for example, and I think that could make a big difference for people.

Amanda Stephens: See, that's fantastic because you've found what works for you.

Susan Carland: Yes. Have you done any research on the healing powers of RENT: The Musical?

Amanda Stephens: I have not, but I'm making a note of that now.

[LAUGHTER]

Susan Carland: Let's put in a joint project pitch!

[MUSIC]

Susan Carland: In or out of the car, we've got to be aware of the ripple effect our actions can have.

Is there any acceptable way to let someone know that you're crossed with their driving? I mean, obviously, you wouldn't advocate giving them the finger, winding down the window and giving them a spray, but what should we do? Is there a way to go, “Look, that wasn't okay”?

Amanda Stephens: I think very much just being aware of potential repercussions because you never know who that driver is and what mind state that driver is in at the time as well.

Definitely, if you need to alert the driver to something, you can honk your horn at them. But I think in terms of expressing your anger, it's best to sort of keep it in your vehicle and just try to find a way to let it go.

Susan Carland: Let it go is sort of the default. Just let it go. It doesn't matter.

[MUSIC]

Susan Carland: And you're not alone in making an effort to be more civil. Experts like Amanda are creating and implementing programs aimed at smoothing things out on a larger scale.

The Reducing Aggressive Driving program helps aggressive drivers understand the psychological motivators behind what's going on for them. Like, “Why did I do that?”

How are people responding to that? Are they happy to be part of the program?

Amanda Stephens: It's had a very positive response and we have a lot of people when we ran the program who put their hand up and said, “I don't really like it when I get angry and aggressive, so I'm really keen to do the program.”

We had some other people who have kids in the car and they've started to see their behaviour through their children's eyes, so they wanted to really sort of address, “I know I get a bit angry and I know I display that a little bit in front of my kids and I don't like it.”

So we had that and we also had people whose partners tapped them on the shoulder and said, “Well, perhaps come and do the program.”

Susan Carland: Dr Steven Zech is a senior lecturer at Monash University's Department of Politics and International Relations. He says civility-improving programs aren't just for the angry drivers amongst us. He thinks they could help angry politicians, too.

Steve Zech: It takes a long time to build cooperation, to open up channels of dialogue, and it just takes a moment to lose it.

Susan Carland: Yeah.

Steve Zech: And so as a society, I think we have to be aware of the potential to have these kind of really severe ruptures and closures and to try and take steps to avoid that. And I think there are some ways we can try to probably facilitate to improve our competencies, our awareness of what we're doing when we're engaging others in these contentious political debates.

Susan Carland: Like, how? What are some of the ways we can do that?

Steve Zech: Well, there should be educational tools available. There are different types of programs. In the US specifically, I'm aware of several where it's about bringing folks together to bridge these divides and having town halls.

There used to be explicit programs for politicians across the parties where they would go on retreats even with their families and have conversations and keep the channels open and in debate. These things have closed up a bit, where I think we need to learn a little bit more about civic virtues and values and understanding something like civility, unpacking it, and then ultimately when it's okay to be civil or not.

I think that there are appropriate ways, and again, people will say, “Well, what do you mean? Who's going to decide when it's appropriate or not?” But we can get there, we can negotiate that because, at its core, civility is a set of norms and practises. And we know from all the social science research that norms are contextual, identity-based, situational, all those kinds of things and they're negotiated and renegotiated.

And so the civility itself is in flux and it's not universal across cultures and context.

Lucas Walsh: Hi, my name's Lucas Walsh. I'm Director of the Monash Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice, and I research young people in their transitions throughout school and beyond.

Susan Carland: Lucas, welcome.

Lucas Walsh: Thanks for having me.

Susan Carland: Do you think that civility is innate? Are some people just born nice or jerks, or can we learn to be more civil?

Lucas Walsh: I think we can definitely learn to be more civil, depending on what philosophical background you come from. We might be born nasty and brutish, but I don't think so. I think we can cultivate civility over time. And even as times change, we can cultivate new forms of civility.

Susan Carland: Ah, okay, that's interesting. What would you consider to be a new form of civility that we're seeing at the moment?

Lucas Walsh: I think we're trying to understand what that new form of civility is. Norms change over time and a particular kind of civility, such as civility is politeness is something that's deeply rooted in context.

And what we're seeing I think in recent years is a shift and the shift is bound up with technological changes, with what academics would call super-diversity, as well as changing political conditions, which older orthodoxies have been thrown out the window.

Susan Carland: Associate Professor Helen Forbes-Mewett is a sociologist in Monash School of Social Sciences. As an expert in social cohesion, she can help us all become a bit more civil starting by recognising different cultural contexts in our own neighbourhoods.

Helen, welcome.

Helen Forbes-Mewett: Thank you.

Susan Carland: Do you think there is a link between civility and social cohesion?

Helen Forbes-Mewett: There's definitely a link, yes. I think it's a very strong link and it is what can make communities work well cohesively.

Susan Carland: Australia's a really multicultural country. Does that bring with it struggles for managing civility in Australia because people do come with different ideas about what civil behaviour is?

Helen Forbes-Mewett: I think it does, but at the same time, it sort of pushes the boundaries a little bit in that it means that Australians do, if they haven't experienced the other cultures much at all, they're placed in a situation where they need to because this is the new world and people have to adjust to that.

But in the globalised world that we live in now, and it's not just Australia, it's everywhere, where there's this huge movement of people all the time, and it's so important to become familiar with that. And often it helps to go to other people's countries and you really get a great understanding then, and it's much easier to accept people's traditions and backgrounds.

Susan Carland: How do we manage a singular idea of civility in a country like Australia though, when everyone or many people might have different ideas about what civil is?

Helen Forbes-Mewett: It is difficult, and that won't change because we will always have different ideas, even within one cultural group.

Susan Carland: Yeah.

Helen Forbes-Mewett: And we're so accustomed to sort of saying “this group of people” and “that group of people” and putting people into these categories. They don't really want to be put into a big category, and they don't fit into one category.

So there's always going to be great challenges with that, but I think we just need to accept the challenge.

It's never going to be perfect, but I think we do a pretty good job when we travel around the world and see other places. We do a pretty good job here, and of course, we can do better.

Susan Carland: We just need to make an effort to remember everyone else's humanity.

Scott Stephens is the ABC's Religion and Ethics Online Editor. He also co-hosts The Minefield on ABC Radio National with my husband, Waleed Aly.

Last year, they co-wrote a piece for the Quarterly Essay, a politics and cultural journal here in Australia, called “Uncivil Wars: How Contempt Is Corroding Democracy”.

Here's Scott.

Scott Stephens: So moral philosophy has lost touch with human language.

I mean, Ray Gaita, the wonderful Australian philosopher, parodies this when he says, “Can you imagine somebody coming across the radical suffering of another human being? And I had a role to play in that radical suffering, and I exclaim, in a moment of moral panic, ‘My God, what have I done? I've led to the violation of her private autonomy. My God, what have I done? I've led to the failure to recognise her inalienable human dignity.’”

There's something artificial about the way that we speak that doesn't do justice to the claim that the moral reality of another human being ought to have upon us. And I think one of the things that we've done, while it's right, we've come to speak like politicians. We've come to embody in the way that we understand moral communication. We've come to embody a kind of unreality.

This is probably going to sound awfully naive. I don't mean it to, I'm really serious about it. The only way that we can recover the practices, the habits of severe conversation is by recovering the practices and habits of severe conversation, which can only be had I think, with another human being in their proximity.

There are certain things that you observe when you say something that is a little bit more harmful than you meant it to be. And there's that little flicker of recognition in the face of the other person. You realise, “My God, I just hurt them. I hurt them.”

There was something I think quite radical about what Stan Grant recently said on his final episode for a while of Q+A, when he used the language, announcing his decision to step aside for a while, where he used the language of hurt: “If your intent was to hurt me, you succeeded.”

I actually thought that was quite beautiful, quite meaningful. Because we've come to believe that our exchanges with one another online, our exchanges with one another in the form of competing monologues, in other words, don't really do damage to anybody else. There's no blood, there's no actual harm or we've so generalised the idea of harm that it doesn't really cut deep. It doesn't sort of touch the soul. It seems to me that one of the best ways is to recover the moral reality of another human being by re-encountering the physical reality of another human being.

Susan Carland: Here's Waleed.

Waleed Aly: And in the absence of the possibility of human interaction being the main mode of interaction in a society like ours, I would say there are probably two rules. One would be first, recognise that when you deal in contempt, you licence it.

Scott Stephens: Yeah, that's right.

Waleed Aly: That is, by saying contempt is now the morally appropriate way to go about things because your cause is just. You do more than just say, “Because my cause is just.” You say, “This is now the coin of the realm.”

Susan Carland: You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Waleed Aly: “We will all do this now, and this is why.”

And Scott and I go into this in a lot of detail in the essay, but this is why some of the giants of the American Civil Rights movement were so keen, so clear, so desperate to resist contempt because they knew that in the end, once contempt became illicit, contempt was one of the great tools of racial oppression. The whole idea of racial oppression was built on this notion of contempt, in this case of contempt. So a countervailing contempt doesn't solve that problem, it merely licences that currency, as point one.

Point two, maybe impose upon yourself the rule that as you engage with someone or some idea, even an idea you find abhorrent, the starting point has to be that you can understand and articulate the best version of that idea in a way that the person who holds that idea would recognise.

Not in a way that you want to frame it, not in a way that's a caricature that's such that you can shape it in your hands to be whatever it is that will be easiest for you to mock, destroy, and hold in contempt, but in a way that you could say, “Okay, person X who holds a view I don't like, is this a fair summary of your position?” And they would go, “Yes, you've got it.” Then begin.

Because I think what you'll actually find is it knocks a lot of the edges off the points you want to make because “Actually, well, this point I want to make goes too far because it doesn't actually acknowledge that that's not what they're saying here. They're saying – they're not saying X, they're saying X-, and that's slightly different”, and so on.

You'd be surprised actually how quickly you have less to say, about how quickly the tone and the nature of the conversation changes, even as it's robust. But it becomes what I think we could call more civil.

Susan Carland: So next time, Waleed, I'll tell you off for leaving your socks on the floor. You would like me to begin that conversation by saying, “You leave your socks on the floor because you're a busy man and this is convenient and you don't have a problem with socks being on the floor. Is that a fair rendering of your –"

Waleed Aly: I would say, “That's a valiant attempt, Susan…”

[LAUGHTER]

Waleed Aly: “...However, I think you'll find that the socks on the floor were put there by you –”

[GASP]

Susan Carland: Okay, cut recording.

[LAUGHTER]

Waleed Aly: “– on my side of the bed, and therefore deemed to be my mess. And now we have the basis for an exchange.”

[LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC]

Susan Carland: Steve believes there's a time and place for uncivil behaviour, but perhaps it's not in household squabbles over socks.

Steve Zech: So you can recognise that maybe there's a space where you can, if that's not working for you, that you have to be uncivil. So I wouldn't say that it's about attacking the expectations. Often it is actually being uncivil to address the other dimensions, those moral wrongs.

When we're looking at a whole range of examples of how people use incivility as dissent, we're looking at things like, I don't know, I think of Colin Kaepernick in the United States and activism taking such a simple gesture that is actually kind of polite but impolite in its signalling during the national anthem of just taking a knee and how that infuriates the population, causes an uproar.

The way Grace Tame didn't smile when she goes to the morning tea before the awards. It's not meeting these kind of politeness norms around civility, calling attention to issues of violence against women, et cetera, et cetera.

So those kinds of acts are meant to advance these broader moral civilities in society with these kinds of impoliteness.

Susan Carland: One thing that makes civil discourse much easier is agreeing on a common good. But as Lucas mentioned last week, that's becoming increasingly difficult in our modern world.

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that we're facing a major existential threat. The good news is that it may be the thing that unites us.

We seem to consider the common good is what's good for me. So how do we create or cultivate a sense in people that we need to come up with a collective idea of what a good society is and how we can all contribute to that?

Lucas Walsh: Yeah. Well, in the first instance, I think that that's going to come to us, and I'm talking about climate change, that as we enter an unprecedented period of geopolitical change of sometimes draconian measures taken in relation to the migration of people throughout the world, we're going to see those conditions amplify as resources become more scarce and as communities are forced to shift and move, such as in the Pacific.

So what this means is that... Well, I mean, it depends on whether they're an optimist or a pessimist, but the challenge being an existential one is going to bring about a consideration of what we have in common because it is existential. Our future depends on it.

I think there's more we could be doing in education, and my primary area is education and employment, and I think that there's a space there. It's a crowded space, but a space there to more actively encourage discussion about those common challenges. And it's not just in relation to climate change. There's a bunch of them we can reel off that are common to humanity. Even the challenges of difference are things that we all have in common.

Susan Carland: If someone is listening at home and thinking, “Nah, I just don't... I think this is a moralising, boring topic, why should I care about creating a more civil society? Why should I care about even seeing it as an important topic?” What would you say to them?

Lucas Walsh: I would urge them to pay attention because the things we take for granted that emerge from civility are things like social cohesion and safety.

A big mistake that I'd made in the past when I was, for example, researching young people in democracy, was that I tended to focus on the big institutional aspects of our democracy, attitudes to elections and protest, and these pointier ends of democracy.

In recent years, it's become much more apparent that the everyday forms of civility, that the way we talk to the person cutting our hair, the way we encounter a colleague who's in front of us, this actually forms a profound bond.

Ignore it at your peril because when it's not there, the other threads become unsewn and we end up in greater precarity if we ignore it.

Susan Carland: And I feel like so often when we talk about things like this, if we can talk about them, we seem to always frame them in, “Well, what do I get out of it? What do people owe me?” What advice or encouragement or instruction would you give to people about what they owe others and their society? What does that look like?

Lucas Walsh: Well, okay, back to old-fashioned thinking, but it's still salient, which is rights have attached to them duties and obligations. The big one related to this discussion is respect and attentiveness to others and preparedness to listen, preparedness to engage.

So what's in it for you is that rights only work properly when that takes place. It's not just about what you get, it's about the thing you do as a corollary of that rights and obligations.

That's kind of a lofty political philosophical proposition, but in the everyday space, we need to just keep thinking about what it is to live in a society. Society is social, and social is relational and relational is fundamentally what the stuff that we people are made of, and we need to attend to it like a garden.

Susan Carland: Lucas Walsh, you make me want to be a better person. Thank you for coming in today.

Lucas Walsh: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Susan Carland: As Steve said, in our interconnected world, it takes tremendous work to build cooperation and just a moment of incivility to lose that progress. We must remember that behind every screen is a human being with emotions and vulnerabilities. Engaging more civilly, even when we fundamentally disagree, can help bridge divides and promote understanding. Civility is not just a personal virtue. It's a cornerstone of a cohesive society. And as we face existential threats such as climate change, we'll need collective action and accord more urgently than ever.

Thank you to all our guests on this series, Dr Waleed Aly, Associate Professor Helen Forbes-Mewett, Dr Amanda Stephens, Scott Stephens, Professor Lucas Walsh, and Dr Steven Zech. You can learn more about their work by visiting our show notes. And thank you, too, for joining us.

This is the final episode of season eight of What Happens Next?. The podcast will return in a few short months with a new series investigating new challenges and how each of us can make a difference. In the meantime, be sure to explore our back catalogue of episodes on Monash Lens or on your favourite podcast app.

Do you have a topic you'd like us to examine? We'd love to hear from you. Email the team at podcasts@monash.edu with your idea.

Hey, listeners, we love your five-star ratings and reviews. Keep them coming. Tell us what you really think about a topic, or just let us know the last episode you listened to. Your feedback makes a difference.

Why just listen to the podcast? Visit Monash University's YouTube channel to see a video version of What Happens Next?. You can also watch this episode on Monash Lens. Visit lens.monash.edu.

Thank you for joining What Happens Next?.