Civil Society and Social Distancing

Part 1

1. The concept of civil society in the West begins in Greece and Rome over 2000 years ago. But it really takes on meaning in the Enlightenment as political philosophers try to reimagine how a society can be organized. 
1. They recognize that businesses in general, whether in the form of guilds or emerging corporations and companies, represent one aspect of every society.
2. They recognize that government, meaning kings and associated parliaments, nobles and etc were another aspect of every society. 
3. But what about everyone else? At one time the church had been considered a third critical part of society, but in England and later the US the church was officially “disestablished.” For practical purposes it dis-integrated into competing sects. Religion was theoretically moved to the realm of private belief rather than being a public institution. 
4. Civil society then becomes the name for all those individuals and organizations in a democratic society whose political behavior determines the shape of that society. When civil society is strong, then the citizens control government and shape society to suit their interests. When civil society is weak then other interests (churches, businesses, media, and so on) take control of the state to their own benefit.
2. The US constitution recognizes the importance of civil society in the first amendment: 
1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
2. Freedom of conscience or religious belief, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to demand that the government stand by its promises are the fundamental basis for civil society. These insure that individuals are free to act together politically in a democratic setting. Civil society thus embraces both individual freedom and forming communities of action.
3. BUT freedom isn’t the only thing necessary for civil society. Equally important are constraints on public behavior that make it possible for individuals to work together. People have understood this from the dawn of time and it appears in the ethics of Aristotle, Confucius  and the Hindu Laws of Manu. If people do not discipline their own public behavior so that they can work with other people, then they become weak and fragmented, and ultimately are subject to tyrants and oligarchs.
4. So the big question is how people learn to discipline their own behavior so that they can cooperate in the task of building up society as a whole. Institutions, whether business, government, or church impose standards of behavior on those who work in them. But civil society can only exist when citizens freely constrain their own behavior; when they discipline themselves. It is self-discipline that is the basis of civil society.
5. And as the title of this talk suggests, this seems to be more difficult in a time of social distancing. So now a few notes.

Part 2

    

1. First it is useful to remember that what we call “social distancing” is really physical distancing that creates barriers to face to face communication. 
1. This is important because a key constraint on our public behavior is the presence of other humans.
1. With the exception of some specific individuals, we all possess in our brains circuits that specifically respond to the facial expressions and tones of voice of our fellow humans. And these create empathy, a sense of having the same feelings. 
2. Take away face to face interactions and it takes an imaginative effort to remain empathetic. As a result empathy eventually begins to disappear. 
1. As it disappears our behavior may well become more and more selfish and quite possibly hurtful. 
2. Or alternatively our behavior becomes more and more rule driven, and thus inflexible and unable to distinguish between different persons and their unique situations.
3. This same capacity for empathy means that we are always watching how others respond to us. We don’t want to make fools of ourselves in public, and this is a second important source of self-discipline. And again, this form of self discipline dissipates with physical distance and barriers to face to face interaction. We’ve all seen the jokes about people gaining weight, not wearing pants or skirts, and etc while locked down at home. They reflect a truth about what happens in the absence of full body social interactions.
2. But remember that communicating over physical distances has been a problem in every society, and in a minute we will look at the legacy of solutions to this problem. 
3. Our current situation isn’t just caused by physical distance. It has been created over the last century by what is the rise of REAL social distancing. 
1. Modern Americans work too many hours in isolation, change jobs too frequently, move their residences too frequently, and spend too many hours in front of a TV or other screens to have regular interaction with their neighbors.
2. Our cities and suburbs are effectively built on economic segregation. At work everyone may be on a first name basis, but in the parking garage and at home there will be a large physical difference between executives, their subordinates, and the PA’s and admin assistants. They live in different neighborhoods, eat at different restaurants, shop in different stores, and watch different TV shows. 
3. At the same time both the fragmentation of mass media and the rise of social media allow us to create new affinity groups that have the false intimacy found among people who agree with each other but never look each other in the eye. The size of our social groups has gotten bigger but much less diverse.
4. As a result we don’t have a chance to practice being part of civil society, to the point that we’ve almost forgotten how civil society actually works. 
2. Beyond the distancing we’ve created ourselves, a second contemporary problem is the rise of anonymity and the avatar. 
1. The home becomes a castle, surrounded by locked doors, shaded windows, privacy fences and entered through garages whose doors open and close automatically. It is quite possible that most of us never know or meet our neighbors. We live anonymous lives. 
2. But worse is the rise of the avatar, the substitute image of ourselves, a mask that hides our real selves from those with whom we socialize.
1. The philosopher and sociologist Charles Taylor notes that one aspect of European culture, and indeed most cultures, is the masquerade. It is the creation of a social space in which identities are hidden. And it is associated with a period of social chaos. In Christian culture it is typical of the period before Lent, called Carnival, Fasching, or Mardi Gras. These periods are associated with, allow, and even encourage every form of what is normally bad social behavior; excessive drinking, sensual displays and overt eroticism, lasciviousness, and even violence. 
2. But while this masquerade was limited to a brief part of the year, it is now a permanent feature of all those forms of socializing that are digitally mediated. The use of avatars has put us all in a perpetual state of social chaos. 
3. So until early this we year had two choices for socializing. 
1. We could meet people face to face and know exactly who we were meeting and use the full set of human communication skills. 
2. We could use digitally mediated communications and never be quite certain who was behind the mask. And the masks were, and are, getting better and better. Already I’ve been experimenting with a virtual 360 meeting room called Spatial that creates a lifelike avatar based on a photo of your head. It wouldn’t fool anybody, but such avatars are already emotionally compelling. 
3. Even current video conferencing only helps a little with anonymity and avatars. We’ve all seen how people use the possibility of an avatar to essentially hide what they are actually doing from the people in the video conference. 
4. Back in 1973 Roger Daltry of The Who sang “can you see the real me, can you, can you”. Today the answer is probably not. But I can see your pet dog, your grandchild, or Darth Vader standing in for you. 
3. In the end it isn’t so much physical distance, but social barriers such as isolation, anonymity, and avatars that have weakened civil society to the point that we are in real danger of losing the freedoms that make democracy possible and protect it from tyranny or oligarchy or both. 
4. What has changed with the COVID 19 crisis is that the residual physical contacts important to civil society have been curtailed, making us conscious of what we have actually been losing for decades. 

Part 3

1. So how do we maintain a civil society. I think we can learn from the ways civil society has been maintained when physical distances kept people from face to face communication. We can learn from people who wrote letters, for example, or communicated by the wireless to use that old word for the radio. And here is what we can learn.

1. First - we must do away with avatars when we socialize via social media. 
1. A key concern of socializing from a distance is always knowing to whom you are speaking. From letters sealed with wax, to trusted messengers, to passwords and codes it has always been essential that we speak directly and intimately only with those whom we know, and know about. 
2. This is why that old school “anonymous letter” was rightly rejected as a credible basis for action except in totalitarian societies that were already socially degenerate. Protecting the real identity of a whistleblower is far different from allowing slander behind the mask of an anonymous avatar. 
3. For my part I simply do not relate to anyone who doesn’t give me their name, and a picture of themselves, and enough information for me to identify them.  
2. Second - we will need to reintroduce the kind of formality in communication that characterized social life in the early 20th century and before.  We may not think of it this way, but formality actually protects all of us from emotional abuse and makes civil discourse possible.

1. First it establishes the respect we owe each other. Civil society is always hierarchical and never fully egalitarian. Formality simply recognizes this reality and establishes that every member of society has a respected place.
2. Salutations in email actually need to get more formal so that we establish an atmosphere of mutual respect. Or in the case of close friends they need to be more intimate to establish a common humanity. An email that begins, “Hi” simultaneously establishes the false intimacy of informality while encouraging disrespect. 
3. Secondly, formality in addressing people establishes the respect we want others to show our colleagues. In private I call my colleagues by their first names. In public, especially in front of students they are all Dr. so and so. This isn’t being stiff. It’s being realistic about a real hierarchical relationship. You cannot fairly grade a student that you want to also befriend. You don’t give an F to a friend, you give it to someone subordinate to you. The same is true of giving a raise or a demotion. Formal language simply acknowledges the reality of the role of power in our relationships and creates clear communication. 
4. Thirdly having a formal language that excludes derogatory terms, curse words, bigoted references, and so on insures that we don’t offend people who can’t see that we were only joking, or who we may not even know. And indeed most modern companies have strict guidelines for communications to insure that discourse stays civil. Until recently such guidelines were found among politicians. And they still remain in the military and civil service. But this is hardly new. The British Navy had such regulations in the 16th century and the language of diplomacy goes back even further.
5. In other words we cannot have civil society if we do not have the discipline to maintain a civil tongue, to use old fashioned language. Name-calling, innuendo, slander, curse words, derogatory references to political affiliation, race, gender, physical appearance, handicaps, and age all destroy civil society by destroying civil speech. Their acceptance in public speech destroys civil society. Their current use by the public and by politicians will destroy America.
1. Third - and this is new in our society, we need to be attentive to how our words will be received across physical and cultural distances.  
1. In the business world it is now common for an office of human resources to be dedicated to working out the formal language that can be used across various cultural divides. The business world knows that civility is critical to profitability and the mission of the company. 
2. Now the rest of us must learn that lesson with regard to social media. A Tweet, a Facebook post, and LinkedIn posting, and Instagram photo: All of these will travel instantly beyond the closed culture of the person from whom they originated into the wide, diverse, world. And if they are insensitive to cultural differences in communication they will create offense, alienation, and contribute to the breakdown of civil society. 
3. In social media we all speak through a megaphone. We do not know who is listening, so we need to guard carefully what we say. 
2. Forth, those of who really wish for civil discourse, should consider staying within civil spaces among civil friends.
1. An old friend of mine reminded me “if you wrestle with pigs you are going to get muddy.” Or as my mother said, "you know who you are by the friends you keep. And so do others.”
2. And since then I’ve stayed away from Twitter. Twitter is the social equivalent of a group of drunken adolescent boys in a strip bar. If you have a so-called “conversation” on Twitter it is likely to be interrupted or drowned out by someone you don’t know and will never want to know. Unrestrained, it is the opposite of a civil society with civil discourse. 
3. Facebook isn’t quite so bad, but I diligently unfriended and unfollowed anyone on Facebook that engages in uncivil behavior. Why would I want you as my Facebook friend when I would avoid you in real life? 
4. But note a problem: the commercial success of Facebook and Twitter, like that of most cable news, depends on uncivil, divisive, conversation. That is what draws eyeballs to the screen, that is what drives advertising revenue, that is what pays. So again, it must be the self-discipline of the public that uses these tools that keeps us civil. 
1. Fifth, we need to get out more often and leave behind our various “screens.” 
1. The best thing in my neighborhood about so-called social distancing is that all the young families are stuck at home. With their children. And as a result they are getting out of the house as often as they can. Suddenly for the first time in a decade I actually see all of my neighbors and can greet them from safe distance. 
2. And related to this - all the yards are looking great. Because we are all now conscious that there are other humans out seeing our houses and yards. Instead of waiting for a visit from code enforcement or the HOA because an anonymous neighbor reported us, we clean things up because we conscious that our behavior affects others. 
3. Civil society is built in public, in public spaces like restaurants, parks, museums, the theater, and most of all the neighborhood, which is the modern equivalent of the old village or town. We don’t need to rub shoulders with each other. And we can wear masks. But we need to be conscious that we occupy the same space with our fellow human beings, and that keeping that space safe, clean and healthy for all us is the fundamental task of civil society. 
4. Groups like the Rotary, or Sunday school classes that are currently meeting online are great. Online maintains relationship built face to face. But ultimately however much we adapt age old lessons for communicating across a distance they are only a temporary substitute for face to face encounters. Assuming of course, that in those encounters we show the value we have for our fellow humans by maintaining a social distance and wearing a face covering.