This TED Talk features political theorist and author Teresa Bejohn, recorded live at TED Salon

Brightline Initiative 2018. This talk contains mature language. Let's get this out of the ways. I'm here

because I wrote a book about civility. And because that book came out

right around the 2016 American presidential election, I started getting lots of invitations

to come and talk about civility and why we need more of it in American politics. It's so great. The only problem was that

I'd written that book about civility because I was convinced that civility is bullshit. Now, that may

sound like a highly uncivil thing to say, and lucky for you and for my publisher,

I did eventually come to change my mind. In the course of writing that book and studying the long

history of civility and religious tolerance in the 17th century, I came to discover that there is a virtue of civility,

and far from being bullshit, it's actually absolutely essential, especially for tolerant societies.

So societies like this one that promised not only to protect diversity, but also the heated

and sometimes even hateful disagreements that that

diversity inspires. You see, the thing about disagreement is that there is a reason that disagreeable

is a synonym for unpleasant. As the English philosopher Thomas Hobbs pointed out all the way back in

1642, that's because the mere act of disagreement is offensive. And Hobbs is still right. It works

like this. So if you and I disagree and I'm right, because I always am, how am I to make sense of the fact

that you are so very, very wrong?

It couldn't possibly be that you've just come to a different conclusion in good faith.

No, you must be up to something.

You must be stupid, bigoted, interested.

Maybe you're insane.

And the same goes the other way, right?

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