Is Civility Better Than Kindness?

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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Is Civility Better Than Kindness?

This week, author Alexandra Hudson visits the podcast to talk about her new book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves. Civility is one of those concepts onto which people project their own biases and even fears. On the surface, you’d think civility could only be a good thing. But it can also come with a lot of baggage. Those who call for greater civility are sometimes accused of diminishing the suffering of others, glossing over reasons for real anger, or practicing respectability politics. On the other hand, what’s so bad about respectability politics – or plain old respectability?

In this conversation, Alexandra talks about her mother’s career as an etiquette expert, the meaning of classical liberalism, the difference between civility and politeness,why she loves Erasmus of Rotterdam, and why she thinks Larry David is the foremost defender of civilization today.

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GUEST BIO

Alexandra Hudson is an award-winning journalist, author, and speaker, as well as the founder of Civic Renaissance, a newsletter and intellectual community dedicated to moral and cultural renewal. Her book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, was recently published by St Martin’s Press.

You can read her Substack here: https://bit.ly/48huPXH

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dom. This is a premium episode for paying subscribers of this podcast. So if you are hearing my voice right now, that means you are either not yet a paying subscriber or you have not added your unique private RSS feed from Substack onto your
0:22.6	podcast app. If the latter is the case, you can do that by going to your Substack settings page
0:28.7	and following the very clear instructions. In a more likely event that it's the former,
0:34.3	I urge you to join our listener community at Megan Dom. megandom.com. For $7 a month,
0:40.7	you get bonus episodes like this one and a lot of other perks like stuff that I write.
0:47.1	So this is about the first 15 minutes of a conversation with Alexandra Hudson. She is the author of a new book, The Soul of
0:56.4	Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. I had her on because I feel like
1:02.5	civility is one of those concepts onto which people project a lot of their own biases and even
1:08.6	fears. It seems like civility can only be a good thing, but it also
1:13.3	comes with a lot of baggage. Those who call for more of it are sometimes accused of diminishing
1:19.3	the suffering of others or glossing over reasons for real anger. They often have a point. But I, for
1:26.2	one, try to employ civility whenever possible,
1:30.0	including, and maybe even especially, in situations with adversaries who actually become
1:35.4	more frustrated and unhinged with the more civility you show them. How's that for a healthy
1:41.1	practice? Alexandra became interested in civility after working in a cabinet-level office in Washington, D.C.
1:49.0	She worked in the office, by the way. She was not in the cabinet, just to be clear.
1:53.4	She worked in this office, and she was shocked by the lack of civility. Her book might be described
1:59.0	as a philosophical history of civility written by a
2:02.7	curious layperson. There's a lot to learn in this conversation. So here is a little taste of it.
2:09.8	Alexander Hudson.
2:14.7	Alexandra Hudson. Welcome to The Unspeakable. Megan, thanks for having me. thrilled to be with you.
2:20.4	You have written a book called The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.
	...

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