Whatever Happened to Civility?

It feels like we are living in an age where everyone is talking and almost no one is listening. Conversations that once happened across kitchen tables or over coffee now unfold in comment sections, sound bites, and headlines designed to provoke rather than inform. The volume keeps rising, the patience keeps shrinking, and somewhere in the noise we have lost the basic habits that once held society together. Civility. Common sense. Respect. These were not lofty ideals reserved for special moments. They were everyday expectations. And their absence is becoming impossible to ignore.

Not technology. Not access to information. Not even disagreement. We have all of that in abundance. What is missing is the ability to disagree without turning on each other. What used to be a difference of opinion now feels like a moral indictment. If someone sees the world differently, the assumption is no longer that they arrived there through experience, values, or reflection. The assumption is that they are ignorant, malicious, or beyond reason. That shift alone explains a lot about the tension we feel everywhere, from family gatherings to public discourse.

Somewhere along the way, disagreement stopped being a conversation and became a competition. The goal is no longer to understand or persuade, but to dominate. To embarrass. To score points in front of an audience. Being right has become less important than looking right, and humility has been replaced by certainty so rigid it leaves no room for nuance or growth. Common sense used to tell us that most people are trying their best with the information they have. Now we assume the worst before we ask a single question.

Here is the uncomfortable truth we rarely say out loud. Being loud does not make you right. Being cruel does not make you strong. And humiliating someone does not make your argument smarter or more persuasive. In fact, it usually does the opposite. It hardens positions, deepens resentment, and guarantees that nothing productive comes from the exchange. If the goal is progress, cruelty is a strange strategy.

Civility used to be the floor, not the ceiling. You could debate fiercely and still walk away with mutual respect. You could challenge ideas without attacking character. You did not need to burn bridges to make your point. There was an understanding that words mattered, and once spoken, they could not be taken back. Common sense reminded us that how we said something often mattered just as much as what we said.

Today, listening is often framed as weakness, as if pausing to hear another perspective somehow dilutes your own. It does not. Listening is how you sharpen your thinking. It is how you discover blind spots. It is how you learn whether your certainty is grounded in truth or simply reinforced by echo chambers.

Social media did not create this problem, but it has absolutely poured gasoline on it. Every reaction is instant. Every opinion is public. There is no natural pause for reflection or restraint. Algorithms reward outrage, not wisdom. The angrier, more extreme, or more dismissive the take, the further it travels. Calm, thoughtful perspectives rarely go viral, but they are the ones that actually move people.

Respect has quietly become conditional. You earn it only if you agree with me, speak like me, vote like me, or live the way I think you should. That is not respect. That is compliance. Real respect recognizes the dignity of someone even when you strongly disagree with them. It understands that disagreement does not erase humanity.

Common sense used to remind us that people are complex and issues are rarely simple. Most questions worth debating live in the gray. You can be right about some things and wrong about others at the same time. You can hold strong convictions and still admit uncertainty. We have traded that maturity for tidy labels and tribal loyalty, because complexity requires effort and humility.

What concerns me most is not that we argue. Argument can be healthy. It can refine ideas and expose weak assumptions. What concerns me is how quickly decency is discarded in the process. How easily we dehumanize people we will never meet. How often empathy is mocked as weakness rather than recognized as wisdom earned through experience.

There was a time when respect was taught before opinion. You learned how to speak before you learned what to say. You learned that restraint was a strength and that words carried weight. You learned that your character was revealed not when things were easy, but when emotions ran hot and disagreements felt personal. That may sound old-fashioned, but some principles endure because they work.

Here is the perspective I keep returning to. You do not have to agree with someone to treat them well. You do not have to surrender your values to show restraint. And you do not have to win every argument to live with integrity. Civility is not weakness. It is discipline. Common sense is not ignorance. It is balance. Respect is not earned through volume or cruelty, but through consistency and self-control.

We can do better than this. Not by silencing ourselves, but by being more thoughtful. Not by abandoning conviction, but by remembering that there are real people on the other side of every conversation. Perspective matters. And right now, we could all stand to reclaim a little more of it.