Apple of Doubt

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Earlier this week PZ Meyers of Pharyngula fame wrote a post about the limits of civility declaring, “There is no virtue in politeness when confronted with ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion“. Indeed I agree that condemnation and even ridicule can be powerful tools in combating harmful ideas. And there are those who hide behind a false front of offense and congeniality using manufactured instances of rudeness to deflect genuine criticism of ideas. We shouldn’t humor them, it is no breach of civility to point our mistakes and to say you believe their ideas are wrong.  Yet we should also not mistake PZ’s words as a universal denunciation of civility or a call for rudeness as a standard.

Contrary to Meyers I would say that civility has a great deal of virtue when dealing with those who are ignorant. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge and a person is more likely to give consideration and credence to an argument that comes free from invectives and insults.  Willful ignorance on the other hand often deserves to be met with derision. Yet incivility, when not used judiciously, has a tendency to reduce an argument down to a personal emotional battle rather than one focused on ideas. Incivility often lacks virtue when dealing with honest doubters.  When it is used as a cudgel, as is sadly the case with many who would use incivility, it immediately pushes the opponent to a distance making them an “other” to be feared or hated and falls back on the same absurd absolutism that is anathema to freethinking.

Yes arguments should be about the ideas but I think a measure of civility actually helps to propagate arguments by making them more palatable to the opposition.  The virtue of a method lies in it’s ability to convey the meaning and while well bred insolence can be powerful when used sparingly and timely; too much mockery drown out the ideas and make others unwilling to listen.  So that is why I believe the best path to open discourse is civility and encourage it as often as I can. I do not encourage incivility as a method but I can understand and even approve of the occasional verbal tongue lashing which can be just as effective and often the determining when it’s appropriate can be a challenge unto itself.