The Art of Civil Discourse

A good number of years ago I was standing in one of those epically long lines at the grocery store. The kind that extend from the check out counter, across the general path of travel, and end somewhere at the back of the cereal aisle. Because our line was blocking shoppers who were trying to make their way from one aisle to the next, we would occasionally make a break in the line to let a shopping cart through.

I had been standing in the line for a good ten or fifteen minutes, and could finally see the check out counter, when a man walked up to me with his cart and said, "Excuse me." I skootched a bit to the side to make room for him to pass, but instead of simply cutting through the line to continue his shopping, he wedged his cart in in front of me... and stayed there. Then he turned his back to me to face the front of the line and acted like nothing happened.

It was the weirdest thing.

I think I mentioned to him that the back of the line was actually waaaaay back there, and that I had thought that he only wanted to pass through. At which point he said something like, "No, no, no. I said 'Excuse me' and you let me in, so now I'm not going anywhere."

Now, some ten years later, I look back on that conversation and it occurs to me that the tone of that exchange is exactly what we see happening frequently these days... online. You know, when you don't have to look someone straight in the eye, so it's easy to call him or her names. Or perhaps the kind of interaction that might happen between drivers in two air-tight automobiles, sitting in traffic, one cutting off the other and then trying to ignore the driver in the car that he has cut off.

It makes me nervous to think that because we spend more time these days on line, or in cars, that we -- as a generation -- may be losing the art of civil discourse. I'm concerned that there is a risk that these less than civilized interactions will soon spill over with more and more frequency from these relatively more anonymous settings to our face-to-face interactions with our colleagues and neighbors.

Can't we all just get along?