MISSOURI WATCH: AMERICA HAS LOST ITS RESPECT FOR CIVILITY, BUT IT ISN'T TOO LATE -- YET

"Civilization is the making of civil persons."

--John Ruskin, British historian

Even with the windows rolled up, we can't escape the diatribes of the uncivil who live among us in today's America. We have become the collective victims of a growing incivility that threatens to supplant the courteous, kind, ever forgiving America that once was. Angry words, crude obscenities, inconsiderate acts, mindless libel, vulgar innuendoes have become today's rule, rather than exception.

To cite but one example. Recently I was driving, at the legal speed limit, down a very busy thoroughfare in one of Missouri's largest cities. In the rear mirror I sighted a young teen-age driver, whose high-speed car was dangerously close to mine, but since there were cars on either side of my lane, I was powerless to accommodate his obvious desire to get around me. When at last traffic had cleared sufficiently for me to move to a slower lane, the young driver pulled alongside my car and, while mouthing obscenities that one hears all too frequently today, also demonstrated the digital dexterity of his middle finger. He then drove off in a great burst of speed, but not before his young girlfriend, seated in the passenger seat, showed off her equally uncivil digital dexterity as she extended her right hand out the window.

Courtesy on our streets and highways has become so foreign that when we see it displayed, we almost treat purveyors as if they were the linear descendants of Forrest Gump. A man who rises when a woman enters the room may be an antiquity from the Victorian Age, but the act displayed a human appreciation for others that is virtually non-existent today. Senior citizens, particularly those with infirmities, are too often treated as objects of scorn rather than respect, and age, once a time for consideration, is viewed as an inconvenience by those who are younger and forced to make allowances for it.

The moment America began to lose its civility isn't clear. I'm certain we had it in the 1930s and 1940s, even those were periods of extreme financial hardship and great sacrifices on battlefields. I don't believe there were signs of it as we began rebuilding our economy, and our country, after World War II, nor did it appear in great evidence during the Korean Conflict. Sometime after that, perhaps as more and more questions were raised about our military presence in Vietnam, the first signs of our incivility became apparent. By the time we had made our inglorious retreat from Vietnam, as the last Americans scrambled up rope ladders leading to hovering helicopters, the loss of respect by individuals for collective society came into full view. The civil rights struggles, during the same period of time as Vietnam, served to exacerbate the country's collective loss of civility. Since then, the base reference of good manners has been what anyone could get away with, and as society became more permissive, the uncivil became more obnoxious.

I'm sure some historian, a few decades from now, will be able to pinpoint the date, which is really less important than devising ways in which our country might regain its collegiality. This presumes that Americans want to regain it, a conclusion that may be entirely presumptuous on my part.

But let's assume, for sake of argument, that we Americans want to go down in history as a civilized people and not the unholy descendants of Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Joseph McCarthy. This may be a huge leap of faith, but most of us still retain enough conscience that we hate to leave a messy party without offering to help the host clean up.

We might start by reminding ourselves that the first order of business in America is not meeting our individual needs. As important as our agenda may seem, it does not take precedence over everyone around us. We could begin to inquire how we might be of service, instead of demanding service from society. We could also discount our human desire for instant gratification, even if it's nothing more than seeking to pass the automobile ahead of us or entering a public building ahead of the struggling senior citizen behind us. We would also regain a degree of civility if we began to discount the hate we hear and read, and if we began thinking for ourselves instead of reveling in the mindless chatter of political extremists. Being a civil citizen yourself, I'm sure you can think of others.

~Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnist for the Southeast Missourian.