Why I Should Care about Stupid People
I did a lecture one time for the local Bar Association on the topic of civility. Apparently lawyers operate in a world where civility has had trouble finding a home. Too adversarial.
Now, there’s a sense in which legal proceedings are by their very nature adversarial, in that (at least) two parties disagree about something, and seek adjudication of the dispute. The question I was supposed to address, however, centered on the tactics of disagreement. There seems to be a certain nostalgia in the legal profession for a time when attorneys argued their cases vigorously, but without all the histrionics made popular by the television courtroom dramas.
So, being just a bit jaded, I assumed the Bar was looking for a lecture on a return to the world of Atticus Finch, and the gentlemanly deference of a bygone era. But then I got to studying it, and I came up with a different idea. What if the appeal to civility masks a yearning not just for a generally agreed upon standard of politeness, but for a kind of human intersubjectivity in which we value one another’s goals and projects as equally compelling as our own? In other words, what if I see you not just as a bit player in my own psychodrama, but as someone whose life is every bit as complicated and compelling as my own? In this context the question would be, “What if I began with the assumption that the person with whom I have a disagreement has a legitimate beef with the way things are situated on my side of the fence, and is merely trying the best s/he can to fix it?”
Before I go any further, let me address what I’m certain is an objection about my own naïveté. Attorneys, after all, so the thinking goes, are paid to win cases, not to think about the validity of the other side’s complaint. Human nature being what it is, profound disagreement often sets up a dynamic in which winners and losers are inevitable. And if winners and losers are an inevitability, and if your job is to try to ensure that your client winds up on the winning side, the temptation to discount out of hand the story the other side wants to tell also seems inevitable. If you’re paid to make sure your client’s version of the story is the one that prevails, you obviously seem to have an interest in doing everything in your power to ensure that your opponent’s version of the facts are dismissed.
But it seems to me that much turns on the idea of “doing everything in your power.” Doing everything in your power covers a lot of ground. A lot of mischief can be wrought under the banner of “doing everything in your power,” including distorting your opponent’s integrity and motivation, as well as the veracity of her claims.
It seems to me that the dehumanizing practice of doing everything in your power to defeat your opponent is at the heart of the complaints about civility. In other words, people sometimes behave as if doing everything in your power amounts to treating the other person as being not much more than an inconvenient speed bump on the expressway headed toward a desired end.
But what if civility meant more than just the vocational equivalent of “Don’t hit; don’t kick; don’t bite?” What if civility meant not that your job required you to take whatever means available to you to prevail against your adversary, but that you “do everything in your power” to take into account the humanity of your adversary in the process of trying to resolve the dispute. Such empathy wouldn’t necessarily commit you to rolling over the in face of your opponent’s version of things. You could still argue strenuously that your opponent is wrong on the merits. But your argument would have to take into consideration the fact that your opponent is also a person — and that in the version of the story she’s telling, she plays the part of the hero — that she’s advancing a set of interests that are just as important to her as yours are to you.
I imagine that my take on civility among attorneys probably evinces at best only eye rolling, since “everybody already knows” what’s “realistic” to expect from lawyers. Still, I’m not so sure that such a word falls necessarily on deaf ears in every quarter of the legal community — but whatever. But the question of civility — which is to say, how average people ought to imagine and treat the projects and goals of those with whom they come in contact — is worth thinking about.
Permit me to use myself as an example. On an ordinary day, I have to drive eleven miles one way across a metropolitan area, usually during rush hour. Invariably, my commute takes much longer than I think it should. The reason for the glacial pace of traffic, I’m convinced, is stupid people; at least that’s how I tend to experience it. People, in the way I typically frame the urban commute, are obstacles to be overcome, self-absorbed herd animals whose primary purpose seems to be to slow me down. I get furious.
Described that way, my thinking about traffic sounds itself maybe a teeny bit self-absorbed. My anger is real; my perceptions are automatic; my emotional reaction is not something I have arrived at through careful consideration of anything other than my own need to move unimpeded through the streets of my city. It is as if everyone else on the expressway is purposely trying to thwart my desire to shave minutes off my drive time.
And so, I honk and swear. I call down the imprecations of the gods upon the heads of these presumptuous nuisances, who dare occupy the same space on the road to which I am certain I’m due. I cannot believe the chutzpah of the woman who tries to beat the system by sneaking in at the last minute to the long line on the exit ramp. I rage against the hubris of the man who has the nerve to drive the speed limit in the lane to which I am convinced — by right of everything holy — I am entitled.
But I never really stop to ask myself why I feel so entitled. Why, exactly, is my getting to work more important than the guy in the ’78 Ford pickup truck next to me? Why is my time more valuable than the woman furiously texting in Toyota in the left hand lane?
Answer: Of course, it’s not.
When I view people whom I don’t know but who nevertheless inconvenience me as obstacles on the path to my own happiness, I have set up a cosmic psychodrama in which I (and those I deem worthy of my consideration) am the main attraction. In order to maintain the illusion that other people’s projects and goals are significant only inasmuch as they relate to my own, I must be convinced that everyone else appears on stage as a bit player (at best) or a prop (at worst). In other words, God created the world and said, “It is good … I’m pretty sure. But what do you think, Derek?”
I must admit that it’s painful to step back from my own experience of my life to interrogate the assumptions that allow me to continue to respond to the world the way I do. When I lay it out the way I have, it sounds absurdly indefensible — even to me. And yet, there it is.
The thing that really torments me, though, is that having seen how I relate to the world, I now have to make a choice about whether or not to continue to live this way. My walking around with my fly undone can be chalked up to my ordinary absent-mindedness … but after someone points out my inattention to sartorial propriety, if I continue to walk around with it open, I have made a choice. At that point, continuing to ignore my open zipper is a statement.
Having publicly admitted that the world does not revolve around me, what should I do? How do I change my reflexes?
How about if I commit myself to continually asking some questions about the world and the other people with whom I come in contact?
How about this?
What if, before reflexively placing myself on center stage, I stopped to consider the other person?
What if the story I tell myself about someone else’s life allows enough room for the other person not to be merely an extension of my own story, but the protagonist in another completely different but compelling story in its own right?
What if I actively wondered about the kind of life the person who is the immediate object of my resentment wants to pursue?
What if I ask myself if there are things about the life of the guy in the pickup truck that are bigger than my small imagination is able to conjure?
What I stop to wonder if the texting lady in the Toyota is a part of something more important than the tiny amount of deference I’m willing to pay her?
What if I consciously try to reinforce in my own mind the reality that other people have just as much right to their projects and goals as I do?
If I dedicated myself to asking questions like that, it might not sweep the world of jurisprudence, but it might just change the world I occupy. Maybe civility as a product of communal aspiration isn’t just a way to keep our social exchanges from conflict, but a way to enrich a world that doesn’t revolve around any one of us as individuals.
Whatever else it does, my consideration of the lives of others gives me a choice about what kind of world I want to inhabit — whether anyone else ever does or not.
