She goes on: "Sociologists talk about the disinhibitors, the factors that lower control of behavior. In some places the controls are permanently off." Blame the Internet, blame shock-jock talk radio, blame whatever you want — the dominant attitude today is that "civility is [only] for face to face."
Actually, as you can tell from my previous post, Getting the Joke, I myself blame the demise of "meta-narrative," in what philosophers call postmodernism, for the decline of civility.
Let me lay my thinking out in detail. As Ms. Goodman indicates, the lack of civility in our culture parallels the loss of "old-time intimate communities":
In the real life communities of the past, says [P.M. Forni, who co-founded the Civility Project at Johns Hopkins University], "we acted as though we were trustees of one another's contentment, happiness, well-being. Since you wanted to keep your friends and couldn't replace them, you treated them with moderation. You had a stake in their lives and they in yours." Today? More of our interactions are faceless, anonymous, disconnected.
In my estimation, the cement to hold communities together in happiness and civil moderation has always been their meta-narratives. Meta-narratives are grand, surpassing story arcs: sin giving way to redemption, from a Christian perspective, or the ceaseless march of progress, from a secular one.
Some of these master plots are not as global as others. "The South shall rise again!" is certainly less than universal. Yet it indubitably has served one particular community as a basis for continued hope and fellow-feeling.
When I say I oppose and resent the demise of meta-narrative, I do not mean to imply that all meta-narratives are created equal. Those that include by excluding — "The South shall rise again!" implicitly excludes blacks — deserve to die.
In my view, however, meta-narratives that are sufficiently universal and all-inclusive can be just what the doctor ordered. (Remember when you could say "just what the doctor ordered" and everyone knew what you meant?) To the extent that I call myself a Christian, what that means to me is basically this: I treat the Christian meta-narrative of sin and redemption — of Christ's saving all humans from the fires of hell by his heroism on the cross — as a metaphor for the same values that are enshrined in the secular story of unceasing progress about which today's postmodernists are so incredulous.
If meta-narrative needs resuscitating, we had better be careful which meta-narratives we resurrect. I admit that. Nazism and communism had their versions of the grand narrative, as does Islamic (not to mention Christian) fundamentalism today. When meta-narrative metastasizes into ideology, watch out.
I believe the Christian meta-narrative, properly understood, avoids that pitfall. Only problem is, a lot of Christians have a different meta-narrative. Those devotees of the "Left Behind" novels who believe the world is coming to an end, if only Israel can hold onto the Holy Land until Jesus returns, are telling a different tale entirely.
Still, I'm more than eager to undertake the risk of reviving meta-narrative in our culture. I think it's the antidote to a lot of society's ills. Think of it this way. If we are today as self-centered and narcissistic as Catholic News Service columnist Therese Borchard says we are in this recent column, what can get us working together again for the common good? Well, what better than thinking of ourselves as, each of us, a member of the cast of a play?
The high school musical, as everybody knows, is where the same "obnoxious teenagers ahead of me in line at Starbucks," as Ms. Borchard puts it, come together on stage in some sort of docility and fellowship to present to their community a ... yes, a narrative or story line for the entertainment and edification of all.
Maybe today we need a little less of "life is a beach" and a lot more of "life is a high school musical." Maybe that's what we so desperately need to make us all more civil.
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