What is civility?

Dealing with people and situations in a respectful manner.

The act of connection.

I’ve been thinking that the ‘Occupy’ protests are really a debate on what it is to be civil. “In a civil society.”

Civility is difficult to discuss. There is very little in the way of genuine example to consider.

The more they study the function of the human brain, the more they are discovering that we are inherently social creatures, and in fact, that we have, at our root, a tendency to form beliefs. Whether rational or not is irrelevant, the process goes on anyway. We attempt to understand the world instinctively on a social level as if we could socialize with everything, and as if reality itself has social expectations of us. Eating alone is just a biological process. Living alone is just taking shelter.

The system we have now is called economy where the measure of anything’s worth can be stated in dollars and cents, and equality amounts to being willing to share this imaginary value with other people to one degree or another. Is there any other system in your experience? Something I might have missed?

Prestige? That has a monetary value in this day and age, thus we all know names like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. How many people these days can name any artist not backed by the economy?

Among artists, the one who does the best work. A starving artist may have more prestige than a billionaire among certain communities. Yes. Sometimes artists become quite famous after they starve to death, figuratively speaking.

Now what allows us to believe in society is some idea that we share values in common. Before economy, there was novelty and rebellion during the renaissance era which was working alongside fidelity. Fidelity is also known as loyalty, and what gives rise to sentiments like nationalism. But is it not true that what it boils down to is we have to believe in something? Have faith in something?

Ironic that banks call themselves Fidelity and Trust. Indeed, they are supposedly based on social trust. They are supposedly seeing to public well-being. They are the guardians of economy.

And when that faith is broken, the system breaks too.

Belief becomes truth sooner or later. Belief becomes truth to the degree that it coincides with the ultimate issue of human nature.

My uncle was a banker for 40 years, and he grew to hate going to work, because all he did was chase after people who were dishonest. Working for a bank and being a champion of the institution can be very different things.

It made him feel the dishonesty from all people. Dishonesty is more of a rule than an exception.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~