Civility and conviviality

A few weeks ago I was threatened very convincingly and aggressively because on the Metro I asked someone to put out their cigarette. It's a no-smoking zone, I tend to get nauseous travelling in cigarette smoke. What was shocking was the aggression of the response which seemed to relish the idea of a fight coupled with the expectation that they had a right to smoke on the train, if only because they were prepared to threaten and perhaps use quite extreme physical violence. Eventually I backed down having ascertained that no-one else seemed willing to back me up and not being sure whether emergency stopping the train would not cause more problems than it might solve. I was aware there was a security camera but felt that an after-being beaten-up piece of evidence was scant protection. It was the failure of civility and social cohesion that was most troubling to me. So I very much identified with the stories in this article. And I'm very interested in the reflection towards the back-end of it.

Civility is not some outdated bourgeois concept, but a daily expression of social solidarity. It's important because it allows us to trust the people around us. We are creatures of instinct, and in cities in particular we are crowded together with people whose motives and intentions we need to read if we are to feel safe. If, in the scrum on a bus, someone lets us on first or offers us a seat, our feelings of pleasure and relief are much greater than one might expect from such an act. That's because the gesture says this person is not only unthreatening, they are prepared to put our own needs ahead of their own.
Conversely, rude and inconsiderate behaviour is alarming because the message is that the perpetrator is defying convention, and we don't know how far they will go. The guy in the ladies' loos might have been having fun. But the women found it threatening because they had no idea which rules he would break next. He might have been there to mock or to mug or to sexually assault.
We are at sea without social norms, and yet who's to decide them? We're all confused, but we need to talk about it. It's not enough for us just to retreat from this issue, afraid of interfering with other people's lives.

More than talk about it, we need to show solidarity publically with those who are attempting to stand up for civil and convivial norms. That is the most effective form of communication. That's what I needed on that Metro train: people to make signs that they would support me.
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Basic civility is about social solidarity, not priggishness

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