During these trying, political times it is easy to forget that we all want the same things. At least the sane among us. Travel anywhere in the world and this simple statement will be proven time and time again. Talk to your neighbor and you will find out that is applies. The things that we all want is safety, security and a little happiness. How do we get these things? Civility.

Somewhere down the road we have duped ourselves. We have decided civility is simply the basis of all other goods, that it will always be, that it will always exist. This is our mistake. And another mistake that we often make is that being civil implies agreeing or even liking someone else. It does not.

Civility is a fragile state that exists only when people realize that we all define the society in which we live. The question is what kind of society do we want to live in? There are only two answers: a civil one or an uncivilized one. So what does civility require?

In the Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins studies the evolutionary fact that we are all related and that we do not have to go so far back in time to realize that. Civility requires that we all realize that we are related and that we have to live together. Civility also requires that we discuss differences and call out obvious wrongs, but it also requires that we realize that differences are not all bad and that some wrongs are not so obvious. Civility requires rational thought and the understanding that if we do not work together that we will all fail.

Civility takes time, but without civility we may not have that much time left. I may not like my family all of the time, but they are the only family I have. And so it is with humanity.