The Civility Trap: Why Being Nice Makes Things Worse [View all]

[summer_in_TX]

Chris Armitage was out with a thought-provoking – and well-documented – article on Substack yesterday: “The Civility Trap: Why Being Nice Makes Things Worse” https://open.substack.com/pub/cmarmitage/p/the-civility-trap-why-being-nice

Here's what makes this trap so effective: your neurology is working against you. When you violate social norms, even in response to someone destroying those norms, your anterior cingulate cortex fires the same signals as physical pain. Being rude to someone advocating genocide literally hurts the brain of people who have functioning empathy capabilities.
This isn't a bug; it's an evolutionary feature. For 200,000 years, humans lived in small bands where reputation determined survival. Social violations meant exile, which meant death. We're wired to feel intense discomfort when breaking taboos, even when those taboos no longer serve their purpose.
Modern authoritarians exploit this systematically. They understand that most people would rather lose rights than lose propriety. So they frame every escalation as a test of your civility. Will you be "divisive"? Will you "sink to their level"? Will you be the one who "destroys discourse"?
Notice how the burden always falls on those responding to violations, never on those committing them. Kilmeade suggests murdering the homeless, and the question becomes whether critics are being too harsh. The framework itself is the trap.”

Lots of great examples plus documentation. Evolutionary biology and human psychology make responding to a pattern of incivility with civility helps them win.

Made me wonder why I haven’t seen viral info on how to contact sponsors of the Brian Kilmeade show and pressure them to drop him.

Maybe it’s out there and I just haven’t seen it.