Jeptha Lodge #121
Voices

Beyond this manners education, Michael attended Cotillion in Saint Louis, Missouri. Along with dozens of other 13-year-olds, he was schooled in the arts of polite conversation, including protocol for politely asking your partner to dance.

Even though in 2024, The Wall Street Journal still features a Miss Manners column on topics like how to respond to inquiries about breastfeeding, proper etiquette is not something we discuss enough societally. Very much a dying art, it’s reasonable to suggest much of our declining civility is due to diminished politeness and courtesies.

No doubt you have encountered rudeness in your own daily life. National Public Radio (NPR) just last week published a segment on this topic. “Researchers have found that instances of rudeness and incivility have been on the rise since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coupled with pushback against social emotional learning in Missouri’s state curriculum and tensions amid changing political landscapes, it can be hard to remain mindful and resist negative reaction.”

Another term for politeness is decorum, what Michael and I used in my book: The Civility Mosaic: How Anyone Can Use the Principles of Freemasonry to Repair Our World. In fact, we point to decorum’s growing unimportance as the first cause of civility’s decline. “Not long ago, society forced us to get along,” we wrote. “We used to ride in train cars together. Think about this experience. Imagine a train with no assigned seats. The act of negotiating this social experience required decorum. We were forced into treating fellow passengers with civility to navigate the communal milieu.”

Of course, these days, many of us ride alone in our own cars, islands to ourselves. Even if we do take a taxi or Uber, it doesn’t guarantee social interaction. In fact, the latter ride share company went so far as to introduce a “Quiet Mode feature” in 2019. This “allows you to specify what level of conversation you'd like to have during your Uber ride . . . riders can choose between ‛Quiet preferred’ and ‛happy to chat’ in the app,” according to USA Today.

The wider point I make in The Civility Mosaic is that decorum was necessitated by living and working so closely with one another in times past, necessitating good manners. Our concept of modern etiquette hails back to the Renaissance as a mechanism to stabilize interpersonal relations. As Smithsonian Magazine explains, “Manners were a response to the violence and crude behaviors run rampant in burgeoning cities and a means of reinforcing social order and distinguishing the privileged class from everyone else. A first generation of Miss Manners, typically men took up the quill. And the newly defined codes of conduct were especially important at the dinner table.”

As for women, once upon a time, females were taught to be proper young ladies at finishing schools. Though those days have come and gone, and with them elements of sexism, at the heart of all such etiquette is an emphasis on treating your fellow humans with dignity and respect. Or at least it should be. The aforementioned NPR piece quotes Asha Hornaday, founder of the Modern School of Manners, about what constitutes politeness: “She said having good manners boils down to consideration, respect and honesty: three simple concepts that can get complicated as social and cultural expectations change over time.”

Freemasonry is also an instructive resource for cultivating good manners or decorum. As I explain in The Civility Mosaic: “A respect for decorum infuses each meeting. It is rare to observe arguments or fights during Lodge, in part because the members address the Lodge through its presiding officer (known as the Lodge Master) instead of directly to one another. (If denied permission by the Master to speak, the brother quietly returns to his seat.)” Meeting in Lodge also offer etiquette guidance in other significant ways. Discernment is one. When commiserating with our brethren in this hallowed space, conversations do not unfold as free-for-alls. Instead, what we speak about is intentionally circumscribed. Religion, politics, and business (and perhaps baseball and traffic) are not to be discussed inside during a lodge meeting. This goes back to Hornaday’s point about good manners being an outgrowth of consideration and respect. In these contentious times, it is more than reasonable to conclude conversations about any of these three topics can lead to incivility and outright hostility.

One place in which decorum is conspicuously absent is the workplace. Toxic corporate environments have sadly become a cliché, demoralizing staffs and even contributing to workplace violence. As The Conversation explains, “Most of us will experience incivility at some oint at work. More than 50 percent experience it weekly. According to a 2022 meta-analysis of 105 incivility studies, you’re more likely to cop it if you’re new, female, in a subordinate position, or from an ethnic minority.” This same piece rightly points to the words we use as a primary factor underlying vocational incivility. I couldn’t agree more.

Words wield tremendous power. If we ever hope to restore civility, both in the workplace and outside of it, we must be more intentional with what we say and what we do not say. This is so critical, because as I point out in my book, the workplace exists as a kind of societal microcosm. Both suffer when we allow toxicity to poison our dealings with others.

Whether we are talking about how we interact with coworkers or how we deal with people in enclosed spaces like the grocery store or a sports game, a renaissance of decorum is needed in 2024. Again, this comes back to Freemasonry’s guiding principles. In Lodge, we meet our Brothers on the level, meaning everyone should be treated fairly and indiscriminately. We would do well to carry this idea outside the Lodge.

Similarly, Masonic Brothers abide by a presumption of decency in others. This aligns with various definitions of manners or decorum.

When we elevate the importance of making others feel comfortable as our North Star, benevolent behavior can’t help but cascade. It acts as a ripple effect, positively encouraging others to follow suit. In popular culture, there is a mistaken belief that possessing decorum is somehow an elitist trait, like knowing which fork to use for one’s salad. The truth is true manners—and true civility—is non-exclusionary. It’s about treating others with dignity, making them feel respected and appreciated.

Looking forward, it is not at all too late for our society to return to the very same decorum that has long underpinned both Freemasonry and society. Here’s to doing so, and in the process, reigniting civility.