The Civility Trap

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he offered a warning that reached well beyond geopolitics. Too often, he said, nations “go along to get along,” accommodating rather than confronting hard truths. That instinct may preserve short-term calm, but it ultimately leaves countries weaker, more vulnerable, and less prepared for what lies ahead.

His warning resonates far beyond international affairs.

Over the past decade, public discourse in the United States has grown noticeably harsher. Mockery has increasingly replaced debate. Public officials, journalists, and ordinary citizens alike have become targets of ridicule and intimidation. Behavior that once would have disqualified a public figure is now often defended as authenticity or strength.

The costs of this rising incivility are not abstract. People stop working together. Relationships fray. Attention shifts from solving shared problems to scoring points. Who among us has not witnessed families, friendships, or entire communities pull apart? A growing body of research suggests that living in a climate of hostility does not make us more engaged or energized—it makes us less happy.

In response, calls for greater civility have become both understandable and necessary.

Over the past several years, a remarkable effort has emerged to push back against polarization and contempt. More than 500 organizations across the United States now work to promote respectful dialogue across differences, many of which are connected through the Listen First Coalition. They’ve demonstrated that people with deep disagreements can listen to one another, ask genuine questions, and speak honestly without dehumanizing one another.

I have been part of this work myself. In my politically diverse community, I help lead an initiative designed to bridge the widening divides that have emerged in recent years. I host an education podcast aimed at defusing the culture-war exchanges that have wreaked havoc on our school systems. And as a school board member, I have introduced a resolution urging public members who address the board to treat one another with dignity rather than contempt.

That work matters. In communities across the country, including my own, these efforts have helped preserve relationships that might otherwise have broken under the strain of polarization.

But here is the mistake we sometimes make, and it is one I have made myself.

Civility, for all its virtues, is too low a bar to support meaningful democratic engagement.

In our effort to counter rising hostility, civility can become a trap—one that rewards getting along over getting honest, and offers the comforting illusion of harmony even when serious problems remain unresolved. I am not arguing against civility itself. Rather, I am urging us not to confuse civility with health.

Otherwise, we risk treating strategies designed to reduce hostility as if they were sufficient answers to our most pressing public problems. We start to believe that if conversations are polite, meetings are calm, and voices remain measured, then things must be going well.

That assumption is the civility trap, and it emerges whenever civility becomes the goal rather than the groundwork for change.

I have fallen into this trap as a school board member. I am proud that our meetings are orderly, that public comments are largely respectful, and that our votes are often unanimous. But I am far less proud of how little time we devote to confronting the hardest problems facing our students—hunger, chronic absenteeism, and the mental-health challenges that quietly prevent many of them from learning. Civility, in those moments, becomes less a pathway to improvement than a shield against discomfort.

This is what Carney was pointing to on the global stage. Going along to get along can feel responsible. It can look mature. But it often masks avoidance and conceals vulnerability. The sustained ovation that followed his remarks suggested that many in the room recognized the danger he was naming.

An important clarification is in order. I am not arguing that civility is always insufficient.

In some settings—especially among family members and close friends—restoring civility can be a genuine and hard-won achievement. When people on the brink of estrangement can share a holiday meal without contempt or speak without shouting, something meaningful has already been accomplished. In those contexts, civility is not a trap; it can be a lifeline, keeping relationships intact and creating the possibility, over time, for deeper, more difficult conversations to emerge naturally when people are ready.

The problem arises when we carry that same standard into institutions, communities, and public life—places where the goal cannot be mere coexistence, but collective attention to the problems we are obligated to face.

Why do we fall for the civility trap so easily? Pride and complacency can certainly play a role. So does discomfort, uncertainty, messiness, and conflict. Naming real problems rarely comes with neat answers.

But the most powerful force is fear.

People fear that lifting the rocks—examining what is not working—will lead to finger-pointing, shame, and blame. And for those who rightly take pride in being fair-minded and respectful, there is an additional fear: that challenging the status quo will cost them the very identity they value most—their commitment to civility itself.

The irony is that avoiding hard conversations rarely protects civility in the long run. It simply delays conflict, often until it erupts in more destructive ways. Avoided problems do not disappear; they deepen.

The answer is not incivility. Contempt, bullying, and humiliation—whether in politics, institutions, or personal life—never serve the public good. They corrode trust and make cooperation impossible.

Civility must be the foundation—not the finish line.

If we are serious about doing the best we can for ourselves, our fellow citizens, or a stable world order, we need more than calm. We need a commitment to treat others—even our adversaries—with dignity, and the courage to engage in dissent and healthy conflict rather than avoiding it. Disagreement has always been part of a healthy society. Contempt corrodes democracy, but so does a civility that asks nothing of us.

Ken Futernick is the author of The Courage to Collaborate - The Case for Labor-Management Partnerships in Education (Harvard Education Press); professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento; and a school board member in El Dorado County, California. He is also the host of the podcast “Courageous Conversations about Our Schools.”