| Abstract: | An overview of the relationship between social structure and social order is employed to highlight the importance of the civility concept to civic society. In discussing these issues, the author provides a brief historical and a contemporary context for assessing the civility concept. This assessment draws on an eclectic literature that addresses the relationship among civility, socialization, and learning, the role of education in the civility process, the changing emphasis of higher education, the culture of individualism, and technology. The author concludes with a brief discussion of culture and the future of civility.
The problem of order arises out of the dual circumstance that human beings have limited (though not nonexistent) capacities for sympathy with their fellows and that they inhabit an environment that fails to provide them with sufficient resources to satisfy fully the needs of all of them. The problem of order is therefore rooted in inescapable conflict between the interests and desires of individuals and the requirements of society: to wit, the pacification of violent strife among men and the secure establishment of cooperative social relations making possible the pursuit of collective goals. (Wrong 1994, p. 36) |
