Our Fading Civility

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President Gordon B. Hinckley

President of the Church

Brigham Young University commencement and inauguration ceremony, 25 Apr. 1996

Your secular education is designed to give you an improved opportunity in the great marketplace of the world. You, in most cases, will be compensated according to the value society places upon your skills.

But, as you have been told before, there should be, there must be, another side to the coin you carry with you from BYU. President David O. McKay, who for many years served as chairman of the Board of Trustees, once said:

“True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature or art, but in the development of character. True education awakens a desire to conserve health by keeping the body clean and undefiled. True education trains in self denial and self mastery. True education regulates the temper, subdues passion and makes obedience to social laws and moral order a guiding principle of life. It develops reason and inculcates faith in the living God as the Eternal Father of all” (Conference Report, April 1928, 102). …

In your studies many of you have chronicled the march of civilization. It has been a truly remarkable odyssey as through the centuries society has made progress as people have lived together in communities with respect and concern one for another. This is the hallmark of civilization. And yet at times we wonder how much progress we have really made. This century which now draws to a close has witnessed more wars and more death and suffering than any other century in human history. … Civility and mutual respect seem to have disappeared as people kill one another over ethnic differences.

But civility also appears to be fading much closer to home. Civility covers a host of matters in the relationships among human beings. Its presence is described in such terms as “good manners” and “good breeding.” But everywhere about us we see the opposite. …

It is appalling. It is alarming. And when all is said and done the cost can be attributed almost entirely to human greed, to uncontrolled passion, to a total disregard for the rights of others. In other words to a lack of civility. As one writer has said, “People might think of a civilized community as one in which there is a refined culture. Not necessarily; first and foremost it is one in which the mass of people subdue their selfish instincts in favor of the common well being” (Royal Bank Letter, May–June 1995). He continues: “In recent years the media have raised boorishness to an art form. The hip heroes of movies today deliver gratuitous put downs to ridicule and belittle anyone who gets in their way. Bad manners, apparently, make a saleable commodity. Television situation comedies wallow in vulgarity, stand up comedians base their acts on insults to their audiences, and talk show hosts become rich and famous by snarling at callers and heckling guests” (Ibid).

All of this speaks of anything but refinement. It speaks of anything but courtesy. It speaks of anything but civility. Rather, it speaks of crudeness and rudeness, and an utter insensitivity to the feelings and rights of others.

It is so with much of the language of the day. In schools and in the workplace there is so much of sleazy, evil, filthy language. I hope that every one of you will rise above it. You are now graduates of this great institution. You cannot afford the image of those whose vocabularies are so impoverished that they must reach into the gutter for words with which to express themselves. Along with such uncouth talk is so much of profanity. It too marks a lack of civility. The finger of the Lord wrote on the tablets of stone, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Ex. 20:7).

Sloppy language and sloppy ways go together. I hope that you have learned more than the sciences, the humanities, law, engineering and the arts, while you have been here. I hope that you will carry with you from this hallowed place a certain polish that will mark you as one in love with the better qualities of life, the culture which adds luster to the mundane world of which we are a part, a patina which puts a quiet glow on what otherwise might be base metal.

Said the Savior to the multitude: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men” (Matt. 5:13).

Civility is what gives savor to our lives. It is the salt that speaks of good taste, good manners, good breeding.

It becomes an expression of the Golden Rule: “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12).