Civility Theory: Summary - With one click...

Summary

• Guiding principle: Civility is mutual respect within shared responsibility.
• Levels: Civility can exist to varying degrees and with varying levels of security: absent, insecure/low, open, secure, developed.
• General welfare function: The higher the existing level of civility, the greater the welfare opportunities for all those involved.
• Specific welfare constellation: In practice, actors always think and act within specific constellations of variables. Therefore, a greater or lesser degree of welfare is always realized within concrete constellations of variables.
• Variable space: Interaction logics, forms of interaction, and levels of civility mutually influence each other. They thus form a variable space in which specific, even dynamic, processes of perception, orientation, and action can take place and be analyzed.
• Social spacetime: Actors with low levels of civility tend to think in narrower spatial and temporal terms, while those with higher levels of civility tend to think in broader spatial and temporal terms. In this sense, levels of civility create a social spacetime.
• Human learning: With over eight billion people on Earth and numerous conditions and potentials of globalization, problems and challenges on Earth can increasingly only be solved through the awareness of humanity as a community of action - the content of human learning.
• Limits of prediction and opportunities for action: While past and current events can be analyzed, future processes are fundamentally open in their forms and outcomes. This means that confident actors have a chance of success even in seemingly hopeless situations.
• Civil ethics: Analyze realistically, act responsibly!
• Civil navigation: Civilly motivated actors orient themselves in a complex world by analyzing it as best as possible and behave accordingly in a responsible manner.
• Theory Development: Since its initial presentation as a theory of civil modernity (2018), the theory of civility has been continuously developed. This has led to the emergence of a General Theory of Civility (GTC) and Specific Theories of Civility for individual areas and challenges (STC), as well as new concepts (for example, variable space, social spacetime, civility ethics, and civility navigation). Since the theory itself understands itself as capable of learning, its own development remains open.
• Accessibility: All available texts and videos on Civility Theory are currently freely accessible via the website of the non-profit organization Civility gUG, Berlin (https://www.civility.berlin). It would be desirable for the theoretical foundations and applied forms of Civility Theory to also become freely accessible through other online and offline forums. Civility-theoretical thinking and action, in the interest of human learning, should never be suppressed.