{"id":19528,"date":"2025-09-17T12:50:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T17:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=19528"},"modified":"2026-02-24T16:12:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T21:12:56","slug":"being-civilized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/being-civilized\/","title":{"rendered":"On being civilized"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cWhat does it matter what I think as long as I\u2019m polite and kind to the person?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause it\u2019s not real. It\u2019s not genuine. It\u2019s <span class=\"georgiai\">performative<\/span>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-19534 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/20250917_welldressed.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\"><\/p>\n<p>Yes, I was being judgy. I reserve the right to be judgy. We\u2019re all judgy. You can call it \u201cdiscerning,\u201d \u201cdiscriminating,\u201d \u201cpattern recognition,\u201d \u201cresentment,\u201d \u201coutrage,\u201d or \u201cvile mean girl,\u201d but we all do it. We may or may not relay our opinions to anyone, but we have them\u2014about things, people, thoughts, beliefs, <a href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/de-gustibus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">matters of taste<\/a>, and behavior. The only difference between your judgment and my judgment is that <span class=\"georgiai\">you don\u2019t agree with me<\/span>. Humans being humans, you feel you have the moral high ground because of course you do. I guarantee if we agreed, we\u2019d be sitting on the couch gleefully reinforcing our mutual opinion and possibly spilling hot tea.<\/p>\n<p>So I looked at this person who objected to my judgment, completely confused.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cPoliteness <em>is<\/em> performative. That is its <em>entire point<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The discussion had to end there for external reasons, we never got back to it, and then life intruded in a way that made it irrelevant, but the only real requirement in life is to be kind. If you can\u2019t manage that, be polite. If you can\u2019t manage <em>that<\/em>, walk away.<\/p>\n<p>But if you are pushed to engagement, go big or go home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhat does it matter what I think as long as I\u2019m polite and kind to the person?\u201d \u201cBecause it\u2019s not real. It\u2019s not genuine. It\u2019s performative.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[712],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19528"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23965,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19528\/revisions\/23965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}