"In matters large and small, many people seemed concerned about churlishness, an ugliness in our relationships that appears to be increasing rather than decreasing"
About this Quote
Churlishness is a deliberately old-fashioned word for a very current anxiety: the sense that the social fabric is fraying in public, at work, online, even at the dinner table. Nick Clooney frames it as something both mundane and structural, "matters large and small", which is the key move. He is arguing that national crises and petty daily interactions are connected by the same moral weather. If politics feels ugly, it will show up in checkout lines; if everyday life is abrasive, politics will feel permissioned to go lower.
The intent is less to scold individuals than to name a climate shift. "Seemed concerned" signals he is taking the temperature of a public mood, not delivering a sermon from on high. That rhetorical modesty makes the claim harder to dismiss. The target is broader than rudeness: "ugliness in our relationships" suggests contempt, suspicion, and the small humiliations that accumulate into alienation. It's a warning that incivility is not just bad manners; it's a governance problem, because democracy relies on tolerating disagreement without turning opponents into enemies.
The subtext is also about acceleration. "Increasing rather than decreasing" implies that prior waves of reform, etiquette, or civic education have failed to counter new forces: polarization, media incentives that reward outrage, and the normalization of cruelty as authenticity. Clooney's phrasing mourns a lost baseline while implying a choice: you can measure the health of a society by how it treats people when nothing "important" is at stake.
The intent is less to scold individuals than to name a climate shift. "Seemed concerned" signals he is taking the temperature of a public mood, not delivering a sermon from on high. That rhetorical modesty makes the claim harder to dismiss. The target is broader than rudeness: "ugliness in our relationships" suggests contempt, suspicion, and the small humiliations that accumulate into alienation. It's a warning that incivility is not just bad manners; it's a governance problem, because democracy relies on tolerating disagreement without turning opponents into enemies.
The subtext is also about acceleration. "Increasing rather than decreasing" implies that prior waves of reform, etiquette, or civic education have failed to counter new forces: polarization, media incentives that reward outrage, and the normalization of cruelty as authenticity. Clooney's phrasing mourns a lost baseline while implying a choice: you can measure the health of a society by how it treats people when nothing "important" is at stake.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
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