Getting Off the Down Escalator

If you’ve started to believe that Americans are getting angrier, you’re not alone. Americans view this era as an extraordinarily angry time in our history.

Of course, anger leads to incivility in the practice of law. That’s bad enough. But it also leads to a particular form of incivility that we might call “righteous incivility.” That’s when you feel justified in lashing out—engaging in uncivil behavior—because you believe the other side has wronged you first.

In its strongest form, this feeling of being morally wronged, always accompanied by the belief that the opponent knew what they were doing, can be intoxicating and judgment-clouding. At the very least, it places us on an escalator heading straight down into incivility. We respond in anger, the other side responds in anger, and the cycle continues. All the while, both sides feel righteous about their own anger.

We all need ways to get off the escalator. Practicing mindfulness can help. Even ten mindful breaths can create enough distance between the stimulus and your response that you can respond in the way you want.

For me, it’s a novel I read in college: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. To be clear, I was forced to read it, and I went kicking and screaming. (To paraphrase Ice Cube’s character in Anaconda, “There are books this big?!?”) It’s been my favorite book ever since I closed the cover for the first time.

The novel takes place in Russia. There’s a murder. The plot revolves around three brothers. There’s a lot of talk about religion, especially between the atheist middle brother Ivan and his younger brother, the novice monk Alyosha.

No need to cover the whole plot here. The relevant passage comes from a scene that falls right in the middle when Father Zosima—a beloved but controversial elder—is dying. He shares his final teachings with his students, and one of those teachings addresses how we should see each other’s moral transgressions:

Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone. For there can be no judge of a criminal on earth until the judge knows that he, too, is a criminal, exactly the same as the one who stands before him, and that he is perhaps most guilty of all for the crime of the one standing before him. When he understands this, then he will be able to be a judge. However mad that may seem, it is true. … And if, … [the accused] goes away unmoved and laughing at you, do not be tempted by that either; it means that his time has not yet come, but it will come in due course; and if it does not come, no matter; if not he, then another will know, and suffer, and judge, and accuse himself, and the truth will be made full.

Sometimes seeing others’ transgressions as our own is a way of neutralizing our righteous incivility. Try it on the highway tonight. When you get cut off, think about all the people you’ve cut off. Think about all the times you were inconsiderate. What happens to your view of others’ inconsiderate driving when you remember the times you’ve driven the same way?

Or try it with legal writing—and, remember, you have to do it literally. The next time you get a brief that seems unfair and uncivil, view those passages as reflecting your own incivility. Recall times that you were unfair and uncivil. Doing so, a la Father Zosima, erases the distance between the other lawyer’s uncivil writing and yourself. It erases “them” and “us.” That might be enough daylight to defeat righteous incivility and keep you focused on the substance rather than the form. That, ultimately, is what wins cases.

At the end of the day, a down escalator is just a slowly moving set of stairs. It’s hard to walk your way back up—but you can do it. Father Zosima’s been a useful guide for me, and I hope he might be for you, too.