The Soul of Civility, Tested

What does civility demand when justice is costly and deeply personal? Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, shares a raw story about how being scammed sparked both a lengthy legal battle and a profound disagreement with her husband over whether to fight or walk away. Through that conflict, Hudson wrestles with whether civility means politeness or principled confrontation, and what it costs our families when moral crusades take over our lives. The episode explores civility not as courteousness or softness, but as disciplined respect for human dignity even when the stakes are high and the gloves stay firmly on.

Tell us your argument stories! 

• Email guest and topic suggestions to us at whenwedisagree@gmail.com
• Follow us on Instagram

Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. We consistently underestimate how long tasks will take and we overestimate what we can accomplish. This planning fallacy explains why projects run late, why renovations exceed budgets, and why promises get broken and disagreements.

The planning fallacy creates conflicts between optimistic promisers and frustrated promise receivers between those who plan and those who suffer when plans fail. The planning fallacy can destroy trust in relationships. Your partner promises to be ready in five minutes and takes 20 or more. Your friend swears they'll help you move, but shows up hours late.

Your he, your teenager, insists they can finish homework in an hour, then needs three. They're not lying. They might genuinely believe. Optimistic estimates. But repeated planning failures feel like [00:01:00] deception to those who suffer the consequences at the workplace. The planning fallacy can create cascading failures, marketing promises, delivery dates that engineering can't meet, or managers set deadlines based on best case scenarios, not realistic scenarios or worst case scenarios.

Teams commit to more than they can deliver. Understanding the planning fallacy improves relationships and reduces conflicts. We can add buffer time to everything. When estimating, consider our past performance and not hope for improvements. When others give estimates, maybe double them to yourself. Most importantly, recognize that planning fallacy isn't just dishonesty.

It's really human. We're all pretty terrible at predicting how long things will take and forgiving others planning failures as you'd want. Yours forgiven is a decent set of advice. Better yet. Plan for planning failures. I'm more Michael Lee, director of the Civility Initiative and Professor of Communication at the College of Charleston.

Today's guest on When We Disagree is [00:02:00] Alexandra Hudson. She is the author of The Soul of Civility, timeless Principles to Help Heal Society and Ourselves, and she is a passionate advocate about the way that ideas, storytelling, and beauty can change people's lives. Alexandra, tell us an argument story. 

Alexandra Hudson : So I have never.

I told this story before. And it's a very vulnerable one. It's one, it's, it is about a time that was about probably the most challenging time in my life and probably the most trying season of my marriage. And it was about justice. So we had. A horrible thing happened in our home. This room was like pouring rain.

When I got home, January 4th, 2023, a pipe had burst in the third, on the third floor of my home, and it just poured water into my home for three or four days, like four swimming pools worth of water. Insurance companies said a remediation company to bake my home, heat it up, left us the massive mold issue.

I hired what I [00:03:00] thought was a great company to come in and get rid of the mold in my home and they said, we have this patent pending enzyme. It's basically magic and we get to keep all your beautiful historic woodwork and plaster walls and none of that invasive, demolition and none of those.

Toxic chemicals that, that is bad for your kids, bad for your body. They're like the wellness crunchy oriented mold company. And I said, great. And they come in. Every other company said it was gonna be three weeks to a month. They come in for five days, they show up with people who have never remediated mold before, and I'm like, uhoh, this is not a good sign.

Anyway, they tell me the job's done and I say, okay, great. Like I bring my kids in the home and literally. Like days after they tell me the mold's gone, I pull plastic off the walls because I had opened up some wall cavities and supposedly treated the mold. I see mold everywhere, in every single room of the house.

And they then proceed to tell me, oh no, if you actually want the mold gone, you're gonna have to pay us more money. We, that mold is your fault [00:04:00] basically. And I was like, no, that's not how this works. Like you. I paid you $50,000. You told me like I brought my kids in the home.

Anyway I like stopped talking with them and I dispute it with my credit card company. Credit card company gives me back half. They keep half. Wow. And they sue us for the half. They sue my family for the half that they think they're owe. Even though their own testing showed the mold was like three times higher when they left than when they came.

And so the big disagreement in my life, that was probably the most painful disagreement I've ever had, was with my husband about what to do about this. Do we just pay these corrupt, uhhuh criminals to go away? Or do we fight? What is justice? 

Michael Lee : Right? 

Alexandra Hudson : What is love? And his view was, that's $50,000.

A lot of money, not the end of the world for us. You're on book tour, we have three kids, we're still doing a whole home renovation. We're still reeling from this crisis. Let's just pay these. Bullies to go away. 

Michael Lee : Uhhuh 

Alexandra Hudson : like this is a democracy. You don't just pay [00:05:00] thugs not to harass you, not to bully you, not to threaten you with litigation.

When they don't do the job. I was like, this is about justice. This is not just about us. And I'm like, and my husband's an attorney. I have a platform. I'm like, if they're doing this to us, who else are they doing this to? I had this like real sense of like missionary. Zeal and righteous indignation. So it was about a year and a half of litigation with this company, and it was painful the entire time.

My husband was so gracious and represented us, but he didn't want to, 'cause he's I just wanna pay them to go away. I just wanna not do this. And I'm like, no, we have to do this. We're doing this for our family. We're doing this to other people. And so the disagreement was about very real competing visions of the good.

Yeah, I had a vision of what was good for our family and good for society. He had a vision of what was good for our family and what was good for society, and we love each other and we love our family, and we love justice equally. He's an attorney. He's in the practice of justice, and this felt like a very deep and very real irreconcilable.

Difference. And I prayed a lot about [00:06:00] this. I thought a lot about this. Like I thought, this is a very painful process. What if we lose, what if we go up against this bad company? We all this emotional toil, all of this, social capital in our relationship expended all this money we're spending on this litigation.

What if we lose is justice a process or is it an outcome? And anyway, we, long story short, we ended up with a resounding victory. Resounding, like categorical, unqualified, like the court, we have a, court order that says we won. And of course it's easy to say we made the right decision.

Yeah. Now, and of course, my husband and I reconciled, we're healed. And now having won, he's okay, that was a good decision, but it was painful. And that was like a core, that was like a core disagreement for many months in our relation. It was like a thing we were tiptoeing around.

Yeah. And in fact. I. This is something I talk about in civility, like about civility. Civility doesn't mean not having preferences. It means you can have deeply held preferences. And in fact, I prayed and I thought a lot about what does civility look like in this situation? I concluded that civility [00:07:00] was not coddling this bad company by saying, oh yeah, you did a good job and I'm just gonna pay you even though you didn't like it was civility was confronting them with.

The truth of their dishonesty. And in fact, I had former employees contact me, former clients contact me, say, oh, this is their business model. They've done this to other people. They've this is how they do business. And that was what Il, that, that was the conclusion I came to. I, I prayed for discretion on that front.

But my, here was my husband. With all the same values, reasonable minds, disagreeing and anyway, so that was a very real painful point of disagreement that in the end I was correct. I'm just joking. I know that's not the moral of the story. The moral of the story is that, it is like I learned firsthand through that.

It's hard to respect people through disagreement. It was hard for me to respect the other side through that disagreement. It was hard for me to respect my husband through that disagreement to remember the bond. Remember love to remember our shared passion for our family, [00:08:00] passion for justice, that we weren't enemies in that situation and to maintain.

What I like put my ideals into practice in that moment. That civility is maintaining our respect for the personhood, the dignity of the other, even when we disagree. That was with my husband, that was with this other company, and real painful, messy, and I worked really hard to maintain that through it, and it was still hard.

So that's just to show I don't have it all figured out. 

Michael Lee : Let me ask you about the tenor of the disagreement with your husband. If you could describe your. Conflict style generally, and then describe the tenor of this particular disagreement specifically that would be helpful. 

Alexandra Hudson : Yeah, I think that in general we have very little conflict, mostly because he's so easygoing and has so few preferences that when he does have a preference, like he lets me have like most of the decisions most times.

And when he has a preference, I'm like, oh, no problem. Like you care a lot about this. We'll go where you want for dinner. We will go where you want on vacation. Like I, we're, we generally have very little in the way of conflict and when we do. [00:09:00] It's like very easily sorted out.

It's amazing. Yeah, we went through 10 years of marriage with like very little conflict like that, and then this just felt like such a huge thing. Yeah. And it was about very real things like how we spend our time, how we spend our money, what are we pursuing? With our collective family resources, and and the tenor of those conversations. It was hard. I think the most painful part for me was looking back on and seeing like how we were walking on eggshells with each other. And then we would have no grace for our kids in that moment. We'd be like, 

Michael Lee : yeah.

Alexandra Hudson : Responding to discovery questions from the bad guys. And then my kids would need something and I'd be like, go away. I can't handle one more thing right now. I'm about to explode of like stress and frustration and anxiety about this. And so the cost. Was real. I feel I grieve most the cost to my children, the time that I spent on that, away from them.

And I try and tell myself that I did it for them and I did do it for them, and I did it for other kids that didn't have the resources that our family had to fight. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. 

Alexandra Hudson : Those bad guys. But yeah. [00:10:00] Tough. 

Michael Lee : What are some other principles from your book? You talked about civility, mean, doesn't mean not having preferences to use a double negative.

Yes. What are some other principles from your book that you try to apply in your life? One of the things I really love about this show is the opportunity to interview folks who have a very public facing stance on civility or healthy conflict or dialogue across difference or any kind of bridge building work.

But then when the rubber really hits the road in your, in their personal lives, is really where it becomes fascinating. 

Alexandra Hudson : So a lot of noble people in this space that we are in, Mike, that give a lot of speeches and say a lot of nice things, write a lot of good books. I know that my most important vocation, a word that comes in the Latin word, Ari, which means to call like my most important calling.

Is being a parent, that is the most important thing I can do to make the world a better place, is to create good human beings. And [00:11:00] cultivate the character and integrity and soul of my children. And I think this is not just in our space, this civility, bridge building, depolarization space.

This is like every, do-gooder. Every CEO of a nonprofit, every public leader. Where it's really easy to feel like you're fighting fighting, sacrificing to make the world a better place, but then losing your family, losing your soul, losing the people closest to you who need you the most.

And I've read enough books. I've, been in close enough in proximity to power, and I know so many of these cautionary tales where people are fighting for the most just and noble things in the world, but at the expense of and of the people who need them most, which is their children and their spouses and their relationship.

And I love my work. I do it for my kids. I think it, I'm working to make the world a more gentle. Less savage place for them, but I know that no, nothing I write, do or say is gonna be a perfect [00:12:00] substitute for being away from them. Like nothing is gonna be a matter as much as being present with them, which is what they need most.

My kids are five, three, and one. 

Michael Lee : Yeah, super young. Talk generally if you would from one parent to another. What is civility? In a general sense, and then how do you encourage especially young children to practice it? 

Alexandra Hudson : Civility is the art of human flourishing. It is the bare minimum of respect that we are owed and owed to others by virtue of our shared personhood and innate human dignity.

It is the it is more than mirror. Politeness. Politeness, I argue, is manners. It's etiquette, it's technique. It's the external stuff. It's what we do. It's what we say. Where civility is something deeper, it's something richer. It's an inner disposition of the heart. It's a, again, a way of seeing others as our fundamental moral equals.

It's seeing ourselves and others correctly. My book is a humanistic manifesto, ex [00:13:00] extolling the gift of being human in ourselves and in others, which is the message we need right now in our dehumanizing and divided time where we wanna diminish the personhood of the people we don't like. And so how that looks like in my parenting is not just being content with my kids, complying with the letter of the law.

Kids are good at that. They know how to break the rules while following the rules. Like my son will, say something. Mean to his sister. And I'll say, first of all, apologize. And he'll say sorry in the most sarcastic and annoying way. And I will say no. Like you obeyed me in the letter of the law, but the spirit was not there.

Your heart was not in the right place, first of all. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. 

Alexandra Hudson : I want you to have a heart of service and love. For your sister, I wanna have contrition for hurting her. Like when you hurt her, first of all, I tell him you hurt yourself too. You don't understand that, but you are, and this is the argument I make for civility, that when we are vicious, cruel, malicious to others, there's no nice guys finishing last and the bad guys [00:14:00] finishing ahead.

The people who are willing to take the gloves off, we often hear like the strong men win. That's not the case. This is barring from Socrates and Augustine and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And many others, that when we are, when we degrade the personhood of another human being, we degrade our own personhood, our own humanity as well.

Michael Lee : I find this as a parent so fascinating too, because of course I really encourage my kids to really just be kind, but then I'm also just the wor have the worst competitive spirit when it comes to sports. And so then I'm watching them play sports now that they're a little older and I'm basically shouting for them to kill somebody.

Take that ball, don't let them take the ball from you, that's your ball. I'm actively encouraging them to be confrontational and to defeat people. It seems to counterman all the messages of kindness and concern for the other that I've been spouting for all these years. But it really gets to the point about what you were saying earlier, which is that [00:15:00] civility can be confrontational and I wanna spend a second there.

So if there's obviously a time to be more aggressive, so you talked about this story of these bullies who were trying to extort money from you. And so my question is when you start the process of confrontation, whether it's fighting or even if you're defending yourself or you're debating, are you leaving the space of civility and engaging in a different practice or to you, is that just a natural extension of civility?

Alexandra Hudson : No, civility is not it both compels us to action and it places limitations on our action. And, here's what I mean by that. That, and I get this from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And his philosophy of peaceful nonviolent resistance. Think back to letter from Birmingham jail.

Dr. King is writing that letter to the white moderate the polite. Moderate, I will [00:16:00] call them. They wanted Dr. King to be polite. Just don't rock the boat. Don't stop ruffling feathers. Stop annoying people and justice will happen. Just be patient. They're asking him and he says, no, the time for justice is now.

And, and for anyone that wanted to be part of his peaceful nonviolent resistance movement, they had to undergo this process that he called purification. It was essentially purifying one's motives in cultivating what I would call the disposition of civility. A fundamental respect and love for the personhood, the innate dignity, the seeing the imago de in the other.

And once, once people, purified their motives for wanting to be part of this movement at that, and cultivated the disposition of civility, that compelled them to act. 

It compelled them to take a stand and say, fellow citizen, fellow human being. I respect you enough to tell you that you have a fundamentally inaccurate view of the world, and I'm gonna show you that through these.[00:17:00] 

Sit-ins letter writing campaigns, marches, protests, but it also so it compelled action and it simultaneously placed limitations on action. It meant I cannot degrade your dignity. Along the way to pursuing greater justice and equity and this broader, vision of human equality. Gandhi said it really well.

It can't be, you can't say that means just are justified by ends because it means Gandhi says, in fact, are everything. How you protest is just as important as what you are protesting for, that you couldn't undermine personhood and human dignity along the way to. Promoting personhood and human dignity.

And so what that meant for me in the context of our litigation, I prayed for this company and the people involved who were very bad and hurt so many people constantly. And I had to keep my heart tender and open. And that's what can happen when you're on these holy crusades. Like you feel like you have this [00:18:00] missionary deal.

You feel hardened. The other side is so bad. You have to be willing to do anything to. Take the gloves off, but I had to and people didn't take the gloves off to win and I worked so hard to stay tender, to stay staffed to stay mindful of the personhood of the other, to tell stories of not them just being these greedy monsters, but they have children.

I wonder what their children are like. Like the, I tried it. It was very hard. And in fact I'll share this one last thing. There are a lot of people today. That say if you hold different views on X, Y, Z from me, you are a bad person and I can't be around you. And it's not even it might not even be like we hold different views or that you hold different views on me.

If you are have insufficient zeal for this issue, that is a moral blight and I can't be around you. If this is not the most important thing that you wanna talk about all the time. And I felt that. For the first time in my life with this thing, when I would tell people about it, if they weren't equally as just, righteously in indignant as I was, [00:19:00] I'm like, what's wrong with you?

I'm like, you crazy person. Like how, like I felt myself saying that, like thinking that to people there's something wrong with your heart, that you are not so enraged as I am, like that you don't have the exact same priorities. And I realized, aha. That's what people feel like in our public discourse right now.

Your view on abortion, your view on Donald Trump. How are you not, how is your mind not exploding with the injustice of it all? And I realized that in that moment and it gave me pause and empathy for people who feel that way. And what I realized in myself, I had let that issue become the most important thing in my life.

I created an idol out of it. And this is the final chapter of my book on misplaced meaning and I and identity that, that when we place our ultimate sense of meaning and identity in politics and political issues, that is bad for democracy. It makes us no longer able to have reasonable discourse.

And ultimately it's bad for our own souls too. And I experience that firsthand. 

Michael Lee : Last question, and it gets exactly to the dilemma about [00:20:00] softness of heart that you were talking about amidst this discord and the bullying of this company, did you, and do you consider that company or representatives of that company to be your moral equals?

Alexandra Hudson : Yes. Like they are created in God's image just like I am, and I owe them a bare minimum. Of respect by virtue of our shared Imago day, our shared personhood. I love this line from Shakespeare. He says, do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. I can't imagine having a drink with these people.

I guess if the opportunity presented itself, I might. Okay. But what Shakespeare's calling us to do is to. Remember that, that there, there are people on the other side of our it's of the other side of the issue, of the other side, of the of the case.

Remember m remembering the person, the shared personhood is the [00:21:00] baseline. And then friendship is you need that basic shared humanity first. And then friendship, building on that and friendship is saying, reasonable minds can disagree on this. 

And, we can still coexist and we can have a whole separate conversation on civic friendship today and how that's been lost in Congress when people moved away from DC and a million other factors.

But yes, civility demands, having these conversations and having a shared humanity is what prevents that from devolving into, dehumanizing the other. Painting someone as a monster, it helps remember that we have more in common than not. And then friendship is what it enables Those conversations to actually strengthen our relationship, strengthen our republic where we don't wanna go scorched earth.

The moment any disagreement arises, which is what we see now, everything is like zero to 60. Everything is, it is totally apocalyptic all the time, [00:22:00] which is bad for democracy, bad for ourselves. 

Michael Lee : If you ever sit down for a drink with this company, check your chalice for poison.

Alexandra Hudson : Exactly. Tell me about it. 

Michael Lee : Alexandra Hudson, thank you so much for being on When we Disagree. When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.