Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It

An excerpt from Diane Kalen-Sukra

PAC would like to express their deepest thanks to Diane Kalen-Sukra for this exclusive excerpt from Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It. Diane is an esteemed speaker at our upcoming event, Democracy and Tyranny Saturday, July 26th at 1 pm EDT where she will be speaking on Diagnosing Civic Culture.

Civility Flows from the Heart

An abridged excerpt from “Love is the Greatest Civic Virtue,” Chapter 7 of Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It (5th Anniversary Edition, 2024)

By Diane Kalen-Sukra

Incivility is not just about rudeness—it is a deeper erosion of trust, shared purpose, and the social fabric that binds communities. Its triggers often arise from a lack of civic skills: the ability to disagree without dehumanizing, to argue without attacking, to defend one’s convictions without destroying the other.

Some believe incivility is justified when they feel wronged. Others have adapted to a culture that rewards manipulation over character. Still others have given up on a shared vision entirely, retreating into factions where contempt for “the other side” is not just tolerated, but valorized.

The loss is not just interpersonal—it’s institutional. When people can no longer navigate disagreement with integrity, the conditions for public life disintegrate. And this is no accident. Civic education is on the decline. Fewer and fewer institutions teach the habits of democracy. The values that once undergirded civic life—generosity, mutual obligation, and warm-heartedness—are increasingly replaced with competitiveness, cynicism, and performative outrage.

Layer onto this the deepening pressures of inequality, polarization, and disillusionment, and it’s no wonder that many lash out—not always out of malice, but out of pain, exclusion, or a loss of hope. Some mistake incivility for power. Others mistake silence for peace. But make no mistake: normalized incivility is not just an unfortunate dynamic; it is an existential threat to democracy.

This threat is all around us. Even seemingly reasonable people begin justifying unacceptable behavior. When is it okay to threaten public officials? To intimidate their family members? To cancel those you disagree with? The answer is: it is never okay.

We must be clear: the rule of law, the dignity of persons, and the ethic of respect are not optional in a democracy. Protest, yes. Accountability, yes. But cruelty, never. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, civil disobedience “does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.” That is not weakness; it is strength. It is love, disciplined and embodied in action.

Incivility, on the other hand, is lazy. It is what we resort to when we are too impatient or wounded or prideful to do the hard work of understanding, persuasion and compromise. And it spreads quickly. Once it becomes normalized, even those with no original grievance start using it to get their way.

Think of a sports field without rules or referees. The strongest, loudest, and most ruthless dominate. That’s not sport—it’s chaos. Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games is not fiction in some civic spaces—it’s metaphor.

Communities need structure. They need agreed-upon norms. They need people who are willing to be gardeners of the commons—pruning what harms, cultivating what heals. It starts with understanding what civility truly means.

Civility has been flattened in modern discourse and too often dismissed as nicety or misused as a muzzle. But in its classical sense, it is a virtue born in the polis. The Latin civilis means “pertaining to citizens or civic life.” Civitas is the city, the place of shared belonging. Civilitas is the conduct that gives life to the city—a posture of generosity, responsibility, and shared duty.

Civility is not what we do because we agree with one another. It is what we do because we belong to one another, “like feet, hands, eyelids and the rows of upper and lower teeth” as Marcus Aurelius reminds us.

P.M. Forni put it plainly: “The civil person is someone who cares for their community and looks at others with a benevolent disposition, rooted in the belief that their claim to well-being and happiness is as valid as their own.”

Today, that spirit is in short supply. Citizenship has been reduced to a transaction—pay taxes, get services. The deeper call—to participate in a moral project, to be custodians of shared life—has been forgotten. But democracy is not a vending machine. It is a covenant. And civility is the thread that keeps it from tearing.

Without it, institutions are weakened and ineffectual. Policies can guide us, but they cannot hold together what culture tears apart. If a culture rewards cruelty, cruelty will spread. If it prizes dignity, dignity can thrive. The question is: what do we reward?

How else can we expect civility to take root, if not by practicing it, daily, in our words, our choices, and our public life? This is why I encourage civic leaders and civic-minded citizens to:

Model compassion. Even when it’s hard, even when you’re angry. That’s when it matters most. People may not remember your argument, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.

Confront incivility. Not with hostility, but with clarity and conviction. Recognize it. Name it. Stand up for others. Never turn a blind eye to injustice. There is always something you can do—so do it. Create conditions where respectful behavior is expected and upheld.

Audit your culture. Diagnose it. Where are the disconnects between what you say and what you tolerate? Where is trust eroding?

Foster Civility Circles. Small, intentional communities where people can practice the skills of democratic life. These are places in your sphere of influence where curiosity, dialogue and shared understanding are operating norms.

And for heaven’s sake, stop gossiping! Nothing kills culture faster. The Greek word diabolos—from which we get ‘devil’—literally means slanderer. Gossip is not harmless, it’s sabotage.

Socrates knew this. Standing in the Athenian agora, falsely accused, he said: “For I know that this is the truth, that I am hated by many people, and this is what will convict me if I am convicted—not Meletus nor Anytus, but the prejudice and envy of the many. These have been the death of many good men, and will probably be the death of many more.” (Plato, Apology 28a).

He was convicted under the law, yes—but not by evidence or reason. He was undone by whisper networks, prejudice, and public envy. His fate reminds us that the machinery of justice can be overtaken by public sentiment, envy, and rumor. We clearly didn’t invent 'cancel culture.'

If civility and courage are not core values in your organization, they must become so. Not because they’re trendy, but because they are the values that make us capable of being a self-governing people.

Research confirms what our conscience already knows. Rudeness destroys teams. It weakens collaboration. It sabotages service. According to Harvard Business Review, it even makes us more error-prone. The solution? Culture. One rooted in respect, dignity, and yes—love.

Train for civility. Teach it. Practice it. Embed it.

Partner with schools. If we want future citizens to be civic-minded, we need to model what that looks like now. Let young people witness that adulthood, at its best, is not a descent into cynicism and contempt, but a maturation into wisdom, restraint, and civic grace.

Above all, remember this: civility is both behavior and belief, rooted in a recognition of the inherent dignity of others. It is about seeing the person across from you and saying you are worthy of my attention, my respect, my restraint. Not because you earned it. But because your humanity carries innate worth.

The ancients understood that a flourishing city depends not only on laws or institutions, but on the moral commitments of its people. This includes friendship rooted in virtue, duty to the common good, and care for one another as fellow citizens. Civility is the public face of that care—dignity and love expressed in action, especially when it is difficult.

Simply put, civility flows from the heart. And the heart work is ours to do.

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Diane Kalen-Sukra is the founder of Kalen Academy, an interactive online school for civic leaders and engaged citizens, which she launched after retiring as a city manager. She is also an acclaimed author, speaker and coach. Diane’s most popular book “Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What To Do About It” takes readers on a successful journey from Bullyville to Sustainaville, which includes a visit to classical antiquity, calling for a renaissance of civic values and civic education as vital to fostering the type of culture that can sustain us, our democracy and our planet.