In a recent column, Garrison Keillor, the familiar host of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, quipped that “it’s highly unusual in this day and age to meet a critic face-to-face.”

He refers to the tendency we have to use the more easily accessed forms of electronic communication to disparage others, imagine conspiracies, or to otherwise assume the worst. We can do so in ether space without first checking our facts or even accounting for the implications of our words. A blistering email or blog is much more convenient than confronting someone in person. Yet in the weeks and months it takes for truth to prevail, credibility can be lost and reputations smeared.

Author Louis L’Amour frequently described the old West code–never shoot a man in the back, do it to his face. In a strange, rough sort of way, it was a mark of civility. These days, one way diatribes, whether it be during a shout-fest on TV, or in a one-way blog, are tantamount to shooting someone in the back.

Keillor has it right. “Civility,” he said, “doesn’t mean acquiescence. It simply means trying to observe the standards of face-to-face conduct.  People whale away at each other in the media and launch juggernauts of invective who never look each other in the eye … In the end, serious people have to be willing to sit down and look each other in the eye and say what we think.”

I suppose that applies as much to politics and religion as it does to the workplace and even the home.  

So as I think ahead on this New Year’s Eve, I would suggest face-to-face honesty and integrity as a worthy goal for us all. Once lost, it is hard to regain. So hold to it tightly and practice it every chance you get.

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