The ancient Greeks, with their penchant for aphorisms and their delight in civic virtue, gave us a phrase as poetic as it is profound: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” It is an edict of selflessness, a testament to their belief that the measure of a civilization lies not in its conquests or riches but in its capacity for beneficence—a virtue that reaches beyond the self and into the collective. Centuries later, Lord Kenneth Clark, that most genteel art historian, argued that the essence of civilization could be distilled into one word: courtesy. For him, civilization was not merely a matter of monuments or achievements but of how people treated one another, a web of social grace that held the tapestry together.
Paul Theroux, through the brash and inventive protagonist of “The Mosquito Coast,” took the view that the key to civilization lay not in courtesy but in ice — yes, ice! – for it was ice that separated the modern from the primitive: comfort distilled into frosty cubes, preserving food, easing heat, and paving the way for the luxuries of refrigeration. Others, of course, would point to loftier benchmarks of civilization: science, language, laws, or the ability to project power. Each metric, in its way, bears truth, though none singularly encapsulates the whole.
But here, dear reader, I submit my own perspective, less grand but no less urgent: the essence of civilization lies, or once lay, largely in modesty. Modesty, that once-great hallmark of decorum and restraint, has been eroded with such ferocity that one wonders if it has any sanctuary left in our cultural fabric. To glimpse its absence is easy enough; simply juxtapose the garb of two societies — say, the Victorian West with its buttoned collars and layers of taffeta, and any tribal counterpart whose garments covered little to nothing — and even the untrained eye will intuit which society had actually advanced. The Victorians, for all their extremes, did not invent modesty; they merely elevated it to its most overwrought heights. Yet the very impulse that gave rise to their exaggerated decorum is ancient and universal, a marker of a society striving to distinguish itself from chaos and want.
Which brings me, reluctantly, to the restroom situation at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. There I had occasion, not long ago, to attend a performance of “My Fair Lady,” a production dripping in charm, wit, and propriety. What I encountered offstage, however, was an affront to the very ethos the play celebrates. T he second-floor restrooms, once discreet havens separated by gender, had been transformed into a large “gender-neutral” lavatory. It was no modest powder room with a single toilet and sink but a sprawling, co-ed labyrinth of stalls. Here, men and women stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting their turn outside the stalls, then shared sinks in a tableau that felt, to put it delicately, profoundly distasteful.
I will not soon forget the expressions of the older women, some of them visibly shaken, as they waited in line alongside men adjusting belts and zippers, surrounded by the sounds and, alas, smells attendant to such spaces. Their discomfort was palpable and, I would argue, entirely justified. No, it is not for these women, or for any of us, to “adjust” to this arrangement. Civilization, unlike evolution, is not the survival of the most adaptable but the triumph of the most enduring virtues. That’s progress. This is not. It is regress, a reversion to something primitive, where the social contract frays and crumbles.
The architects of this so-called modernity would, no doubt, dismiss my objections as quaint. So what if it is? Well then, they might argue that shared restrooms are a practical innovation, a nod to inclusivity. But inclusivity, like all virtues, must have its limits, lest it devour the very principles it claims to serve. To impose this arrangement on a public space. particularly one frequented by an older, more decorous crowd, is not merely inconsiderate; it is a form of cultural vandalism.
The left often accuses conservatives of wanting to turn back the clock, of yearning for the 1950s with its starched collars and rigid norms. But this, this, is a turn not backward in the direction of the primitive, albeit with plumbing.
I do not mean to suggest a reversion to the era of petticoats and parasols, though I confess to finding something charming in the self-restraint of those times. No, what is needed is not a wholesale retreat into history but a determined stand against the entropy of the present age, and along with it, a recognition that while all progress requires change, not all change is progress. Real progress builds on the foundations of what is good, rather than demolishing them in a misguided zeal for “modernization.” Modesty, I contend, is not merely virtuous; it is foundational. It is the very fabric of civilization, the thread that binds and elevates us.
To discard modesty is to discard the very thing that makes us civil. It is to abandon the shade of the proverbial tree, the legacy we are meant to leave for those who come after us. And so, with resolve, we must say: no further. We must protect what is good and decent with the same fervor we would muster to defend our homes from invaders. For in the end, the enemy of civilization is not barbarian hordes but the slow, quiet erosion of its virtues. Let us not be complicit in their demise.
