Being polite helps grease the wheels of civility.

 My father always said, if you want to slide through life, try being polite. 

What can we learn from how the British do it? I came across this graphic. It lays out what they say, what they mean and what people who aren't from Britain hear.

To be honest, I read this list AFTER trying to ask someone questions about a public policy issue and not getting any actual answers and getting frustrated.  It is in moments like this, where you are genuinely trying to have a rational conversation and you find out, nope, the other person is just spouting slogans that they don't understand, that I personally find it most hard to be humanistic towards others.

My desire is to scream - that doesn't make any sense!!!! But, that wouldn't be very polite. Which is why I like this list. It's a very gentle way to help nudge people towards better more rational conversations.  It's also a good way, in some cases, to blow people off without overtly saying, I'm not going to attend to this nonsense anymore, while keeping the door open for future conversation.

Even better, what if we actually mean it positively?   

I think mostly what this list helps me think is that - British politeness in discourse allows people to disagree without being mean about it. That's a valuable life skill to cultivate. 

By the way, I do have a course on a humanistic approach to civility that you might enjoy if you thought this was helpful.  https://humanistlearning.com/a-humanistic-approach-to-civility/