Klarinet Archive - Posting 000062.txt from 2002/04

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Shocking
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 10:44:37 -0500

On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 10:00:15 -0500, bhausmann1@-----.net said:

> At 02:32 PM 4/2/2002 +0000, Tony Pay wrote:
>
> >On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 09:16:53 -0500, bhausmann1@-----.net said:
> >
> > > At 05:06 AM 4/2/2002 +0000, Tony Pay wrote
> >
> > > > One thing that's certain is that there isn't a moral high
> > > > ground, though shockable people often pretend that there is.
> > > > Someone who is shockable isn't 'better' than someone who isn't.
> > > > On the contrary, you tend to find that people who are righteous
> > > > about being shocked by trivialities like single words are often
> > > > less trustworthy in other regards.
> > >
> > > Of COURSE there is a high moral ground here.
> >
> > Nah;-)
>
> Brilliant argument, Tony! ;-)

Not my style, really, is it?-)

But I already said what I wanted to say, and I think you almost agreed
with me: people are *taught*, or teach themselves, to be arbitrarily
offended by these particular words. ('Poo' doesn't bother anyone, for
example). Believing that using the words is 'bad', and that people who
use them are 'bad' people, is just part of a silly system.

People who don't mind being thought 'bad' can then get knee-jerk
reactions by using the words in front of people who have bought into the
system. (Most of them even *want* to have bought into the system, and
be shocked, as I said before.)

But clearly, the fact that the process gets one group of people
automatically to be *thought* bad by the other group of people doesn't
*make them* bad.

And all of it obscures real moral issues. Surely the whole point of
life is to stop thinking that people are bad for silly reasons, and
start waking up to real evils in the world.

We need to stop behaving in a way that reinforces for us, and our
children, the silly idea that a particular word can be bad in itself.

*Ideas* are the things that can be bad -- really bad. And when they're
bad, as you implied yourself, they're bad independently of the words
used to express them.

Tony
--
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