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The essay “What You Can’t Say” is written by the excessively intelligent and articulate Paul Graham. It discusses conformism and “moral fashion” in society, and turns over some rocks to explore what beliefs our society holds now that will seem archaic in just a few decades. It’s a lengthy read, but interesting throughout.
From the essay:
What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They’re just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they’re much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
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Very interesting.
Perhaps we should be glad the Christian right is nervous.
i loved this essay. it goes along with a few of the things i think about from time to time but seems to put them into words much better than i could.
This makes a very good point. I was thinking about this the other day when I was lookning at “tshirthell.com”. For the uninitiated, it’s a site for some wildly inappropriate t-shirts (although many a very funny). One says: “What about all the good things Hitler did?”. This is a t-shirt specifically designed to flaunt the breaking of a taboo, but is completely accurate. Believe it or not, Hitler actually did do some very good things for Germany. There’s a reason he was so popular. It’s just that we remember the vastly negative impact he had on the world, rather than the postive impact he had in much smaller ways to the majority of Germans.
Even in writing this I’m aware of the instant thoughts of millions – “he’s Nazi!!!”. Um, no. Not even slightly. I have no problems with Jew, blacks, gays, the disabled, or any other specific community. The guy deserved to die horribly (and did), but in a limited way, he did some good. See – I have to excuse my self! Bloody taboos!
I love these types of essays, they expand my thought so much. On a note related to the above, I actually believe WWII was a good thing. It was what WWI was supposed to be: a war to end all war.
While this obviously has not happened, it seems to me that major conflicts have slowed down for fear of a repetition of the horrendous bloodshed of those years. Perhaps we are simply in a lull, though, and soon major powers will battle again…
“Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
.”
Nice. *not sarcasm*
Wow. I wish I could elaborate on how thought inducing this article is, but my mind is still racing with it. Absolutley excellent.
It was an alright article he could have made his point in a much shorter time.
And hes asking why parents don’t allow kids to say fuck and shit, thats just reaching. Obviously theres tons of reasons mainly because when these words used they are used in a derogatory manner. And theres alot of reasons parents teach tell there kids that santa clause is real. Maybe their childhood memories were good of santa clause, or maybe they didnt ever get a chance to believe in him and theres only a limited amount of time where kids will actually believe this stuff so you might as well let them be imaginitive while they still can. Try telling a kid whos never heard of santa clause that is 15 years old that he is real, see what he says.
There was a few more things i didnt like that he said, but i guess the article was pretty intriguing.
are* used , tell* not teach tell, couple other mistakes too
I can’t believe you wrote that, you thinkist!
This is a good article; a lot of things I can really relate to.
I recently moved from the UK to Japan – sure enough, there are loads of differences, but some of them just seems insane.
For example, teenage girls wearing mini skirts in the UK would be yelled at by their parents and called all sorts of unsavoury names by strangers, but here skirts are hiked up high, regardless of the weather conditions.
So what do they think is offensive here? Not barely-cover-all hotpants and minis, but flash a bit of shoulder and people will STARE at you as if you’re swinging a puppy by it’s tail. It still makes little to no sense in my mind. Maybe it really is just a cultural thing.
I suppose the real gritty problems would come in challenging religion – people do it every day, and despite all kinds of evidence pointing towards natural progression over ‘God will provide’, so many people seem hung up on it.
Who knows; maybe one day it’ll all come out in favour of one party or the other, but for now religion at least sets boundries for daily life and systems of behaviour and gives people hope in what could otherwise be seen as a very cruel world. Sure some ideas stemming from religion are seen as extreme now, but views change all the time.
Maybe the moral should be; ‘Think what you want, because regardless of who is actually right, we’ll all be made fools of in one way or another.’
I think it’ll be interesting to review my life now from when I’m a pensioner, and see what kinds of taboos have since been dispelled/created. =)
Hopefully this sort of question and debate is not subject to the vagaries of fashion. The Economist Magazine opened an online debate right after the invasion of Afghanistan in following 9/11. It was titled “How much dissent is acceptable in times of war” (or something close). It addressed the phenomenon that any questioning, any criticism of decisions being made might be deeply unpatriotic or even immoral. They may still have it archived if anyone wants to look it up – I seem to recall some very lively exchanges. Another form of social conformity that I have studied with interest is our tendancy to form “tribes”. Even those who are anti-establishment sometimes don’t recognise how strict and codified their own “establishment”, their own flavour of dissent or self-expression is, and how intolerant they often are of diversity in others.
I have to say, I’m pretty sure that’s the exact point he was trying to make.
An excellent example of the language thing is Neopets. The site was originally designed for bored college students who missed their pets at home. Now it is primarily a child oriented site. Because of this, certain language filters have been introduced to the forums, so that you can’t type words such as shit and fuck. When you hit send, it will simply give you an error message saying that the site is for children and no foul language is permitted. It’s been blown out of all proportion, but that’s another discussion entirely. What’s amusing is that there are certain words, like crap and bugger, that the Neopets censors seem to have decided are perfectly acceptable for children to use. When I was a kid, if I’d said crap or bugger, I would have missed out on dessert for a week!
A changing fashion in language use and its acceptablity, exactly like he was saying.
Who knows? Perhaps in another 20 years those words will be perfectly acceptable in children’s vocabularies.