That’s a title, innit. But it does cover the basic idea of the phenomenon that I think we’re facing today. This one shouldn’t be a terribly long once and is hopefully more on the level of a passing thought than a mini-essay. That said it is more stream-of-consciousness than drafted masterpiece so don’t take this too, too seriously and maybe you can share your thoughts so we can refine this a bit.
I was cooking dinner when I recalled an article I had read some time ago about this woman complaining that a sign had been posted in the office which said something to the effect of “No pungent foods in the office”. No curry, no kimchi, (probably) no fajitas (to my dismay). Leave the anchovies at home, we don’t want it in the office. And the author was complaining that it was an attack on non-whites (because of course it was) non-white cultures have notoriously smelly foods I guess. Uhh, comrade, there are plenty of smelly foods from white countries. I have smelled some of the grossest shit outta Scandinavian foods. It’s not a non-white thing. It’s an ingredients thing. Now, do I agree with the decision of the office to prohibit BY MANDATE these foods. I agree that it was within the property-owner’s rights to prohibit these foods, I disagree that it should have been done. A lot of this comes down to the idea of social decency. Where just because it’s not prohibited that something be done, doesn’t mean you should do it. It also doesn’t mean that if you do it that others should be prohibited from giving you side-eye and the like.
Let’s move to another example. In the United States, I’ve read that they’re doing these drag queen story hour things where transvestites (yeah, remember what tranny used to mean?) read stories to kids. Again, we run into a situation where what we’re doing on the face of it might not be the worst. They’re just men reading books to children… while wearing outrageous outfits. But it’s one of those things while I wouldn’t say outlaw it, I wouldn’t send my own kid there either. There’s a time and a place for transvestites, especially those in the photos that I’ve seen, and it ain’t 4PM in a library with a bunch of kids around ’em. Again, going back to this idea of social decency. Men have a role to play and women have a role to play and we’re going to play our roles and society will move on just fine.
Right now, I think the United States (from what I’ve been reading from outside the United States) is undergoing a bit of a war on social decency. This is likely the result of liberalism. “Liberalism” here refers to the philosophy of liberty, not the Democrats. The Democrats are, of course, a very illiberal party and want to mandate and control what feels like every aspect of your life from on high rather than allowing the machine of democracy (ironically enough) to decide. We can think of social decency as a kind of contract where “I’ll tolerate your minor nuisances if you agree to do the same for me and also keep them to a minimum”. There’s also this element of benefit of the doubt. So if you’re at a restaurant and someone doesn’t know how to use their knife and they’re scratching their plate like crazy, you would be willing to write off their ignorance as a minor nuisance and not make a big deal out of it. “Maybe it’s a kid and they don’t know how to use knives yet” you might think. “Maybe their parents will teach them how to use their knives”. But you’re only there for the duration of your meal and then you don’t have to deal with it anymore. You might hasten your meal a bit to get away from the nuisance but at the end of the day you can escape the nuisance.
And there are varying degrees of nuisance. There’s talking on your phone while you’re taking the train and then there’s running up and down the train and sitting on an open seat. If you talked on the phone while on the train, you’re going to get side eye but no one’s going to chew you out (or at least I haven’t seen it yet). I’d be willing to bet that if you were running up and down the train playing musical chairs, you would be asked to leave. Now is there a rule against taking an open seat? No. Is there a rule against changing your seat? No. Isn’t musical chairs just the combination of two things that are OK? So why would you be asked to leave for one but not the other two? One, it’s dangerous. But I’d say the real issue is that you’re being a disturbance. Deliberately being a social disturbance.
So we’re seeing left and right as the American left try to push these boundaries even further. No one cares if your boy is wearing a pink shirt but they might care a lot more if he’s dancing and removing articles of clothing. We want to ingrain some set of values in children and we don’t all need to ingrain the same set of values to get a mostly cohesive society but we do need to kind of agree on the baseline. And what we’re seeing is the window of acceptable public behavior kind of being forced open. Will this lead somewhere good? Somewhere bad? I don’t know. But while the war on social decency happens and people continue to deliberately disturb social order, there will be tension between political factions. Until we can agree on some kind of baseline social behavior, perhaps taught in a class mandatory in school called “Moral education”… whoops. Japan is leaking through me again. Until that point, I think we’ll continue to experience this lack of social cohesion and for better or worse, I guess we’ll see where it takes us. Thanks for reading.
Artemis Hunt
Home of the Huntress 