On Crudity

I was once told that some Victorian somewhere thought it improper to put a book by Austen on a shelf next to a book by Dickens. Male and female jackets brushing in the night might shock the children.

Maybe this weirdness happened, though I knew aged Victorians in West Virginia and they were healthy, salty, old souls that seemed very unlikely to worry about the mating rituals of books. After all they read the King James every day . . . and it has Judges and the Song of Solomon.

Prudes exist. I have met the occasional over sheltered student who is horrified when we go to an art museum and see . . . paintings.

You know.

And yet for every student who needs to be delivered from prudery, I meet hundreds more who are ensnared in crudity. Today a Presidential candidate who owns a strip club decided to attack the looks of his opponent’s wife on this social media feed. When the prude in college has gotten “free,” often they simply become another barbarian, playing as an adult with childish toys, and spouting crudities as profundities.

We should strive for gentility, but I don’t know how to defend manners without simply turning every reader off. We cannot even remember what it was like to show restraint . . . when we knew that some jokes were for private time and others for public or when we could be shocked by inappropriate behavior.

Gentility is the mark of civilization. A bear can do what a bear does in the woods, but a man doesn’t. A lady or a gentleman could be crude, but chooses not to be.

A very wise man said: …whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Since my thoughts and actions become part of who I am, it seems sensible to focus on lovely, commendable, excellent, and praise worthy things. Surely there are times we will have to reflect on ugly things, but that is not our goal. One aspect of who I am is what I will not do to win. 

We do not torture non-combatants, not even Nazis, because we wish to be better than Nazis. We cannot win a war against barbarism by becoming barbarians. However, in our daily life many of us practice at barbarism and have no sense of restraint. We say and do whatever we wish, but there is no virtue in this. We are merely animals doing as animals do. A gentleman stops, thinks about it, and often does not do it.

When a man of character says: “Frankly, I don’t give a d-n . . . ” it is explosive, because he rarely swears.

We fear that rectitude will be boring, but this is as silly as thinking that every flatulence must be public or nothing will be interesting. It is true that a comic can juice a laugh by being “shocking.” It is also true that this is a declining asset. What is shocking today is blase tomorrow.

I am tired . . . tired and bored beyond measure . . . of endless crudity. I am sick of fifth graders saying the f-word, people in line at the store discussing private family things loudly, and our candidates swearing to their manhood while swearing away their honor. We can commit a vulgarity once for shock, but run the risk of becoming a mere vulgarian.

God help me turn to the lovely, commendable, excellent, and praise worthy things and saying them to others in a manner that makes them interesting.