by Grue » Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:26 pm
If you mean me, I've lived in 2 countries on different continents, went to public schools, university for 6 years, lived in 7 cities (5 in the US, east and west coast), travelled to 5 countries, 27 states in the US in 5 years, fly 4 times a month, worked for 2 state agencies, work with 12 national groups and 4 senators offices, ran a conuslting firm for 12 years and have consulted for over 300 companies, written over 20 applications, worked for film crews, done professional sound engineering, done studio recording and played in 7 professional bands. I'm fairly well-travelled, and have no illusions about the real world. I have been in many settings where people not only swear but do far worse things.
What is at issue is whether it is right because everyone does. If everyone in the army had sex with sheep would that make it acceptable? As my grandmother always said, if your friends told you to stick your head in the fire would you do it? Moral lines are not determined by human norms, if they were the genocide in Rwanda would be acceptable by Rwandan standards.
It may sound silly to compare cussing to those kinds of actions, but the raelity is that 50 years ago the language used today in schools, the work place and on TV would not have been tolerated. Everyone has these romantic visions of 1950s America, the Golden Age. Well you know what, that 'innocence' was predicated on social norms that we no longer accept.
What you realism I call moral compromise (and this is obviously way beyond language on Sloth). The next push in the United States will be lowering the age of consent, AKA the Califonia Man-Boy love project, and legalizing incest, and there are already pushes underway to do that. Why should cussing be OK in any normall society, but not OK in rap and hip-hip, and if it is OK in that music, do we also accept all the other social norms that music espouses.
By the way, I'm not heated up about this, I just think there is a broader moral issue, and frankly I think the United States and a lot of other countries are creating a monster they will not be able to contain.
Flame if you want (I'm sure you will), but these are not the cloistered views of a sheltered prig. You may not agree with them, and some of you probably see me as the worst of the right-wing (although I am more politically left than anything), but this is not a Christian home-schooled perspective. This is a political activist perspective. Stand for what you beleieve. Let everyone do what they like if it feels good and is hurting noone is not a belief system, it's abdication of social responsibility.