Obscenity....

I do not make a big deal about it. In some contexts, it may even be apposite.

But I do make a big deal out of people who believe that words are just subjective, matter in motion. I think that they have a spirit, a meaning. You put your own breath of life into them or your mind behind your written symbols. That is your spirit. Ultimately, if your spirit is not in agreement with the Spirit then you are wrong.

In contrast, relativism is premised on the notion that what we say is immoral, is therefore immoral and so what we say is obscene, is therefore obscene. What you say does not have a spirit to it. It is just your will. Your own assertion into matter in motion, perhaps you are just matter in motion too.. This premise is incorrect. There are objective facts involved in the issue and it is not all merely subjective. This is the very reason that obscenities are what they are based on excrement and copulation. They deal only in uncivilized things in all languages. In contrast, all civilized cultures surround that which most closely links humans with animals with ceremony, ritual, etc. They tend to try to protect the human spirit this way, this distinction between human and animal. The things that threaten that distinction are things like having sex and going to the bathroom, which come to be represented in crass sentiment by obscenities. They threaten to break that distinction because they are things that animals do. Yet, something like composing, reading and writing are not surrounded by ceremony, ritual or privacy.

Men tend not to use these obscenities around women and children out of the ancient notions of civilization. Instead, it is their duty as a man, a human, to protect women and children from the harsh realities of Nature and human animality. Yet in places like the military, construction and so on men will use obscenities because they are among men who all know the more brutish realities that they are seeking to protect women and children from.

I had a conversation with a man recently and he said that women using obscenities disgusts him. These are most likely some of the reasons why. This is one of those things one could write a dissertation about. Invariably, the breaking of the distinction between human and animal is found at the end of civilization, as in Rwanda.

But to America,
American civilization is on the decline, it seems this is the way of the world. For this reason you will see more obscenity, less of the distinction and discriminations that civilization rests on, including the distinction of human and animal, and less respect for women and children. Indeed, discrimination comes to be a negative buzzword as an indiscriminate people continue on their way into decadence and decline. The New Man is the type of man who becomes more and more common as a civilization declines.

A few points,

There are still situations in which one can be arrested for using "fighting words" inappropriately because the animality that is part of the ethos of obscenity is something that can be dangerous. People also don't use profanity in many situations because assumptions are made about how civilized the person that uses it is. Which is only logical.

In a civilized culture the distinction of human and animal is held in place by ceremonies and ritual surrounding sex, etc. So when people go to a movie with bathroom humor and sex humor they instinctively know by common sense the juxtaposition and tension between categories that the humor is based on. These things are universal. There is a universal pattern of prejudices, pre-judgments or Sense that is common to man. Sometimes on this issue people will say, "Oh, just have some common sense!" They are appealing to it.

In the end, it seems to me that one can abstain from obscenity and coarse jesting, for refined jesting is much better anyway.