Vulgarity
Isn’t it finally the last line of defense in a society that’s lost its way?
The major trappings of moral revolution all contain one major ask, and that is the relaxation of the preservative qualities of prudence. Every slip in morality is found in conceding this line to our base nature. The better angels of our conscience are simply captured by their wondering eye for the curiosity in our darker demons. To be curious has always been a two edged sword. Being able to further any new pathway to greater understanding has curiosity as its prerequisite, but the danger lies in our desires to experiment, not to find discrepancies in evidence, but to taste everything, inaccurate or not, out of our purest narcissism. To believe that once bitten we can easily find the ointment that will draw out the poison of errantly choosing the wrong mushroom to imbibe, rather than to first learn simply not to consume it is a much better cure, this has become our favorite folly.
I once observed that I was among my closest family, friends and acquaintances, an anomaly of prudishness, being like my fraternal grandmother, not willing to let my tongue greet vulgarity with any vain prurient temptation to taste it, while the lot continued about me to indulge as if some new law had overturned nature. My curiosity remained, and though it caught me by some inglorious demons of experimentation as well as it does anyone, I retained a resistance to most of the vulgar language, and behavior, that I was privy to, for some reason.
New.
That was the only apparent qualification for their exploration of the terse, I thought. It just all bent me the wrong way. I had no use for it, for some reason.
I think for my grandmother, that reason was partially fear, and partially wisdom. And, I also thought, that is not all bad. But for some reason, now people do. It’s bad to be cautious about the mushroom you desire. Indulge. You can manage if it’s a certain controllable detriment to your well-being, as long as there’s a chance it turns out to be a noxious elixir of some baccalaureate ecstasy, it’s worth it. And that was it for me. It was the worth, the value, that I could not quite bring myself to agree with, in the testing of whether something was lethal for the pleasure it might give, dodging the potential thought that it could bring harm, only for the value of the potential thought of its power to bring pleasure.
But that’s where we stand now, isn’t it?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Nothing sacred, nothing taboo. All is fair in love and war. But, these are just numbing pills of rationalization, after all. The vulgar, now, treated as if it’s one in the same world as any grape or animal this world has yielded up, has been given the place of a cornucopia on the table of our hedonism. Every single final result of our imprudence has now been renamed for the sake of one all-encompassing value, godhood.
Now, while above there has obviously been careful language chosen so as to discuss what is imprudent, to protect the innocent, with that out of the way, we’ll now drop the pretense. Vulgar, the word for irreverent talk, of deviant secular interest, was supposed to be a warning of sorts. My grandmother feared its use for one simple reason. God was watching her. Today, God is not feared, but rather it’s our own godhood that is sought after above all. The sadly immense legion of souls now traveling this world who would not even wince at such a statement is now not just alarming, but truly devastating. Why is this a problem, though? That answer has become illusive, but it starts with our senses of shame and humility. Every step of progress in the human spirit is found in failure, not in acquisition of power. But, this is exactly the mindset of the vulgar, chasing their assets rather than their good name.
The love chapter of the book of Corinthians, chapter thirteen, comes to mind. Love is patient. If I could divine all the great mysteries of knowledge, but have not love, I’m nothing. Where has love gone now, and with it, maturity, fear, wisdom? When I became a man, I put away childish things. But these things are now being called childish, unenlightened, basic. We want godhood. We must be allowed to shape our world, or else we’re not free, just tiny children being ordered around by an unworthy, unaccomplished, self-declared “dictator in the sky.” Yet, it’s this love we’ve lost, the wisdom, maturity, and fear of what should be feared, that remains with those who have not lost any of it, of their sense of value and worth. They have not indulged the thought that we’re more than we are, that we can manage our world, like a god.
That thought is rubbish to those who have found where they truly reside in their world.
This world is not manageable by us. Its fruit, flora and fauna, its elixirs, its poisons, its people and their souls, these are not under our power. They are under one power alone. And, you are under that power, you who would rather indulge your fantasies, and fail to acknowledge truth. It’s the prudent, the humble, and yes, the fearful that will not only own this world, but rule it, and everything in it. So, lie, and indulge vulgarity. Could it be your ultimate end, or does that thought put too much of a weight on your curiosity? Are we meant to be free to choose what we want, or just free to choose what we should? It’s the question that is not being asked. And it’s that because, now, we’re sure it doesn’t matter.
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