Good Taste and Vulgarity

[miss fortune]

I'm not the issue. And I certainly don't want to have a personal fight with you. So it will be with regret that, unless you stop trying to have a fight with me, I will be forced to put you on Ignore.

But really, it would be in your best interests to ask why you are trying to have personal fights on the internet.

you're the one who's making it personal... I was arguing with the idea

and you are very much the one who went for low blows, despite the fact that you don't even know me. either focus on the ideas or realize that personal insults will not be tolerated and will lead to banning

 

[EcK]

Vulgarity is good taste if you have a French accent to go with it though.



(not a good excuse, I know)

 

[Mole]

Vulgarity is good taste if you have a French accent to go with it though.



(not a good excuse, I know)

We can of course use vulgarity in art or theatre or movies, but in that case we know we are consciously offering vulgarity as part of the work. Shakespeare is an excellent example of this. The problem arises when we are vulgar but don't know we are being vulgar. Perhaps we could call this unconscious vulgarity or uneducated vulgarity.

 

[EcK]

We can of course use vulgarity in art or theatre or movies, but in that case we know we are consciously offering vulgarity as part of the work. Shakespeare is an excellent example of this. The problem arises when we are vulgar but don't know we are being vulgar. Perhaps we could call this unconscious vulgarity or uneducated vulgarity.

But then you'd be talking about relative cultural values and speech patterns.
I mean, long time ago, the Jews committed genocide on the philistines because they thought they were primitive bastards. I'm sure they thought them rude.

 

[Cellmold]

Not binary.

 

[OrangeAppled]

I don't think popularity or ability to be understood is vulgarity. Vulgarity has connotations of poor taste; some popular, mainstream stuff is not in poor taste. Of course, "poor taste" is hard to define also...

Regarding the likes of Shakespeare and how they enjoy popularity in their time across classes and are now regarded as genius because of their complexity, well, that combination is likely part of why they are regarded as genius. Making quality, complex stuff that is simultaneously popular is harder than simply one or the other. To be able to package a degree of complexity in an easily digestible format is a bigger feat, IMO, than something you have to be educated to understand.

Although I also take issue with the idea of education being needed to grasp high-brow things, as it is an idea often found behind the prejudice that lower class people are stupid, lazy and dirty. My grandma only has a formal education up to the 8th grade and grew up in a poor family, and she appreciates and understands lots of "high-brow" literature, art and music, while actually disdaining a lot of vulgar, pop stuff. However, she also says that they read much heavier stuff as children in her day. I don't know if that is her romanticizing the past, but she managed to be more cultured than many with a high school education today.

Now, if we are discussing a trend for low-brow stuff to be sinking even lower...well, maybe that is happening.

 

[Mole]

The Vulgate and Popular Culture

But then you'd be talking about relative cultural values and speech patterns.
I mean, long time ago, the Jews committed genocide on the philistines because they thought they were primitive bastards. I'm sure they thought them rude.

Vulgarity has a long history, at least right back to the Vulgate, the Christian bible written in Latin. This second Christian bible was called the Vulgate because it was written for the vulgar people. The original Christian bible was written in Ancient Greek.

So it was commonly thought that the original Christian bible, written in Ancient Greek was high culture in good taste, while the Latin translation was considered vulgar for the vulgar people.

So vulgarity has little to do with being rude or impolite, it has to do with a world view. So good taste is characterised by Ancient Greek and vulgarity is characterised by Latin.

It is interesting today that almost no Christians can read their own bible, their own sacred book, in its original Ancient Greek. So we can say modern day Christians are vulgar, so it should be no surprise to discover that modern popular culture is also vulgar.

 

[Mole]

I don't think popularity or ability to be understood is vulgarity. Vulgarity has connotations of poor taste; some popular, mainstream stuff is not in poor taste. Of course, "poor taste" is hard to define also...

Regarding the likes of Shakespeare and how they enjoy popularity in their time across classes and are now regarded as genius because of their complexity, well, that combination is likely part of why they are regarded as genius. Making quality, complex stuff that is simultaneously popular is harder than simply one or the other. To be able to package a degree of complexity in an easily digestible format is a bigger feat, IMO, than something you have to be educated to understand.

Although I also take issue with the idea of education being needed to grasp high-brow things, as it is an idea often found behind the prejudice that lower class people are stupid, lazy and dirty. My grandma only has a formal education up to the 8th grade and grew up in a poor family, and she appreciates and understands lots of "high-brow" literature, art and music, while actually disdaining a lot of vulgar, pop stuff. However, she also says that they read much heavier stuff as children in her day. I don't know if that is her romanticizing the past, but she managed to be more cultured than many with a high school education today.

Now, if we are discussing a trend for low-brow stuff to be sinking even lower...well, maybe that is happening.

No one ever went broke underestimating the good taste of popular culture.

 

[Mole]

Although I also take issue with the idea of education being needed to grasp high-brow things, as it is an idea often found behind the prejudice that lower class people are stupid, lazy and dirty.

The Labor Premier of New South Wales, Australia, Neville Wran, was born into a working class background, but is famous for saying that the only important thing about the working class is to get out of it.

 

[sprinkles]

You talk about it like you're in it lol

 

[sprinkles]

Also go build a robot

Or solve a sudokucube

Or play TIS-100

You pleb

 

[sprinkles]

Also if I might add:

 

[Mole]

Also if I might add:

It is a very interesting question whether electronic games are vulgar or not.

I understand egames are now as big as the music industry, and I can't help but think of those flying armed drones in foreign countries from containers just down the road from the comforts of their home and family.

I guess 10,000 hours of practice on egames qualifies us to fly armed drones over foreign countries.

So is it vulgar to kill our enemies at an enormous distance without any danger to ourselves? Certainly it requires no chivalry or even courage. And my guess is that egames don't teach chivalry or courage.

It seems that egames teach technique. And I guess the egamers are proud of their technique but lack any humanity.

And as we become what we do, egamers become their technique.

 

[Mole]

Desire

The hardest thing to do is to change our desires. But being the hardest, it is the most valuable. Of course the very idea of changing our desires is anathema to the culture of narcissism.

The first thing we notice is that although our desires drive us, they are invisible. So how can we change something we can't see?

I don't think we can directly, consciously change our desires. So all we can do is to fight desire with desire.

Some of us long for something better. And it is this desire that can change the gears of our desires.

So with the car moving forward we give ourselves to our desire for something better. Things start to break up, we can't see where we are going. But we attend to the changes taking place for they are the changes in our desire. And like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, we start to see the world anew.

 

[Mole]

English and Good Taste

As we learn a new language, say English, there comes a moment when we are able to write in English cliches. This is a moment of achievement, and a moment of power, we can feel the power of English lifting us, lifting our wings and driving us forward.

But English is not a language of rules, English is a language of good taste. There are no rules for good taste or good English, we must taste it and see. Or we must listen to it and hear if it is good.

For the neophyte, cliches are very seductive. They enable us to do business, conduct relationships, and even worship our God. But ultimately cliches are vulgar, they are in bad taste, they taste bad because they have been in too many mouths.

But dare we set sail on a sea of English without a chart to guide us. What will people think of us? Will we speak gobledegook? On the other hand, what will we discover?

We all fear the unknown, if we sail too far, we might fall off the edge the Earth, or, on the other hand, we might discover the New World.

And English is the same, we don't know what we will discover. Of course industrial society needs certainty to plan, finance and sell, the wheels of industry must continue to keep turning to make an adequate return on investment. And so industrial society runs on cliche, cliche, after cliche, after cliche, like the assembly line of a factory.

Yet English awaits us. Dare we cut our hearts on the high seas?