It is interesting to see how our understanding of what is “acceptable” changes through time. Things change in both directions – some things that are “acceptable” become “unacceptable” whilst other things go from “unacceptable” to “acceptable”.
There are many reasons for this, but the one that I want to say a little bit about in this blog entry is the impact of the global “connectedness” that we have through the world wide web and other “sharing” mechanisms. There are many knock-on effects of this – and it would take a long time to cover all of them – so this post focuses on just a few.
Information Availability
This is, of course, perhaps the biggest single “benefit” of this global interconnectedness. It is a step change in the availability of information. The barriers to “knowing” have been lowered significantly – although in this connection there is a BIG difference between knowing and understanding!! However, this benefit is also a significant problem. Whilst it is easy to get information – it is also easy to create information – the problem with that is that a lot of the information is actually mis-information. (bringing with it the difficulty of telling one from the other!)
There is an argument that says that pretty soon we will be in the situation (if we are not already) where there is more misinformation than information available to us all. In the “good old days” when the supply was much more rigorously controlled we could, of course, never be sure whether we were being told “the truth” or something else – but we could be reasonably sure that we were being told what we were supposed to hear. There is no such clear cut distinction any longer.
We therefore are “knowing” much more – but also having to process that “knowledge” much more – often without clear guides as to how much we should believe it. Because we “know” more it is much more difficult to “hide” anything – increasingly it is the case that privacy is disappearing. That is happening at all levels – from personal to state. Thus what goes on “behind closed doors” is less well concealed from the prying eyes.
Given that there are so many different ideas on what is “acceptable” it becomes more difficult to deem something unacceptable – you simply point “over there” and say – “well he does it and it doesn’t seem to be a problem”. Equally though, you can also point “over there” and say “you can’t do that – nobody else does that and gets away with it”!!
Cultural “dumbing down”
A related effect is that the differences between societies are becoming less – not disappearing altogether, but diminishing and becoming less important. This is not something new – it is an effect of the world ‘shrinking’ as travel becomes less problematic and has been going on throughout history. History is not my strong point, but to my untutored eye it would seem that there is an ever increasing trend towards grouping together. Many years ago “the family” would stick together against another family – then “the village” would fend off attacks from the next village – from there – via many steps – it escalated to the nation.
The diminishing differences make a lot of sense in many ways – however – it also means that the diversity is distilled. I guess that you would hope that the result would be a pulling through of the “good bits” and discarding the bad. That, of course will not always happen. There are bound to be times when there is some sort of conflict – and the resulting ‘compromise’ might well be at the expense of some real benefits.
Now, one of the defining characteristics of a culture is what is acceptable and what is not within that culture. Any “dumbing down” is going to change that – not always for the better.
The third and final (for this post) thing that impacts on “acceptability” is what I will call the power of the minority.
Now – this at first glance seems like a bit of an anomaly – “power” associated with a minority? Surely that is rarely the case. It seems that in the “new age” there is so much of a bias towards being “politically correct” and avoiding “upsetting” anyone that the minorities actually have a much bigger say in things than, perhaps, they sometimes should.
I should say that I do NOT subscribe to the view that just because most people think something is OK then it definitely is – there are MANY occasions where the minority are, indeed, in “the right”. There are many times when the rights of the minorities MUST be respected.
There are also many times when the minority only needs to shout the equivalent of “help, I am being bullied” to garner sympathy for their cause – regardless of the rights and wrongs. It is much harder for “the majority” to protect their own rights. In any situation where A (the majority) is pitted against B (the minority) there should be NO discrimination. The problem is that – simply because B is a minority – it is difficult for A to ever claim that they are being discriminated against.
So – A claims that a certain act is unacceptable – B claims it is perfectly acceptable and, what is more, is a fundamental part of what makes B a B. Any criticism of that act then becomes a “discriminatory act”. A is forced into a “no-win” situation.
A related – and immensely relevant in the context of the global “connectedness” – fact is that often these minorities are extremely vocal and active in pushing their point. In any grouping on the www it seems that there is a sort of 90-8-2 split – 90% are simply spectators and of the remaining 10% there is a small group that is dominating in terms of participation.
That 2% often includes the majority of the minority!! Simply because they are a minority there is a greater desire to promote their thoughts and feelings and ideas. This means that the very active within any group may well tend to represent a roughly 50-50 split between the majority view and the minority view. I’m no expert on such matters, but I can’t avoid thinking that this is precisely how a few revolutionaries can take something over with much less difficulty than the “numbers” suggest they should have.
There are no end of examples of things becoming “unacceptable” due to what are pretty petty reasons. Many times “upholding one person’s rights” results in “restricting many other people’s rights” just to maintain a reasonable ‘truce’. Unfortunately, the end result is a “ban” on doing many things to appease a few – a minority – albeit a very vocal minority.
Its a bit like looking at online reviews – human nature being what it is someone who is criticising something is much more likely to be willing to put their views forward than someone who is praising it. There is therefore a built in skew in the balance between good and bad reviews – sure, if something has nothing but good reviews then that is a really good sign – but if something has only bad reviews that may be down to the sample size of reviewers.
Change happens – the world today is a vastly different place when compared to how it was when I was a boy – or even just a few years – months – ago. A lot of things that were “normal behaviour” back then are “beyond the pale” now – and it also works the other way round.
Don’t get me wrong – the majority of changes are (probably) beneficial and it is good that some things that were commonplace have become unacceptable and it is good that some taboo subjects are now openly spoken about. However the “you-shouldn’t-do-this” lobby are able to wield a much greater amount of influence simply because they can – and do – get their message across to a relatively huge audience.
One of the most visible – or should that be audible – ways in which thing switch between acceptable and unacceptable tends to be language – words – some that I remember as being “commonplace” in my youth are now so “overloaded” with meaning that you dare not use them. It must present itself as a real challenge for authors writing about a different period in history. Do they try to accurately reflect the sort of language used then – or do they “water it down” to be acceptable to a modern reader.
I often find in books that there is language that I, personally, would never use. However, I recognise that – in the context of the book – such language is adding to the ‘authenticity’ or the ‘reality’ of the way in which the story is told. I know that not everyone takes such a tolerant view – or rather – I know that some draw the “line of tolerance” in a different place – since there is for me also a line that I am reluctant to cross.
That “line of tolerance” (see The Thin Grey Line for some other thoughts in a similar vein) – which is also the “boundary of acceptability” – moves with time. There are things that I would have done/said/read a number of years ago that I would not now. In some cases that has been driven by societal changes – in other cases it is driven by personal changes. Another point about the “boundary of acceptability” is that it is – in many cases – a wide boundary with many things that fall within what is effectively a no-man’s land – things you cannot accept – but at the same time are not ‘completely’ unacceptable. Is there such a thing as a “necessary evil”?
In my next post I need to follow this up – especially regarding the width of the boundary.