Changing conventions

CHANGE LONG HAS BEEN A TOPIC for discussion and is part of the warp and woof of our world concerning not only culture, but nature as well. The science of physics points out that, in its subatomic insights, the world is in constant molecular change or motion. This would cease only at absolute zero. Let's see how change applies to our lives in respect to conventions, mores, and morals--all standards of one sort or another.

A convention is "a practice or procedure widely observed in a group, especially to facilitate social intercourse." Various languages are a pristine example. While language itself seems to be wired into the human brain, this or that vocabulary basically is arbitrary. The word "hell" in German, for example, means "light," while in English it refers to a place of damnation. The way language is written is of interest; note that European languages are written left to right while Hebrew and Arabic are written right to left. Some languages are written in columnar fashion (Chinese and Hieroglyphics). These conventions are subject to change, as in an e-mail address where there is no space between the letters.

Mores are "accepted traditional customs and usage of a particular social group that come to be regarded as essential to its survival and welfare." For centuries, heterosexual marriages were de rigueur in most cultures, although there were variations on the theme in polygynous or polygamous liaisons. Warrior societies, in which men were decimated, needed more children to survive and so men took on several wives. In the case of extreme poverty, one woman shared several men, as no single man had the wherewithal to support a woman. (Some cynics may ask, "So, what else is new?") In Western culture, women mostly were relegated to stay-at-home or caregiver status. The latter were school teachers, nurses, librarians, etc. The male was "head of the household," though often that was but a titular designation.

Morals are a sticky issue and many sociologists consider them as nothing more than entrenched mores--fundamentally arbitrary in nature. Some philosophers claim that morals simply represent what a group or individual likes or dislikes. In short, they represent an unverified and unverifiable subjective judgment. How would one prove that stealing or murder is wrong? Neither can be measured objectively as "right" or "wrong." They simply do not fit the scientific category of measurement. Morality in this view largely is a matter of aesthetic taste. It has an emotive appeal, but does not belong in the category of a cognitive one that produces knowledge--and this can vary from group to group or individual to individual. Examples are the condoning of suicide or of topless female bathing. Their claim is that there is no such action as "intrinsically good or evil." When the Allies occupied Germany after World War Ii, coal trains slowed rounding curves, giving the Germans an opportunity to jump on the train and push coal off onto the right of way where citizens could take it to heat their homes. Cardinal Frings of Cologne said this was not stealing, as the people needed coal to keep from freezing and those who had an abundance of it (American troops) had no right to deprive those in desperate need. The practice came to be known as gefringing. So, not all stealing is stealing any more than killing the enemy in wartime is murder. The anti-death penalty crowd claims that the state execution of a person convicted of a capital crime is murder, but is this simply an abuse of language?

Conservatives, however, uphold the wrongness and rightness of many actions. In their view, abortion is wrong--dead wrong, one might say. Childbirth outside of marriage still produces bastards, they claim, although they would accept the softened description of unwed mothers as "single mothers." One should note, though, that this no longer is regarded as an onerous term. In fact, there were 1,500,000 American babies born out of wedlock in 2004, teens giving birth to 24% of these. The Political Right views many TV programs and movies as frankly pornographic, what with women wearing pop-out bustiers, lesbians engaging in open-mouth kissing, and men portraying homosexual relationships. The controversial Oscar-nominated movie "Brokeback Mountain" is one example.

In a culture that fosters (should 1 say enforces) diversity, one can expect differing views on values and disvalues. Let's take a look at these and commit yourself to classifying them according to conventions, mores, or morals.

In many public schools, condoms now are available from the nurse's office upon request. The teaching of their proper use sometimes is part of a hygiene class. Where do you stand? How about same-sex marriages whose gay and lesbian proponents simply argue are a matter of civil rights'? Yet, more than civil rights are being sought despite the fact that the word "marriage," as applied here, would be an oxymoron. Between heterosexuals, cohabitation (the politically correct word for "shacking up") without benefit of marriage appears more and more popular, especially among seniors.