You might have caught the March, 2018, report that Mount Etna is moving, and you might have been surprised that a large volcano is, as the geologists tell us, sliding into the sea. Etna will continue to move because it, like every other surface feature, is part of an outer planetary shell of shifting units. As you learned in elementary school, the crust of Earth is like a dynamic cracked eggshell. The cracks are sites where the pieces can slide past one another, bump into one another, or pull apart from one another. In many places, the yolk and white rise to the surface; that is, magma rises, becomes lava, and builds volcanic features like Etna.
For those who live around the base of Etna, the volcano is a substantial feature on the landscape, and its eruptions, though at times disruptive to daily living, don’t alter the mountain by much. It appears to be the same through successive generations of local inhabitants. But in reality, it is changing, and it is moving.
And that’s what we see with regard to community standards. They appear to be substantial, but they change, often imperceptibly. Fashion: Think of the first bathing suits. Think of today’s bathing suits. Look at the difference between the initial bikinis and contemporary thongs. Look at the difference between clothing permitted in schools in the 1950s in the United States and the clothing accepted today. And language. When Rhett says the word damn in Gone with the Wind, the word shocks very few in a modern audience, but it was quite shocking for the initial audiences. And in today’s movies? Apparently, if an alien being were to go to the theater to see a typical action or crime film, it would think that a word once reserved for crude backroom or alley talk is common.
Community standards change. For almost every aging person, the standards of their youth seem no longer to apply. What once seemed to be as substantial as a mountain that occasionally erupted probably no longer seems to be quite so substantial. “Sure, we can understand the small eruptions, but we always knew where the mountain was. Now, geologists are telling us that it is moving as it erupts. Is nothing permanent?”
No, nothing is. Anecdote: Walking on a main street of a small town, I observed one young woman shout a greeting to another: “Hey, So-n-so, how the …. are you?” You can put any word in there you want, but I’m guessing that you’re guessing what I heard. And I’m guessing that you’re thinking, “That’s not a big deal today. It’s normal. It’s part of a crude society.”
Right, “crude talk” is relatively normal. But in the 1950s such a greeting was very rare. Community standards change sometimes little by little, sometimes in violent eruptions of change. Community standards are very much like Mount Etna.
In 1974 Justice William Rehnquist wrote about community standards in Hamling v. U.S. The case centered on the distribution of “obscene materials.” The Justice said,
“This Court has emphasized on more than one occasion that a principal concern in requiring that a judgement be made on the basis of contemporary community standards is to assure that the material is judged neither on the basis of each juror’s personal opinion nor by its effect on a particular sensitive or insensitive person or group.”
And, ironically, where are we today with regard to community standards and “a particular sensitive person or group”? What was once regarded as shocking is not shocking to sensitive persons or groups, and what was regarded as friendly banter or historic reference has become “offensive.” Like Etna, the cultural mountain shifts, and as it does, it erupts, sometimes spitting out just a little ash and lava and at other times throwing up a mass of culture-changing lava and debris.
So, what can anyone do? Should anyone even attempt to stop the movement? The reality of the mountain is that the people living around its base have no control over the volcano or over the underlying tectonic plate movements. The only control over community standards is to personally choose to live differently or to live in a different place with like-minded people. But be forewarned: Every group that has ever set out to establish a secure set of community standards has run into the inexorable change that comes with the realities of circumstance, including the arrival of the next generation that wishes to build its own mountain of culture.
And if you are one of the “sensitive,” maybe you might consider what the people do around the base of Etna. When its eruptions disrupt their lives, they shrug their shoulders, clean up the ash if they can, and when it’s possible, move back to ride on the same tectonic plate that carries the volcano. In short, they become desensitized to some of the changes wrought by the moving volcano. Test this: View Gone with the Wind, and see what emotional response you have when Clark Gable utters that word.
But you might argue that becoming desensitized is just “giving up.” You would be correct, of course. Becoming desensitized is a matter of giving up, and it’s also a matter of becoming indurated like solidifying lava. In desensitization, we lose our pliability and our ability to make the changes to community standards we wish to make.
Ah! I empathize with your plight. You live on the side of a mountain that forces you to become desensitized to its eruptions; yet, you want to be pliable while maintaining the landscape you have long known. Now people find themselves in a quandary. Am I insensitive if I say "...," or am I too sensitive if I am offended by "..."?
For those who live around the base of Etna, the volcano is a substantial feature on the landscape, and its eruptions, though at times disruptive to daily living, don’t alter the mountain by much. It appears to be the same through successive generations of local inhabitants. But in reality, it is changing, and it is moving.
And that’s what we see with regard to community standards. They appear to be substantial, but they change, often imperceptibly. Fashion: Think of the first bathing suits. Think of today’s bathing suits. Look at the difference between the initial bikinis and contemporary thongs. Look at the difference between clothing permitted in schools in the 1950s in the United States and the clothing accepted today. And language. When Rhett says the word damn in Gone with the Wind, the word shocks very few in a modern audience, but it was quite shocking for the initial audiences. And in today’s movies? Apparently, if an alien being were to go to the theater to see a typical action or crime film, it would think that a word once reserved for crude backroom or alley talk is common.
Community standards change. For almost every aging person, the standards of their youth seem no longer to apply. What once seemed to be as substantial as a mountain that occasionally erupted probably no longer seems to be quite so substantial. “Sure, we can understand the small eruptions, but we always knew where the mountain was. Now, geologists are telling us that it is moving as it erupts. Is nothing permanent?”
No, nothing is. Anecdote: Walking on a main street of a small town, I observed one young woman shout a greeting to another: “Hey, So-n-so, how the …. are you?” You can put any word in there you want, but I’m guessing that you’re guessing what I heard. And I’m guessing that you’re thinking, “That’s not a big deal today. It’s normal. It’s part of a crude society.”
Right, “crude talk” is relatively normal. But in the 1950s such a greeting was very rare. Community standards change sometimes little by little, sometimes in violent eruptions of change. Community standards are very much like Mount Etna.
In 1974 Justice William Rehnquist wrote about community standards in Hamling v. U.S. The case centered on the distribution of “obscene materials.” The Justice said,
“This Court has emphasized on more than one occasion that a principal concern in requiring that a judgement be made on the basis of contemporary community standards is to assure that the material is judged neither on the basis of each juror’s personal opinion nor by its effect on a particular sensitive or insensitive person or group.”
And, ironically, where are we today with regard to community standards and “a particular sensitive person or group”? What was once regarded as shocking is not shocking to sensitive persons or groups, and what was regarded as friendly banter or historic reference has become “offensive.” Like Etna, the cultural mountain shifts, and as it does, it erupts, sometimes spitting out just a little ash and lava and at other times throwing up a mass of culture-changing lava and debris.
So, what can anyone do? Should anyone even attempt to stop the movement? The reality of the mountain is that the people living around its base have no control over the volcano or over the underlying tectonic plate movements. The only control over community standards is to personally choose to live differently or to live in a different place with like-minded people. But be forewarned: Every group that has ever set out to establish a secure set of community standards has run into the inexorable change that comes with the realities of circumstance, including the arrival of the next generation that wishes to build its own mountain of culture.
And if you are one of the “sensitive,” maybe you might consider what the people do around the base of Etna. When its eruptions disrupt their lives, they shrug their shoulders, clean up the ash if they can, and when it’s possible, move back to ride on the same tectonic plate that carries the volcano. In short, they become desensitized to some of the changes wrought by the moving volcano. Test this: View Gone with the Wind, and see what emotional response you have when Clark Gable utters that word.
But you might argue that becoming desensitized is just “giving up.” You would be correct, of course. Becoming desensitized is a matter of giving up, and it’s also a matter of becoming indurated like solidifying lava. In desensitization, we lose our pliability and our ability to make the changes to community standards we wish to make.
Ah! I empathize with your plight. You live on the side of a mountain that forces you to become desensitized to its eruptions; yet, you want to be pliable while maintaining the landscape you have long known. Now people find themselves in a quandary. Am I insensitive if I say "...," or am I too sensitive if I am offended by "..."?
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