WHAT IS FOUL?

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What’s on today: From a Sunday Scribblings prompt, a few ramblings about what is ‘foul’. Hope you don’t think this post is, though … PLUS … A couple of my recent ramblings - a problem with commonsense, and knowing chronic fatigue syndrome.
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WHAT IS FOUL?

Yuck! Stink? You’ve no idea. It’s like bad eggs and smelly socks all rolled into one.
It could be many things – a down-and-out in need of a bath; a teenager’s room; the teenager himself … in need of a bath. Or the word ‘foul’ can apply to what you don’t like.
A nice spider’s web is the foulest terror to some. Forget the fact that they help keep a house clear of other creepy-crawlies. They’re just so – foul. But this is more a phobia – an unconscious reaction to what we consider gross.

But who decides what is foul or not?

For instance, I remember reading about some anthropologists. They were telling of an ancient tribe they lived with. They thought a cheese sandwich was horrendous – as they tucked into a termite nest.
The sociologist Foucault could tell us something of what we think is foul. He was interested in knowledge and how it is related to power. Examining mental illness, sexuality and crime, he noted that often such things are decided by categorizing things as normal or abnormal.

Abnormal tended to be areas that were a threat to the system.

Hence, Soviet Russia could class anti-Communist behaviour as insanity; at the time of the Industrial Revolution, insanity was down to idleness – after all, everyone needed to work, work, work.
And let us not forget the Christian view of the Devil. You won’t find this fellow, with his ‘foul’ sulphuric stench, in the Bible. This description followed – a definition of the ‘foulness’ of not following God’s ways.
So that which is ‘foul’ becomes that which is against a consensus devised by the powerful. On an innocuous level, it can be excused and applauded as good manners. But so often the definition of ‘foul’ can be a socio-political control mechanism.
Indeed, it has a consensual morality all its own. After all, do YOU worry about farting in an empty room?

© Anthony North, February 2008

This is a post inspired by a Sunday Scribblings prompt. Have you had a go yet?

WHY NOT TRY SOME OF MY RECENT RAMBLINGS?

COMMONSENSE BY DIKTAT

You’ve all heard about the research. It can come in many forms. Beefburgers can make you fat. That’s a classic. As if we didn’t know already. But to science, we don’t. If it isn’t proved, it may not be right …
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CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME - THE BEGINNING

As regular readers will know, I have the condition, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I’m often asked questions about it, but apart from the occasional mention, I haven’t really written about it …
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VIOLENT BRITAIN

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What’s on today: How to sort out rising violence in society … PLUS … New health policies demand sensible lifestyle from people. Bush finally takes green measures.
YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

VIOLENT BRITAIN

Five people in Britain died over the New Year festivities due to violence, including a 16 year old teenager. Now, for some countries this is maybe not a terrible death toll, but for Britain, it is part of a growing problem of unrestrained violence.
Measures taken to combat it include attempts to raise the price of alcohol and put restraints on known violent louts. But the problem will never be sorted out by specific measures alone. Something more significant is needed.

Looking back to the 18th century crimewave could be useful.

At this time, Britain seemed to self-destruct into an orgy of crime and violence. Why is this? If we look at the time, certain things become obvious.
It was the time when capitalism was beginning, and religion was in decline. Today, that religious decline is almost complete, and we have a new breed of super-capitalism. Hence, the social ingredients are remarkably similar.

As such, maybe we can gain answers by looking at how the crimewave was finally sorted out.

And it was a three-pronged solution. First of all, the streets were flooded with Police, beginning with the Bow Street Runners. But other things were far more significant.
A new social movement began, financed by philanthropists, to properly tackle social inequalities; and a new breed of preacher – the Methodist – went on to the street to bring back morality.
Of course, I’m not saying religion needs a popular return, but in getting rid of it, we also got rid of the moral and social constraints of good order. We need to relearn these values. But of most importance, the answer to crime is found in taking a holistic approach to society.

© Anthony North, January 2007

DOCTOR GOD

A new NHS constitution will soon be with us in the UK, giving us clear rights we have to health care. However, our ‘esteemed leader’, Brown, has worryingly indicated that this will mean ‘duties’ on us to look after ourselves …
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BUSH DOES A GREENY

Okay, it’s happened. President Bush has actually signed into law a new energy bill that – wait for it – attempts to help the environment. Now I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t a joke, really …
… read more …

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ORDER AND MORALITY

Many years ago I was waiting for a train with my young family. It was a busy city station and it was approaching rush hour, but I’d never had problems with this train. There always seemed plenty of room.
This was a good job because amongst my entourage was a baby in a pram. However, this particular afternoon the train pulled up with just two carriages instead of the usual four. Which seemed to present a problem for the people waiting to get on board.

Manners, it seems, went out of fashion.

Rather than waiting, courteously, for me to load the pram, a near stampede ensued, creating a bottleneck by the door, seemingly blocked by a delicate baby in a pram. But of course, people are decent, and the baby was in no danger?
Well, as it rocked on its wheels and threatened to spill baby onto the platform, I decided my best course of action would be to extricate myself and family from this mayhem – especially as the one gent who tried to intervene was about to be punched.

This event has stayed with me for decades.

This is because it taught me a simple fact about people, life and society. We like to think, today, that we are moral people, existing in an ordered society. But the above event suggests this is wrong.
Rather, could it be that we have not advanced morally at all. It is simply that society and infrastructure are such, today, that order takes away the need to consider the subject. Which should, I would have thought, make us worry.

© Anthony North, November 2007

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Fiction Xtra - IT STALKS ME - A tale not to be read in the dark.

Contagion. A simple word. A medical word. Someone catches a cold. They pass it on. You suffer from closeness to the person. Contagion. Nothing simpler. Nothing more obvious. But what about contagion of the mind? Can we suffer the nightmares of others …
… read more …

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WHY DOES BAD EXIST?

Recent comments and events have led me to ponder a question I’ve asked myself many times before. Namely, why does bad exist in the world? And it is a question that has always led me to a disturbing answer.
Atheists love the question. They point out that if God was really a benevolent God, then he would not have allowed bad into his Creation.

We could say man isn’t created in God’s image, but God in man’s.

This answers the theological point. For instance, if God is a reflection of us, then as we have bad in us, bad would inevitably be existent in God’s Creation. Except, of course, if we created the image of God, He didn’t ‘create’. We did.
We can place bad on a malevolent fallen angel – old Lucifer. But to do so is a cop out. The thing about ‘evil’ as an influence is that it takes away responsibility from the person. We can too easily say, it wasn’t our fault.

So is it in the genes?

I’m afraid I don’t like this answer either. I see it as just a modern interpretation of the above. If bad is in the genes, then again, it isn’t our fault. So a reason for bad, it seems, evades us.
I usually fall on this answer: prior to learning morality, man was an instinctual animal, with no moral requirement to not do what he needed to survive. Maybe bad is this influence not kept at bay by sufficient moral teaching to fight it.
But there’s one other question that begs an answer. If there was no ‘bad’ in the world, how would we know when we’re good?

© Anthony North, September 2007

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