It's easy to look at every new generation and see the decline of Western Civilization. The practice tends to get a bit old. But sometiems an essayist is to astute in their observations that it's fun reading about the latest decline. Theodore Dalrymple is just such a writer:
Recently in London a correspondent of a left-liberal Dutch newspaper interviewed me, a decent, civilized sort—one of us, in short. I am sure that he brought up his children to say please and thank you, probably in several languages.
The correspondent asked me: what was wrong with tattooing, if that was how people wanted to adorn themselves?
I asked him whether he would have himself tattooed—whether he would be happy if his teenaged children had themselves tattooed—and if not, why not? After all, if he would not like it, he must have some inner objection to tattooing.
True, he said, but tattooing was not illegal. And since even I, who deprecated it, did not think that it should be illegal, there was nothing further to say about it. If tattooing was legal, it was thus of no social, moral, or cultural significance.
I tried to point out some of the cultural meanings of the vogue for tattooing. First, it was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.
Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.
And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.
But the correspondent’s premise that the legality of an act was the sole criterion by which one could or should judge it chilled me. It is a sinister premise. It makes the legislature the complete arbiter of manners and morals, and thus accords to the state quasi-totalitarian powers without the state’s ever having claimed them. The state alone decides what we have or lack permission to do: we have to make no moral decisions for ourselves, for what we have legal permission to do is also, by definition, morally acceptable.
Even worse than the correspondent’s implicitly totalitarian assumption was his lack of awareness of how societies cohere, and how social existence becomes tolerable, let alone pleasant. After all, the law does not prohibit rudeness, boorishness, and an infinity of unpleasant habits. But it is clear that if, for example, the prevalence of boorishness increases, life in society becomes more filled with friction and danger.
What I found so odd about the correspondent were his perfect manners and refined tastes. But so little confidence did he have in the value of the things that he valued that he seemed indifferent to the mechanism of their disappearance or destruction. This is the way a civilization ends: not with a bang but a whimper.
There is much to be said about the silent revolutions of apathy, but what I enjoyed most was this line -- "Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion." --
It's not just that they're low class, but that like a Hallmark card, they're someone else's sentiment borrowed by the user to substitute for truth.
We all go through periods of trying to identify ourselves by shorthand. Clothing and hair styles change and we change with them, but tatoos linger long past a time in which they hold any context.
A person who gets a tatoo is making a bet with himself that the sentiments are timeless, because he does not intend to change. Since it's a sucker bet, we should line up as the opposition. Can you imagine the money we could make removing tatoos in say ten years?
2 comments:
Love is fleeting, but tattoos are forever.
Liberals' philosophy of moral superiority through amorality is rooted in the tenet that people should be free to destroy themselves. Traditionalists believe that people connected to people -- like, say, to a mom and a dad and later to the guy in the next cube -- won't want to.
At any given time in the culture, there are young people who lack maturity and perspective who will one day grow up and gain some. That is nothing new. Tattoos leave the permanent stain of immaturity, a reminder of dumber days, but tattoos don't bother me too much because they can also point out the contrast in a positive way, as in, I once was lost but now am found, and besides, most tattoos can be covered up if necessary. What gets me, and strikes me as immaturity and stupidity taken to a new level, is piercing. I always wonder when I see a guy who has punched a quarter-inch hole in his ear what he will think of his decision when he's 32, or 52, or 72. When a young person disfigures himself in such a conspicuous way, he is determining his path at a point in his life when he has no clue yet what his life will be about. It is not long before that guy starts seeing a dope in the mirror every morning. The only statement his piercing makes is one of self-absorption and a generalized contempt, a broadcast message that he is not to be trusted. Genius!
I was a doof like anybody when I was a teen. One of the things I always made sure of is that I paid my bills on time and handled my financial affairs repsonsibly. I didn't put any effort into learning anything in school, but I knew that having bad credit would limit my options later in life, and it is good to keep options open.
By disfiguring themselves, today's teens are limiting their future options. You can cry all you want about discrimination and how you should be able to perform a job no matter what you look like, but if you can willfully avoid that discrimination in the first place, why wouldn't you? Disfigured and adorned people are assigning themselves a lower status than they otherwise could achieve on merit alone.
I run into all kinds of adorned people in California. My thirtysomething pool construction manager, for whatever reason, had a pierced tongue. Everytime he talked to me, all I could think of was Rosanna Arquette in Pulp Fiction explaining how it was for better fellatio. This guy was big and burly, and needless to say, in talking with him, I always kept my back to an exit. Whatever signals he was attempting to send with his adornment, the ones I received definitely knocked him down a few pegs on my respectometer.
Nowadays, the kids bagging my groceries and serving me smoothies have piercings out of National Geographic. I suppose hiring standards must be revised to reflect the demographic. Are these kids tomorrow's CPAs and architects, or are they assigning themselves to forever bag groceries? The doofs should have left their options open.
Post a Comment