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Yo Valek


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Actually, I find swearing to be a useful linguistic tool for communicating intensity of feeling, among other things. It's the treatment of the terms as obscene or immoral or otherwise "wrong-to-use" that I find to be nonsensical, though I grant that overuse dilutes their purpose.

Oh. And... uh... sh*t. Yeah. And...

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Actually' date=' I find swearing to be a useful linguistic tool for communicating intensity of feeling, among other things. It's the treatment of the terms as obscene or immoral or otherwise "wrong-to-use" that I find to be nonsensical, though I grant that overuse dilutes their purpose. [/quote']

I'm not denying the effectiveness of their ability to convey feeling. I'm asking who decides what is and is not morally acceptable for our society? In Michigan you can still be charged with a crime for swearing in front of women and children.

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Who decides? Everyone. No one. For the more authoritarian members of our society, religious or political leaders may be able to dictate what is or is not moral for them, but these people are often powerless to stop attitudes on many subjects from evolving in the general society at large (note gay and interracial marriage, single parenthood, pot smoking, etc.).

In a society like ours, asking who decides what is moral is like asking who decides what is proper English - you'll have plenty of people who say they are the decider, and some of them are stupid enough to believe it, but at best they simply have a bit more influence than others on a constantly evolving subject.

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Who decides? Everyone. No one. For the more authoritarian members of our society, religious or political leaders may be able to dictate what is or is not moral for them, but these people are often powerless to stop attitudes on many subjects from evolving in the general society at large (note gay and interracial marriage, single parenthood, pot smoking, etc.).

In a society like ours, asking who decides what is moral is like asking who decides what is proper English - you'll have plenty of people who say they are the decider, and some of them are stupid enough to believe it, but at best they simply have a bit more influence than others on a constantly evolving subject.

An excellent answer. I prefer to examine it in the form of petite and grande narratives, further splitting up your answer into each of the aforementioned categories, from individual household make-up to city, county, state, segments of country...pretty much anyway one could want to divide it, but I'm certain you are already aware of all these methodologies.

And with that, we've probably interjected enough intellectualism to get ourselves hanged. ;)

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