Contra Bonos Mores

Morality and values seem to be all over the place. Or maybe nowhere. The problem with discovering a society's values may also lie with discovering that it is the value of the median or "common people". The phronimos or "practically wise" man is not always found in abundance. Everybody believes he is a spoudaios of some kind. We have little time for the philo-sophos of this world. We judge and scatter judgements as best the horde deems fit. So it is to the rule of the "common people". Forget Greek, let's just call them the "lower bourgeoisie". (Look at that, the English lingo can be as deficient as the Malti sometimes!).

Thus it has come to be that in the Osterreich home of tolerance and Mozart we have had Mr Irving jailed for his persistent denial of the Holocaust. What kind of freedom of expression is that? It has rightly been held that the best punishment would be to disprove the bugger than let him suffer the martyr's cause in some prison near Salzburg. Holocaust denial - contra bonos mores?

In that same country (Osterreich - currently of the doped skiers fame - that is what is called a useless info drop in Maltatoday style) billboards that were deemed to be too pornographic were removed from the streets of Vienna. They pictured among others, Chirac, Queen E II and Bush having sex. The artist claimed he had a vision of the leaders having an orgy while everything around them decays. Censored. Too pornographic (porno- & - graphos) - Contra bones mores?

In the Southern hemisphere things are not going too well either. A Bishop in Wellington has urged viewers to boycott a NZ TV channel because it is due to broadcast an episode of South Park which shows a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding that is taken to be a miracle until the Pope pronounces it to be menstruation. Censored. Too offensive - contra bonos mores?

In the good old UK an intrepid couple walked the length of the main island of Britain from Land's End to John O'Groats. Only thing is that they did it in the nude. Nekked. The male part of this nude mobile consortium was arrested nine times. The exhibition of his pudenda were not well appreciated by the Nick. The female part, graciously blonde and with a well-rounded set of buttocks was arrested five times in the same quest over the same time. We might be detecting a tad bit of discrimination and a slight variation in the bonos mores in the UK when it comes to treating the fairer (and well curved) sex. The couple are pictured at the end of the post at their final destination point (that's the North of Scotland... in February! - original photo in the Guardian Online).

And once we are on the subject of backsides we might as well refer to the latest update on the Dolly's Zygote page. The backside is just where he picked up the last post called "The Common People". At no point did we express any judgement on whether the Zygote was for or against the jesus on coin thingy or whether the question of honesty was in doubt. Our issue was mainly about the Common People and their treatment and maybe reflected our resentment (and we are not very proud of this) of the fact that the common people gets to dip its finger in many a decision were it couldn't tell a rat's ass from a zygote's spectacles. Abusive? Maybe. Offensive? Probably not. Contra bonos mores? Ah. I'm still wondering about who we are to decide that one. Over to you dolly. :-)