re societally acceptable behavior in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes from cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb subject societally acceptable behavior date mon apr gmt merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior who is society how do they define what is acceptable how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position mac wow you got me thinking now this is an interesting question in that recently there has been a move in society to classify previously socially unacceptable yet legal activities as ok in the past it seems to me there were always two coexisting methods of social control first and most explicit is legal control that is the set of actions we define as currently illegal and having a specifically defined set of punishments secondly and somewhat more hidden is social control these are the actions which are considered socially unacceptable and while not covered by legal control are scrictly controled by social censure ideally if socialization is working as it should legal control is hardly ever needed since most people voluntarilly control their actions due to the pressure of social censure the control manifests itself in day to day life as guilt and morality i ve heard it said and fully believe that if it weren t for the vast majority of people policing themselves legal control would be absolutely impossible lately last years however there has been a move to attempt to dissengage the individual from societal control ie if it ain t illegal then don t pick on me i m not saying this is wrong merely that it is a byproduct of a society which has a high education level a high exposure to alternative ideas via the popular media a high level of institutionalized individual rights and a me oriented culture i guess what i m saying is that we appear to be in a state of transition here in the western world in that we still have many ideas about what we can can t allow people to do based entirely on personal squeamishness yet we are fully bent on maximizing individual freedoms to the max as long as those freedoms don t impinge on another s imho society is trying to persue two mutually exclusive ends here while we appreciate and persue individual rights these satisfy the old territoriality and dominance instincts the removal of socialized inherent fears based on ignorance will result in the continued destabilization of society i got no quick fix i have no idea how we can get ourselves out of this mess i know i would never consent to the roll back of personal freedoms in order to stabilize society yet i believe development of societies follow a darwinian process which selects for stability can we find a social model which maximizes indiv freed s yet is stable perhaps it is possible to live with a non stable society anybody see a way out comments ps therefore answer to question we don t do we want to phil trodwell this space i d be happy to ram a goddam volt cattle for rent prod into that tub with you right now but not cheap this radio hunter s thompson
