Social Convention- What You Make it, Nothing More

The Laws of Chivalry still resonate today, as the idyllic code of perfect bahaviour, a true code that all codes since are a mere dilution of.

We believe that don't we?

Sir Galahad and the Quest for The Grail.
The ideal of ideals.

Medieval knight would meet for a battle, not play dirty, and not charge before the signal from the other side. Just like sport today.

No dirty tricks, you had to show the enemy what you were doing.
No camouflage, make sure you are brightly coloured.
And never strike from behind.

Peasants do not fire their bows at knights, only peasants.
Knights do not mow down peasants, they only fight knights.

When Henry V broke these rules at Agincourt, it was the medieval equivalent, morally, of the Behaviour of the Nazis in the Second World War. Every Warcrime, rolled into one.

But the other side of the coin.
If you offered a city the chance to surrender, and it refused, should you take it, you put all the males to death, and rape all the women.

If you defeat a knight in combat, who has a lady with him, the lady is yours.

Trial by combat, is a a legitimate mode of trial, much preferred by the nobility to trial by jury.

So it wasn't all that great.

Our modern system of manners are likewise a social convention.
It's interesting to see how some of our odd customs evolved.
Table manners, for example.

Cardinal Richelieau introduced the table knife, because his high sensibilities were offended by people picking their teeth with sharp blades.



But more was to come. Ever wondered the point of a fish fork?
The answer is, not much. Most of this cutlery is nineteenth century invention. These complicated codes came in, due to the pressure of the times.
The industrual revolution meant that people born in the gutter ended up richer than descendants of the Conquerer's knights.
How to tell the sacred blood of the Norman, from the peasant blood of the Saxon?

By whether or not you knew which silly knife to use.
By whether you were born in a household to learn the difference.

Conventions serve the need of the society they exist in.
We follow them, because we want to get along with others.

That also affects our word usage.

At one time, only religous oaths offended people. There weren't any taboo words which weren't an oath of some kind.
Sex, the toilet and other 'vulgarities', weren't talked about if you didn't need to, but the ordinary words for these things, were not in themselves considered offensive.

This again, is a late eighteenth- early nineteenth development.
It served a function, to sort out the decorous, from the vulgar.
Let the common people, use common words.
We'll talk about powdering our noses.



Now I'm not stupid enough to think that I don't need to follow these conventions.
I have to make a living.
I don't speak offensively at work, I don't here either.
But at home with my mates, or down the pub, I actually speak quite coarsely and quite vulgarly.
I can affect class, it doesn't come naturally to me.

Words are just words. The power to offend is all in the perception of the hearer. When talking to anyone in everyday life about f**king, I use the word, as it stands. If I'm proposing it to a woman, I use the word. I've not known one take offence at it's use either.
That's the word for that activity. Perfectly good verb. What's the problem with it?
Don't you think now, even five years olds know what the word means?

Who really is offended by it?

These social conventions were in place to maintain a class system.
In an era of mass communication, not only is their maintenance impossible, it is completely pointless.

But hey, as long as you want to maintain them, I'll follow them when I need to, as I do here.
But I certainly don't take any offence at people using the f**k word.
I think there's something very endearing about a woman who doesn't feel men need to stand on ceremony around them.
These conventions get in the way of genuine human interaction, because they stifle us.
We use them in life when we HAVE to, but there's no need to give them support.

People express themselves as they see fit.

But then again, I'm pretty common.