Changing conventions.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS

CHANGE LONG HAS BEEN A TOPIC for discussion and is part of the warp and woof of our world concerning not only culture, but nature as well. The science of physics points out that, in its subatomic insights, the world is in constant molecular change or motion. This would cease only at absolute zero. Let's see how change applies to our lives in respect to conventions, mores, and morals--all standards of one sort or another.

A convention is "a practice or procedure widely observed in a group, especially to facilitate social intercourse." Various languages are a pristine example. While language itself seems to be wired into the human brain, this or that vocabulary basically is arbitrary. The word "hell" in German, for example, means "light," while in English it refers to a place of damnation. The way language is written is of interest; note that European languages are written left to right while Hebrew and Arabic are written right to left. Some languages are written in columnar fashion (Chinese and Hieroglyphics). These conventions are subject to change, as in an e-mail address where there is no space between the letters.

Mores are "accepted traditional customs and usage of a particular social group that come to be regarded as essential to its survival and welfare." For centuries, heterosexual marriages were de rigueur in most cultures, although there were variations on the theme in polygynous or polygamous liaisons. Warrior societies, in which men were decimated, needed more children to survive and so men took on several wives. In the case of extreme poverty, one woman shared several men, as no single man had the wherewithal to support a woman. (Some cynics may ask, "So, what else is new?") In Western culture, women mostly were relegated to stay-at-home or caregiver status. The latter were school teachers, nurses, librarians, etc. The male was "head of the household," though often that was but a titular designation.

Morals are a sticky issue and many sociologists consider them as nothing more than entrenched mores--fundamentally arbitrary in nature. Some philosophers claim that morals simply represent what a group or individual likes or dislikes. In short, they represent an unverified and unverifiable subjective judgment. How would one prove that stealing or murder is wrong? Neither can be measured objectively as "right" or "wrong." They simply do not fit the scientific category of measurement. Morality in this view largely is a matter of...