Epictetus, The Handbook 48: Right Modesty

. . . It is dangerous too to lapse into foul language; when anything of the kind occurs, rebuke the offender, if the occasion allow, and if not, make it plain to him by your silence, or a blush or a frown, that you are angry at his words.

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

Years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at this advice. I would have been concerned about how a love of formality is simply the appearance of dignity, and really has little do with true character. I am far more open now to what Epictetus says, not because age has made me any wiser, but because experience has taught me how expression that is vulgar, dismissive, or degrading is not only hurtful to others, but reflects a baseness in my own soul.

I am hardly as attuned to technology and social media as are my children, but I have noticed how online communication combines instant efficiency with a certain personal distance. This seems to be a breeding ground for expression that can be both careless and malicious. Though thoughtless speech has surely been with us as long as we have had language, it now seems to bit easier to engage in. Arguments give way to insults, reason to passion, and we can all do it from the comfort of a personal bubble. If we feel offended, we offend right back, and the more base the language the better.

I see the chats that accompany online games, and they would a make a sailor blush. I read conservative news, filled with slurs and the insistence that liberals suffer from a mental illness, and I read liberal news filled with different slurs and the insistence that conservatives are all moral monsters. The question of truth doesn’t seem to enter the picture, because we’re so busy shouting about our indignation and putting others down.

The problem with vulgarity, I think, is not simply that it is saucy or crude, but that it is a slap in the face to the dignity of any person. Reducing someone or something to those two most common forms of foulness, sex and defecation, really does nothing more than consider man as just an animal. 

One might also add the defamation of the Divine. If I am humble enough to believe in what is greater than me, I should never take such an idea, and such words, lightly. If I should choose to make myself the center of all things, then I hardly need to make light of something others happen to respect. 
 

Now I can become all indignant and preachy about such things, but I find it best to just refuse to speak as others do, and to move on to something better. I’m the first too appreciate that extraordinary language is sometimes suited for extraordinary circumstances, but I find it too easy to make vulgarity all too ordinary. In doing so, I’m showing others that I have no respect for them, while also revealing how deeply I have no respect for myself. 

Written in 5/2012