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To: Tomalak
To have a society of stigma, you must have a society where "what the neighbors will say" actually matters. You must have a society where most people spend their whole lives in one place surrounded by their families instead of a mobile, anonymous society. A society where reputations are fixed and once set can never really be changed. Where ostracism has terrible socioeconomic consequences.

It is not possible to restore Victorian social relations or the concept of "scandal". People do not want crime. But then again, they do not want to be stuck all their lives in miserable marriages, to be constantly watched and judged, or see the bastard stigma restored.
12 posted on 08/01/2002 4:29:13 PM PDT by Tokhtamish
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To: Tokhtamish
To have a society of stigma, you must have a society where "what the neighbors will say" actually matters. You must have a society where most people spend their whole lives in one place surrounded by their families instead of a mobile, anonymous society. A society where reputations are fixed and once set can never really be changed. Where ostracism has terrible socioeconomic consequences.

It is not possible to restore Victorian social relations or the concept of "scandal". People do not want crime. But then again, they do not want to be stuck all their lives in miserable marriages, to be constantly watched and judged, or see the bastard stigma restored.

Unfortunate in some ways, but true and very well said.

Reading Victorian novels give an inkling of what large scale reimposition of moral stigma and sanctions would mean. Even today, people still do make moral judgements and disapprove of those who are flagrantly immoral or unjust. But the "rights" of individuals, of families or of lovers will always lead to abuses of those rights, and people today won't give up the former to curb the latter.

Raise the banner of individual freedom in an affluent, anonymous urban society and inevitably it will be used against neighbors, employers or landlords who disapprove of illicit sex. It's not inevitable that the state intervene against them, but the same public opinion and consumer choice that once enforced morality eventually comes to enforce the right to immorality. As you imply, in a poorer, less mobile, rural, familial society political liberty may be combined with social control, but it would be difficult or impossible to achieve under present conditions.

I find things to admire in the original article, but it's unconvincing in the end. And he's barking up the wrong tree about British Tories like Widdicombe and Hitchens. Though they do good work championing voluntaristic or non-state moral policing, one can't help thinking sometimes that that's because actual legal prohibitions aren't possible. In another political environment, they might well be championing such policies.

113 posted on 08/02/2002 12:08:02 PM PDT by x
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