A Vulgar Time

"Vulgar" is a word with a very broad meaning.  It has Latin origins, and in those origins denotes a mob or common folk.  It can mean unsophisticated, crude, offensive, undeveloped, ostentatious, excessive, and ordinary.  A most useful adjective..

Thucydides complains that "so little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand."  The word "vulgar" as it appears in that complaint has several of the meanings noted, and the complaint itself seems particularly apt to our time.

The picture above is of a part of the Las Vegas strip, and was taken by your charming and delightful old Uncle Ciceronianus during a visit to that ridiculous but amusing place into which have been dumped absurd facsimiles of an Egyptian pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, a Roman arena, a statute of the Emperor Augustus and much more.  Personally, I can't think of it as offensive though I'm sure some do.  But it's certainly vulgar in various ways and so graces this post.  Its vulgarity is of a piece with our time, as excess and ostentation abound among those who've made vast sums of money, from the commonest entertainer to sport stars (also entertainers, when you think of it) and those who manipulate our politics or are politicians, most especially our supremely vulgar president.

As for offensiveness and crudity, they're clearly on display everywhere.  Those characteristics are typical of what passes as public debate in our Great Republic.  We seem eager to offend when offering an opinion or responding to one, or to a person or event.  We even find it offensive to have to do so.  We're particularly incensed by anyone who thinks differently than we do or looks different from us, and feel free if not compelled to say so.  We resent the very idea that we should not speak our mind in the most offensive manner possible.  Thus the current contempt for "political correctness."

Thucydides' complaint is strikingly applicable to our time, I would say.  There is no effort to investigate whether something is or is not true, and acceptance of the first thing we hear, or read, is commonplace among us--provided, of course, that it's agreeable to us.  How else would it be possible for people to believe what they believe, for people to do what they do, here in God's favorite country?

But our time is vastly different from that of Thucydides in that what comes to hand, for us, is so much, and comes to all of us so easily and constantly due to our technology.  We've begun to learn that there are those who take advantage of that technology to provide us with falsities which appeal to us and by which we're manipulated, but being vulgar may take no real notice this is the case in so many instances.  We think what we think and why shouldn't we?  What right has anyone to tell us otherwise?

Those who are offensive readily take offense, and when offended they're crude in their response.  So we revile those we disagree with rather than respond to them.  Our response to those we disagree with consist of ad hominems and nothing more.

What comes after vulgarity?