Pieter van den Berge: Spotting (1675 to 1737)
A standing man with his tongue stuck out and his right hand pointed raised.

"…indecency exhausts itself with its own irrelevance."

Few compliments seem less complementary than Derision, but it tends to be the praise of choice when passed from the indecent toward the Decent. The indecent hold limited resources, certainly less vast than Decency ever commands, so they compensate by making loud noises and dramatic gestures that signify little and mean even less. In any odd moment, their advantage, if only represented in volume, might appear to be overwhelming. They do the lizard dance where they stand tall on their skinny hind legs to appear much larger and more powerful than they actually are, relying upon startle reflex to balance what they not mistakenly understand to be uneven scales. Decency learns not to take those threats too terribly seriously, however otherwise terrible they might seem.

Decency learns this lesson in the oldest of the old-fashioned ways. The instruction first feels like impending destruction. The message seems oddly familiar to the one your imposter syndrome whispers in your inner ear. It’s intended to feel discouraging, to dull your most potent weapon, to convince you to quit before you yield Decency’s many powerful benefits. First, Decency tends to seem like a dream, an idealized aspiration, perhaps comforting but probably unrealistic. Realism seems the more powerful perspective, wielding Real Politics and harsh lessons. Decency’s idealism looks rather flimsy in comparison, the very antithesis of steely. Indecency’s beady eyes intimidate and indict. They sure seem capable of winning any competition. Indecency seems less inhibited by limitations imposed by good conduct. Heck, indecency’s free to resort to anything while Decency’s arsenal seems inadequate and limiting in comparison.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” trade unionist Nicholas Klein.

First, indecency might ignore you. Then, it might deploy derision before even beginning to engage in anything resembling competition. It will attempt to tilt the playing field to its advantage first. By the time it finally gets around to competing, it has already spent much of its potential on distracting avoidance. Notice how indecency assidiously avoids resorting to reasoned conversation. Indecency can’t compete by logically arguing points. If it can’t win by the time it resorts to Derision, it can’t win except by brute force, and brute force tends to be the most self-destructive option of many almost equally ineffective ones. However, brute force can certainly intimidate Decency and force it into an ineffective defensive crouch. Decency can cower with the best, preserving its potential until a more promising moment presents itself. Decency seems too easily intimidated. Its Kryptonite tends to be discouragement, which might be why indecency tends to deploy the Derision card early and often whenever any seriously Decent competition threatens it.

Decency seems to be almost entirely a faith-based initiative. It succeeds, when it succeeds—and it doesn’t always succeed–when it’s accompanied by an almost completely irrational faith in its relevance. The more unshakable this foolish belief, the less powerful indecency’s Derision seems: water off that proverbial duck’s back. The contest seldom goes to the person who scores the most reasonable points. It might more frequently go to whoever makes the most noise, at least in the shortest run. Decency somehow manages to hold on until its vindication rides in atop what might have been one of the slower horses in the race. Fortunately, it was never really a competition because indecency cannot compete beyond meaningless clashes. Indecency lacks strategic integrity. Its Derision is a form of defensiveness. Its offenses tend to be defensive moves fueled by a deeper sense of vulnerability than ever seems apparent to any Decent opponent. Indecency thrives on bright lights and carefully crafted bedlam.

Decency promises nothing more or less than its own reward, though that reward, once achieved, seems to more than adequately compensate one for their troubles. It demands a thicker skin than ever seems obvious. Derision might seem to utterly defeat it at times. Indecency, though, is always cruising for an eventual bruising. Its inherent brutality and inhumanity render it unlikely to ultimately show all that well. In the short run, indecency might seem to have already overrun the place. Don’t be surprised when Decency rears its resourceful head again, out of what were presumed to have been ashes. Once serious competition starts, indecency has already ceded whatever advantage it once imagined it possessed. Anybody can successfully survive indecency in almost any short run by merely ignoring its poisonous presence, certainly by not taking it nearly as seriously as it insists you should be taking it. In the longer run, indecency exhausts itself with its own irrelevance.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz