Antonio Tempesta: Canens Searching for Picus (1606)

"It seems likely to be taken down by defensive friendly fire."

Hoping to gain a better understanding of Decency, I initiated a Google search for “Decency In The News.” I received in return references and explanations that didn’t even attempt to define Decency, or even to provide current examples of it in action. I found instead lengthy descriptions of what Decency isn’t, how it so often seems missing from online conversations, and how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has done little to encourage Decency in online forums, though it has successfully shielded platform owners from lawsuits for such offenses as third-party slander and copyright infringement. “Reports about ‘decency’ in the news consistently focus on its erosion in politics and society, though the Communications Decency Act also remains a topic. Current conversations often frame a decline in decency as a symptom of deeper societal issues like incivility and political polarization.”

One deeper societal issue, aside from the obvious incivility and political polarization, might be the apparent unspeakability of Decency. I’d expected a raft of fuzzy bunny pictures and so-called human interest stories gleaned from recent publications, but I received none of that from my query. Even when I invoked the much-touted AI enhancement to Google’s more traditional search, I received nothing anyone might recognize as Decency, just reports of its absence. This outcome seemed roughly equivalent to not thinking of a rhinoceros, that old parlor trick that reliably disabled one’s ability to not think of a rhinoceros. We seem, as a society, to be so busy mourning Decency that we have no time left to practice it. I wonder if we’d even recognize it if it snuck up and bit us on the butt, after all the time we’ve spent grieving over its demise.

Years ago, I attended a conference where I met the founder of The Good News Network. His idea was simple: counteract the decidedly troubling news content with nothing but good news. I hadn’t even thought of him since shortly after we met because, while I thought his idea was uplifting, I didn’t think it had much chance of actually gaining much traction. Good News, as a genre, gains few headlines. Bad news seems so much more serious and vital. Decency seems optional, deferrable, not critical. I was delighted, though, to discover that The Good News Network still exists and contains a nearly infinite supply of Decency, indexed for handy access. It even provides daily notices to remind one that all is not dark and stormy. Still, the site hardly seems serious. I’ve bookmarked it for future access, but I doubt I’ll resort to accessing it much. This admission borders on tragic.

Given the choice between something healthy and something not, diners choose what they apparently really want. A friend opened a “healthy breakfast restaurant” in Bend, Oregon, as the city was rapidly gentrifying with Californian refugees. He figured he could please that crowd by offering what no typical small-town Oregon café could offer then. Rather than featuring hash browns with sausage gravy and eggs Benedict breakfasts, he’d feature smoothies and gluten-free choices. He very nearly went out of business before deciding to shift his business model back to the more traditional one. He concluded that people talk a healthy game more than they actually engage in it, and while they might stick to their diets at home, restaurants seem to provide a context within which diets get abandoned.

Decency might be of a similar nature. Maybe everyone would easily vote in favor of it theoretically, but it’s considerably more challenging to abide by its premises in practice. I think the world of everyone except that SOB who just cut me off in traffic. Perhaps we’re oversupplied with genuine SOBs these days. Decency seems stealthy. Not even a concerted search might discover its hiding places. It demands an onerous amount of belief and counterbalancing disbelief in the necessary dominion of its opposites. Perhaps it simply has so many more opposites that it tends to get lost too easily in practice. We might not readily recognize it when it gifts us with its presence. We seem wary and ready for almost every intrusion except a sudden and unwanted appearance of Decency into our space. It seems likely to be taken down by defensive friendly fire.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz