The New Moral Language
William Hodges [England; 1744-1797] “Jacques and the Wounded Stag.” Based on Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” Act II, Sc. I
A hot Jerusalem day, July 2022. I am lying flat on a training table and my physiotherapist at the time—let’s call her K.-- is trying to coax life into my protesting right knee, weakened as it is by old injuries: torn menisci, sprained ligaments and arthritic deterioration. She generally does a wonderful job, but believes she needs to distract me from my pain as she works. So she will breezily mention events of the day, and on this occasion, she refers to the current US president--on a 2-day visit to Israel--as an object of ire for many Israelis.
When I ask K. why she believes that to be true, she alludes to the traffic snarls that Mr. Biden’s visit is causing. I sigh, and say, well yes, but that is the case whenever a US president visits, and I mention the traffic situation was identical when Mr. Trump came to Jerusalem in 2017.
K. leans over slightly and says, confidently, in a conspiratorial murmur, “but we liked Trump, right?” When I indicated that perhaps I was not as enamoured of the former president as she seemed to be, K. said, “oh, because you think he’s uncouth?”
Afterwards, I found myself mulling over the description of Mr. Trump, at his worst, as merely “uncouth”, and it got me to thinking about the language of the ethical universe, both on the right and the left, that we now inhabit. My feeling is, that with the possible exception of dogs, what is truly a person’s best friend is the dictionary, that beacon of clarity and arbiter of words. When I got home that day, I researched “uncouth,” and found this, courtesy of Webster and the OED:
“Uncouth comes from Old English cūth, meaning `familiar’ or `known,’ prefixed by un-, giving the meaning `unfamiliar.’”
How did a word that meant `unfamiliar’ come to mean `outlandish, rugged, or rude’? Some examples from literature illustrate that the transition happened quite naturally.
In Captain Singleton, Daniel Defoe refers to `a strange noise more uncouth than any they had ever heard.’ In Shakespeare's As You Like It, Orlando tells Adam, `If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee.’ And in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane `fears to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him!’ So, that which is unfamiliar is often perceived as strange, wild, or unpleasant. Meanings such as outlandish," "rugged," or "rude" naturally follow.
And in strange way, I think those depictions perfectly represented K.’s mindset, which is that objections to the former president lay in simply not being used to someone speaking his mind with such “refreshing honesty” and, yes, occasionally veering off into the updated definition of “uncouth.”
Certain countries and cultures also earn the “uncouth” epiphet; see, for instance, this assessment of the behavior of Israeli politicians in the chamber where they carry out their “performances”: “Israeli youth may watch the uncouth and aggressive behavior of far too many Knesset members on the official Knesset channel and mistakenly adopt this as an exemplary behavior to follow. In this framework, often he who shouts louder is perceived as the victor.” And the Unites States merited a book title on the basis of the way it is viewed overseas: “Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America.”
It feels like there is a new moral language, or lack of one, that has emerged in the past few decades, in which the art of the euphemism is in high demand. Prior to being sentenced to a twenty-three year prison term for rape and sexual assault, the former film producer Harvey Weinstein issued this “apology” for his decades of predation: "I appreciate the way I've behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain and I sincerely apologize for it…I so respect all women and regret what happened."
This penchant towards absurd understatement and mendacity, reveals at its core just how certain actions are now reinterpreted, especially if one is wealthy or powerful or can hire PR firms. And so we refuse to call out crimes for what they are, instead reaching for coded language such as 'inappropriate behavior' and 'regrettable incident”, in place of “that person committed acts of unspeakable evil.” It’s as though violent racism is just a social faux pas, and rape a bit of horseplay gone overboard, a mere breach of etiquette.
The online site “the grammarist” reminds us that “the term to call a spade a spade has its roots in Ancient Greece, in a phrase found in Plutarch’s Apophthegmata Laconic: `to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough.’ Later, in the mid-1500s, the Dutch scholar Erasmus collected various Greek works and translated them into Latin, at which time he interpreted the aphorism as `to call a spade a spade’, meaning to speak the unvarnished truth, to speak plainly and without embellishment and without softening the hard realities of that truth. To complicate matters, the word spade came into use in the United States during the 1920s as a pejorative term for African-Americans. [Thus] ` to call a spade a spade’ has sometimes been perceived as a racist phrase, even though its roots reach back to antiquity.”
Language tells us who we are and what we really think; it illuminates our finest moments and betrays our darkest impulses. In Hebrew, the word dvarim means both “words” and also “things”. This attests to a core principle of Jewish ethics; words are not simply pieces of sound, but they have real heft and substance. Every time a word is understood differently, its impact is far reaching for those people who take words seriously. As the great short story writer Raymond Carver noted about the craft of writing, though it is often true about life itself: “That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.”
Feel free to share this post and, please recommend my Substack to others.
For paid subscribers, my series on the High Holidays continues on Wednesday, and Thursday’s post will continue with ideas about the weekly parsha. If you have been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, this would be an opportune time to make the switch. [I continue to receive letters about how helpful the holiday posts are].
Stay safe, and take good care of yourselves.
Further Reading
Ruth Wasserman Lande, “Israel Has No Culture of Respect.” Jpost.com June 15, 2023.
Andrei Markovits, Uncouth Nation, 2007