DecencyUnscrolling
Unknown Artist: Scroll 2: Nezumi no soshi emaki (1600 - 1650) Nara [?], Japan
"…hello to a fresh strange bedfellow…"
As I neared the end of my Decency Series, I, as usual, began fretting about what might follow. By the eightieth installment of any series, my sense of its content has become a permanent resident. I no longer fret about what to write next because the flow has become inexorable. One installment follows another without requiring overmuch conjuring. But I end each series on the upcoming equinox or solstice, so when the winter solstice started casting shadows, I began my usual fussing again. I had finally become accustomed to where I was going just in time to reach my agreed-upon dead end. What comes next?
Whatever comes next will later seem a prescient choice, but in those moments before I decide, it looks as if I should be hiding from rather than warmly embracing my future.
Selfullness
Paul Cézanne: Self-Portrait (1898)
“I’ll be studying and learning this lesson for the rest of a halfway Decent lifetime.”
Brian was always the brightest person in any group he worked with. He naturally gravitated toward performing in a pivotal role, often as a leader. If not the formally-declared leader, then the most widely-acknowledged one. He was, by any measure, an enormously Decent person, patient, often to a fault, and extraordinarily kind. He promoted The Muse and my work, sponsoring some workshops and championing our perspectives. He mentored many. When our business went bust, The Muse found a real job, primarily on the strength of Brian’s lead and his firm, supportive recommendation. He worked unimaginable hours, routinely arriving early, leaving late, and working weekends. He developed the habit of never taking vacations, since he was really the critical presence when one of his dozen or more projects faced a significant milestone. Something was always facing another critical milestone review.
HR finally confronted him after he’d accumulated three months of unused vacation time.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 12/18/2025
Bartolomeo Pinelli: The Author's Family (1810)
In reflection, this writing week delved more deeply into Decency's philosophical underpinnings than had any previous writing week in this series. As I near the end of this series—only two more installments remain—it might make sense that Decency gets reduced to the philosophical it might actually be, though I consider it more an ethical philosophy than a necessarily moral one. The distinction, since I'm already delving into the deeply philosophical, lies in who directs the action. In moral action, it seems somebody else directs by commanding, "Thou Shalt." In ethical action, the actor directs the action and stars in the performance. Decency seems to be necessarily self-directed action.
I began this writing week avoiding providing instruction, instead simply reflecting "On Being" Decent.
Excluding
Honoré Victorin Daumier: An Excusable Error. Chickens thinking they have found the cage where they spent their early childhood, plate 21 from La Crinolomanie (1857)
ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
This lithograph focuses on the outlandish crinoline fashion, which lasted about a decade. Among other activities, Daumier’s exuberant crinolines destroy gardens, sweep up street trash, and catch their wearers in high winds and turnstiles. While this plate comes from the Actualités series, it has also been catalogued under the topic La crinolomanie (Crinoline Mania). This sheet and others by Daumier play on the support garment’s incongruous approximation of the human form. Daumier’s images stress that these contraptions, whether cage- or basket- like, were functionally useless.
—- —
"…we can curl up in wonder…"
The hospitality industry has finally become the least hospitable industry. I intend no artificial irony as I declare this obvious truth, just the old-fashioned kind of irony. What could be more Decent than hospitality? Perhaps nothing, unless it’s turned on its head. It has been turned on its head by seemingly everyone working in that most curious of industries. Hospitality seems an odd industry, anyway, because I can’t see smoke stacks protruding from whatever hospitality might be doing, and I think that I really should see smoke stacks protruding from the top of any Decent industry, even hospitality, if it actually imagines itself to be an industry.
In my day, even a half-decent industry featured assembly lines and efficiency experts.
FauxDecency
Jan Sadeler I: The False Shepherd (c. 1575)
"…I'd prefer to believe most would perceive such beliefs the utter opposite of Decency in action."
If Decency has always been a matter of choice, what constrains such decisions? I see today a proliferation of what I must characterize as poor choices made in the name of what I can’t quite comprehend as representing Decency in action. Our State Department’s embassies recently received a directive from the White House declaring that every country practicing Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion is guilty of human rights abuses. Likewise, those acknowledging their women’s right to choose. These pronouncements seem the very opposite of Decency. Decency stood on its head and turned inside-out: FauxDecency. I would live and let live in this instance except this instance seems a perverse exception, and it is the perversion that drives my aversion. This cannot represent Decency, even as practiced on Mars, or else Decency itself becomes a meaningless concept in practice.
The vast army of whacko right-wing conspiracy believists are not theorists, for they seem to firmly believe that their wickedness represents true righteousness.
AlternativeFutures
Edward King: A future politician (1874)
"Decency’s probably more resilient than even the most practiced cynicism."
My old colleague and friend, Al, who has followed my writing for about thirty years, reminds me after reading my recent story featuring pointed comments about cynicism that, as a species, we seem to be much better at predicting long recoveries than at experiencing them. He contends that most systems recover much more quickly than their intimates predicted. This pessimism about our resiliency might fuel much despondency. As we watch what we consider Decency crumbling before us, we do more than just order handbaskets. We believe we might never recover from this latest round of insults, even though our history seems resplendent with examples of more rapid recovery. Even if we held the power to regenerate a severed limb spontaneously, we wouldn’t necessarily relish the experience. We might come to believe that we were more finite than we’d ever actually been, and confidently predict that any individual lobbing off would do us in.
We are already recovering from these latest insults, even as the wolves continue devouring so much of what we hold so dear.
BecomingComplicit
Anneliese Hager: Untitled [Portrait A. H.] (1947)
"Attempting to live Decently incurs ever more complicity."
To live is to become complicit. Attempting to live Decently only deepens this dilemma, for one may not insist upon society respecting one’s personal proclivities. Vegans surround themselves with murderers. Choosing to live Decently distances one from some, though it might also bring others closer. The least common denominator seems as unconscionable as it also seems most divisive. No way exists to avoid experiencing this division. The higher the aspiration, the lower the everyday experience. I have cordoned off vast swaths of my community as unworthy of my presence. I won’t shop at Walmart because of their disgustingly indecent business policies toward those they euphemistically call “Their Partners.” I won’t visit the Tractor Supply store since they tried to gain street cred by noisily cancelling their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies under the phony guise of promoting actual equality. I was not born yesterday.
The more I embraced Decency, the more complicit I became.
DeSensing
Louis-Léopold Boilly: The Five Senses (1823)
"Decency primarily exists in the cloudy eyes of its beholders."
Decency requires certain sensitivities before it can be successfully deployed. One must accurately perceive one’s surroundings before one can engage congruently. Imperfections can create divergences such that Decencies escape my ability to properly muster them. I increasingly exist out of context, disconnected from the surrounding world.
Early on, I sensed that this world was someone else’s.
OnBeingDecent...
Giuseppe Maria Mitelli Allegory of the Lightness of Being (1702)
Gallery Notes: This elegantly attired nobleman – who is young (giovine), handsome (bello) and rich (ricco) – flaunts his possessions. His affluence is emphasized by the pile of gold coins on the table and the many costly attributes of art, gaming, and diversions that literally surround him. Yet apparently this is not enough. Amid all this opulence, he looks disillusioned and unsatisfied. Is this all there is?
"Decency's question is rarely what but when."
On Being Decent … In Indecent Places
I can speak with authority only about my personal experiences, and even that ability seems limited. I have nothing to teach anyone else, except by example, often by bad example. I am no paragon of anything except not being a paragon of anything. This context says nothing about the content of whatever I consider here, for I consider here to present an example of considering, not necessarily to conclude anything. That said, I have been writing Decency Stories for eighty-two consecutive days, discovering more than declaiming, sometimes seemingly shaming myself in the process. I have stumbled into contradictions and many tenacious misconceptions, realizing how little I understood the topic of my efforts. As I near the end of this series, I realize that I probably won’t be offering any crisp summarization of my subject at the end. I didn’t intend this effort to reduce understanding into a spare handful, but to expand it. It has proven more expansive than I could have imagined when I began.
One prominent subtext, though, that many of these stories have shown, involves one of the more common yet perplexing situations: On Being Decent In Indecent Places, not How To Be Decent In Indecent Places, but “merely” On Being Decent.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 12/11/2025
Carl Gottlieb Guttenberg: The Public Scribe [L'ecrivain public] (1783)
This writing week proved to be a relatively quiet roller coaster ride with highs and lows properly attenuated and ultimately, unsurprisingly, unanticipated. Little happened as I’d either hoped or feared, so much for prescience and good fortune. I’m coming close to concluding that we’re not the deciding factor here; we might thrive on synchronicity and luck, whether good or bad, but ultimately beyond our ability to influence. The fact that we feel an innate ability to control only makes this roller coaster ride more entertaining as our expectations repeatedly and ultimately, thankfully, disappoint our expectations. We should be both well used to and warmly accepting of these disappointments that visit us when we don’t immediately realize that our prescience so frequently fails us.
Decency was not as I'd expected it to manifest.
CynicismProofing
Gaston Lachaise: Self-Portrait (20th century)
"I will mount my defence against encroaching seasonal cynicism with some Decent poems."
I believe that there’s only one essential battle fully worthy of human engagement, the eternal battle against cynicism. Cynicism has always been humanity’s greatest foe. It possesses strange attractors, though. It tends to interest those who have grown weary of the utter predictability of existence, those who convince themselves that they can see through “the game.” Those who contend that they play no game play the most encumbering one of all. The utter predictability of life can sometimes seem like a curse. Three score and ten, give or take, including the genuine risk of an early demise. The galling impermanence of existence off-puts. Those who fain invulnerability embody only cynicism. They project what they claim to oppose by merely breaking rules, as if liberty were little more than a tenacious inability to get along with anybody else.
After a dog-year downwind from utter incompetence, this witness to the attempted reintroduction of cynicism into our governance finds himself exhausted from the unending exertion.
InPractice
Adolf Oberlaender: The Piano's Revenge: Practice (1882)
"I might have initiated this enquiry only to continue it ad infinitum, InPractice."
I should not feel so surprised when I stumble upon the discovery that Decency, like every other concept, only manifests InPractice. In theory, it seems to contradict itself. Only InPractice does it exhibit its underlying nature, which proves to be indescribable. The description clearly ain’t the thing. InPractice, Decency seems to exhibit little if any ‘thingness.’ Not natively being either person, place, or thing, it steadfastly sidesteps all attempts at facile description, let alone definition. I suppose its dictionary definition performs as well as any dictionary definition might aspire to, though, as I believe I’ve shown in this series so far, much variation swirls around the concept’s central core. Decency can never manifest contextlessly. In fact, Decency seems unusually dependent upon well-formed context to exhibit much of any meaning at all.
You might not notice it when it exhibits.
Endimbenment
Unknown Tibeto-Chinese Artist:
Enlightened Protector Mahakala with Six Arms [Shadbhuja] (18th/19th century)
"Certainty must certainly be the surest sign of ignorance."
Acquiring knowledge and understanding never occurs as advertised. I understood that I would be acquiring something and come to know as a result of my efforts, but the outcome seems to reliably be different than either of those. Determining the endpoint, when such searches are finished, proves challenging, and applying what I learn, even more so, for it seems that I acquire much less, but also much different, than I expected. Even when I adjust my expectations beforehand, based upon my long and disappointed experience, the result underwhelms me. It always seems much simpler than it should properly seem and also much more complicated. I tend to find myself incapable of explaining what I experienced, what I definitively learned. I feel more humbled than haughty.
It’s little wonder why the uneducated look down their noses at eggheads, for the learnéd among us have suffered a shit ton more humility than have the great unwashed.
DecentPeople
Vincent van Gogh: The Drinkers (1890)
ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
During his time in the Asylum of Saint-Paul in Saint-Rémy, a small town near Arles, Vincent van Gogh made a number of copies of the work of artists he admired, which freed him from having to produce original compositions and allowed him to concentrate instead on interpretation. For this image, Van Gogh copied a wood engraving from Honoré Daumier’s Drinkers, a parody on the four ages of man. The exaggerated figure types capture Daumier’s characteristic humor and convey his sad message about the horrors of alcoholism. The greenish palette may well be an allusion to the notorious alcoholic drink absinthe.
— — —
"My Decencies seem as fleeting as my days."
People seem to have a deep need to classify each other into categories. A deep need for self-esteem might drive this tendency, though there must be better ways for us to feel good about ourselves. This practice seems the likely source of prejudice, misogyny, and a startling list of the more prominent human frailties. I wonder why we couldn’t be generally better than this, since we hold the capacity to make finer judgments and even to choose to make no judgments at all. Would it kill us to make fewer judgments under some ‘judge not, lest ye be judged’ rule? I suspect so.
I feel embarrassed to acknowledge that, in this whole series, of which this writing finds me 85% finished, I have been spouting deep antipathy toward a class I labeled Indecent without clearly defining who belonged to that group.
SelfDeception
Antonio Mancini: Self Portrait; verso: Two Self Portraits (c. 1900-1902)
"The difference between Decencies might not matter as much as the intensity of each audience member's suspended disbelief, not to mention the actors'."
Discussions of Decency rarely mention the essential role that SelfDeception plays in its daily practice. Unlike a character in a novel or history, the Decent must wrestle with all the complexities and contradictions inherent in any practice. From one minute to the next, conditions might change, disrupting an intended trajectory. So, while one hears plenty of talk about choosing a path, one only rarely hears stories of having to pick and then continually choose again and again. There sometimes seems to be no end to the choosing when it comes to Decency. This can become understandably frustrating, with some loss of focus and discipline seeming common. The Decency originally intended can sometimes get twisted in delivery and manifest in rather embarrassing ways. A Decent SelfDeception might kick in then, to preserve self-esteem. The story remembered often seems divergent from the story as initially intended and executed.
Lapses in discipline are not uncommon.
HarshJudgments
Nicolas Chapron: Judgment of Solomon (17th century)
"Let he who is without indecency cast the first criticism."
The Decent seem to have the greatest license to criticize those with fewer scruples. They appear to inhabit unimpeachable high ground that bestows better judgment, so who better to critique others? Does Decency necessarily assign such a responsibility upon its perveyors, or are they somehow enjoined from overly overtly criticizing, lest that seem unseemly? I suspect the answer to these questions must be the responsibility of each Decent person. I know the answer for myself, though my answer sometimes shifts, depending.
I do believe it’s unseemly of me to criticize harshly, or, perhaps, to criticize at all.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 12/04/2025
Muirhead Bone: Rainy Day, Deal ((20th century)
This writing week saw the first hard freeze in this Valley They Liked So Well. It also saw the start of its typical seasonal socking-in as this bowl filled with fog that the weakening sun could not manage to burn off. Rudolph the Red-Nosed had a prominent franchise here in my youth, and would today if video games hadn’t undermined most of our traditions. The Villa felt cozy with the fireplace blazing after my granddaughter Tilda struck the fateful match that lit the first pile of kindling and firewood, leaving the fireplace warming through the long post-Thanksgiving weekend. I continued my exploration of Decency in its surprisingly many guises. I suspect that if I focused this much attention on any topic, though, I’d only undermine whatever I thought I understood about it beforehand. Learning settles nothing, but usually opens ever more complicating and confusing cans of worms, ad infinitum.
Ferocency
Hieronymus Wierix: Cruelty (1577)
Gallery Notes:
The female personification of Cruelty (Crudelitas) sits on a bag where the collected grain flows out. She hands a bread with a fish to a dog, and a stone with a snake to a young child. In the tree behind her sits an owl with a burning heart in its beak. On the left in the background a river with a current acceleration. On the right in the background a face on a village. On a field, a woman sprinkles food for the pigs. In the margin, a six-line exlanatory poem in Dutch, Latin and French.
— — —
"Under certain uncertain conditions, a two-by-four to the side of the head could be considered an intervention of Decency."
Varying intensities are permitted when deploying Decency. It needn’t always seem gentle or even necessarily kind. As with most things, tough love equivalents unquestionably exist, though one must usually deploy them circumspectly lest motive be interpreted differently than intended. In business, for instance, certain otherwise unseemly intensities seem permitted under the self-referential rubric that “business is business,” a multi-purpose excuse intended to cover every possible variation. It seems as though nobody can call “violation” regardless of the intensity of the application if it’s done in the pursuit of profits.
I’ve also noticed a certain erosion of what used to pass for decorum, allowing for some rather coarse words to be injected into otherwise benign conversation.
MoralHazards
Unidentified Artist: Danvers, Massachusetts Insane Hospital (c. 1903)
"What does it mean to respond Decently then?"
Decency seems to demand continual adaptation. What constitutes Decency in one context might border on indecency in an adjacent space. Further, emotional states also enter into this calculus. One might easily justify different responses when feeling angry than when feeling secure. Decency does not provide an isolated or isolating platform for responding. Everybody’s inescapably in each fray together, whatever their behavioral or moral preference. It might not prove helpful to equate Decency with morality, especially when subtle senses of superiority creep into the internal conversation. That said, the Decent might behave more consistently, if only because they insist upon certain limits and boundaries. There are probably many more things Decency won’t consent to do than indecency even notices.
I’m fussing today about how Decency can get twisted in the presence of the insane.
InnerIndecency
Honoré Victorin Daumier: The Emperor of Morocco in Consultation With the Famous Magician Desbarolles. “- This small line here indicates to me that you are going to get a royal thrashing!,” plate 126 from Actualités (1859)
"They ultimately only manage to fool themselves."
Some things I firmly believe that I can see might not actually exist. Belief provides more than adequate evidence to convince almost anybody that almost any nonexistent entity probably exists. Beliefs can be remarkably incorrigible beasts, so they must be held with a certain circumspection. They might support unshakeable conviction in absolute fiction. I concede that many of the worst indecencies I’ve ever witnessed fed on just such convictions.
Furthermore, few who held those convictions were ever considered to be felons, though the damage they inflicted might well have supported criminal indictment.
SelfDealing
Stuart Davis: Study for “Package Deal” (1956)
"Nobody Decently corners any competition."
Decency requires some hair-splitting. One must somehow manage to sustain oneself without over-reaching. Society maintains laws against monopoly because we deem SelfDealing indecent. It’s unseemly for anybody to merely compete with their own interests. It’s considered Decent to engage as a part of a system rather than as the entirety of it. Monopolists freeze others out, essentially robbing them of opportunity, however much their monopoly might resemble greater efficiency. Efficiency in the service of nobody else amounts to wasted effort. Efficient monopolies are merely rapacious.
Oligarchies are monopolies on steroids.
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