OBSCENITIES

By Colin Gibson in All Sorts

what are the real obscenities of today?

OBSCENITIES
When I was little boy I ran home one day from primary school and excitedly reported to my mother that one of the older boys had used a naughty word-at least that's what one of the girls had said had happened. I don't remember now what the word was, but I do remember my mother speaking sternly to me and saying that I was never to use that word again. That it wasn't the sort of language good little boys or girls used, and she certainly didn't want to
hear it used again in her house.
Much later, and scarcely much wiser or knowledgeable about what 'bad language' might entail, I took a summer job at the blood and bone works at Burnside, where by-products from the nearby abattoir were turned into useful soil dressings for gardeners, I met a group of adult workers whose daily language was 'colourful' beyond my wildest imaginings; whose every second word was 'bloody', repeated so remorselessly that I finally found it really funny to hear them talk. How different from the dry academic discourse of the lectures at university, which never descended to the remotely improper.
Now days in a New Zealand which has effortlessly learned its bad language from television ads and movies, our public discourse matches our private talk in mindless obscenities casually used. That many of them are drawn from the language of religion goes unnoticed, though I recall once offering a language course for schools on swearing (that national habit), and quickly discovered that although in fact New Zealanders are as foul-mouthed-and as woefully unimaginative in that practice as any-our educational system was bent on pretending that we all spoke in the sanitised, well-mannered tones of BBC television and radio presenters. We have entirely forgotten that the Christian Church once held that swearing of the kind we don't even blink at now was a damnable sin, in the full sense of that adjective.
But we humans continually invent new ways of committing obscenities.
Only a few weeks ago, the ODT excitedly reported that a super yacht had sailed into what it called a super city-Auckland, of course. It seems the yacht is owned by a Russian tycoon who has made his millions from vodka sales (drunkenness is an even bigger social problem in Russia than it is in New Zealand!).
This yacht is reportedly longer than a rugby field. It contains hangers for a helicopter and a submarine, and two helipads. There is an underwater viewing space and stateroom for 24 guests, looked after by 52 crew members, The vessel boasts a seawater swimming pool and three huge spa pools, as well as a cinema and a library. The owner's suite has a 'stateroom' with a Californian king-size bed, a saloon and bar and library with a fireplace. It has a private lift to carry its occupants to an equally private swimming platform. The whole monstrous pleasure boat can be rented for a week at a time for a mere 2.4 million dollars.
But this is just one of the toys of the rich of this world.
Oxfam reports that by next year the world's richest 1% of our planet's population will own more than the total owned by the remaining 99%
of us. Already the rich people of the world possess assets worth nearly 3 million dollars each, while 80% of the world's population own assets worth 3 thousand dollars each. This makes no mention of the millions who are simply below any measurable poverty line. 'The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering', ran the report, 'and the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast.'
In our own country that gap is also steadily widening as a business- friendly government virtually ignores child poverty and homelessness, and remorselessly cuts at benefits and slashes spending on social services.
Forget swear words. The real obscenities are elsewhere. And didn't Jesus have some harsh words about Dives ignoring the beggar at his doors, and the problems of getting camels through the eye of a needle.
Colin Gibson