There is a time and a place for everything. This age-old mantra and proverb has been used countless times, especially so in contemporary times. However many of us use it without fully understanding the value of the implied ethic and structure of the phrase, nor are we truly aware of the implications of this one phrase being implemented within any given society.

There are two primary ways that the phrase itself could be interpreted. The more absolutist approach would interpret it as implying that there is a particular location and a time period where absolutely everything and anything goes. This is a deliberate stretch of meaning and is not very practicable upon any scale other than the individual scale. This would imply that if an individual were to find a location where over the period of relative infinity the consequences of one’s actions would not carry impact on or off location then virtually everything that is possible ‘can’ be considered to be appropriate to that time and place. By this reasoning an individual who reaches a particular location in the middle of the ocean highly unlikely to be disturbed for years, and who no longer has any links with the past, could technically commit suicide without question of acceptability. However, again this is a stretch.

A more common relativist interpretation of the phrase would be that all actions and states belong to some location and time or another. This is common sense and it is true to say that this is already significantly influentially at play within society. For example, it is considered more acceptable to eat food on a table, not while driving a vehicle and it is considered more acceptable to laugh in a circus than a funeral. The underlying tenet is that if an action in a particular time and place does not occur to the detriment of another then preconceptions towards that action no longer applies.

It seems simple enough in concept. It also appears to be consistent as even terms such as good or bad are relative rather than absolute and so the concept can be applied to a much wider spectrum of situations. For instance, the lighting of cigarettes and naturism are both activities that are frowned upon in different contexts, and can lead to fines or prosecution. Don’t smokers have rights? The question is whether their right to smoke over-rules other peoples’ rights not to smoke.

And this brings us to the crucial point. If an arrangement is reached where the rights of the actor and those of the social consciousness are both upheld, then one could say that the time and place for the actor has been found, with minimal resistance.

And this is truly of interest as it opens up a whole plethora of possibilities that more a more conservative outlook would hastily dismiss as necessarily immoral. After all, there is a time and a place for everything.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Contemplations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.