Why Everything Inappropriate is Attractive

When a friend asked me as to why everything inappropriate is so attractive I was at loss for words for a coherent and acceptable answer. I just discovered another attribute of human nature. While many of my friends will present me the usual good and evil reaction that is written in all religious scriptures and narrated by a Mulla or a Priest every week in the weekly congregation but I am searching for an answer that is more to do with human beings and less with faith.

My first reaction to my friend’s question was how do we define the word inappropriate? According to the Standard English language dictionary inappropriate is something that is not acceptable, wrong, out of place. For anything to be inappropriate someone needs to evaluate it as such. This makes inappropriateness essentially other people’s understanding of our actions.

Do we really want to entrust others the right to decide on what we should or should not do? I will be very nervous giving away this right to someone else to decide on our actions. If this is my life then I have the right to live it myself. I cannot and should not let others decide on how I live my life. As an individual I am liable to my actions and have the right to decide on the way I want to live it. My faith in personal freedom is absolute to the extent that I would not object to someone committing suicide and indeed the statutes in western countries do not consider a penal offence.

My friend insists that we judge ourselves constantly therefore inappropriate remains inappropriate even if we are no longer concerned about others. We can run away from everything and everyone in this world but not ourselves. In response I will again say our values are again someone else’s values; someone defines our standards and not we ourselves. As human beings we are not born with pre-programmed software that tells us what and how to live our lives therefore all our values, believes, norms and standards are given to us by others. These are someone else’s values that are ingrained in our personalities when we are learning to live our lives. That is why values and standards of morality are different in every culture and society. Cousin marriages are an acceptable practice in many of the eastern cultures especially in South Asia whereas the same is incest in the west. Alcohol is inappropriate in Muslim cultures whereas it is not appropriate in other cultures. Sikhs do not smoke tobacco whereas there are over a billion other people who smoke. If you drink alcohol in a Muslim community, marry a cousin in a western society or smoke tobacco in a Sikh village these will be all be inappropriate while the same will be acceptable outside these cultural confines.

Inappropriateness is relative and changes form culture to culture and society to society. If societies and cultures that are collection of people can decide on the standards then why by the same corollary individuals can not define appropriateness for themselves. Anything that attracts me is closer to nature, satisfies me, and makes my life worth living so I cannot let someone’s views on morality, or ethics take away these essentials from my life.

I don’t know my friend convinced or not? Convincing my extraordinarily intelligent, gifted and bright friend is not easy though I will keep trying. Having said this I agree to individual’s right to define appropriateness including accepting standards by others.