Respectability

Is respectability only a social matter or condition? There are certain people held up as paragons of virtue  and historically others you warn your kid to stay away from—like the nasty old hermit at the end of the road. Virtue signaling is something that creates suspicion. Deeds are one way that people attain status, another is birth. On an individual level one achieves pride in one’s being, a feeling that derives from behavior in the world, ethics. There is a tradition of impudence carried on by those who rebel against norms. George Simenon and other infamous philanderers including Wilt Chamberlain who wore a fur covered in seals noses and boasted of having slept with a 1000 women create a topsy-turvy world in which what is bad is good. You get your stripes on the basis of how naughty you are. Utilitarians believe that the good is defined by what makes one happy. "All I'm asking for is a little respect when I come home," sings Otis Redding.

read "Enjambment of Fallen Men" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

also read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy in Kirkus.