The adjective deplorable, which comes from the Latin word deplorabĭlis, qualifies what is disgusting, abhorrent, disastrous or disastrous. The deplorable, therefore, deserves a negative assessment.
For example: “The mayor had a deplorable attitude when he refused to receive the victims of insecurity”, “The team played a deplorable game and could have lost by a greater difference”, “Many children in this country live in deplorable conditions “.
In general, we speak of the deplorable state of something when it shows significant damage, whether physical or symbolic. A dilapidated hospital, to cite one case, may have leaky ceilings and cracks in the walls, as well as broken furniture and poor cleanliness.
Someone can affirm that the educational system of a country is deplorable, on the other hand, when schools fail to prepare students to successfully integrate into the professional and labor world due to their defects in training. Students, in this way, graduate without being able to understand a text or perform basic calculations.
The deplorable state of a person can be linked to their health, their hygiene or their way of life. An individual can maintain that he saw another in a deplorable state since the subject was walking half-naked down the street with a dirty body while he shouted that he wanted drugs to consume.
Many times qualifying a situation or an attitude as deplorable implies a condemnation or criticism. If a journalist points out that the performance of a tennis player was deplorable, he will be alluding to a lousy level of play.
Society teaches us to behave in a certain way, which it considers “acceptable”, and for this it relies on a series of examples and one of anti-examples; the latter represent everything he qualifies as “deplorable.” These teachings are transmitted through our parents or guardians, our teachers at school and, in general, all adults who have authority and influence over us.
As much as they convince us of the moral weight of a certain action, all the assessments we make about our environment are contextual. We are inevitably framed in a time, in a country, in a region, and nothing, not even the most violent and unjust act, can be described in the same way throughout the centuries. Let us not forget that until just a few decades ago, racism was much more accepted –or less repudiated– than it is today.
One of the meanings that we find of this term in the dictionary is “that deserves pity or compassion”, and this leads us to ask ourselves once again if it is so easy to recognize situations or subjects that deserve these feelings. Why do we feel sorry for a person? When do we feel compassion? The answers may be different for everyone, especially when cultural issues come into play, and this underlines the subjective nature of the deplorable concept .
Outside of questions related to morality, the state of things is also perceived differently depending on a very wide range of factors, such as the customs, culture and economic situation of the observer. In fact, some people may not have images of things in a dire state in their minds, since they have never had the possibility of accessing a standard of living that most consider “acceptable.”
For people from the middle class and above, a house with moldy walls, leaking ceilings, broken pipes and insect infestations is undoubtedly a deplorable place, but those who have always lived in buildings with these characteristics do not they perceive these defects with the same seriousness.
