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virus: origins of taboos
« on: 2004-01-14 16:18:24 » |
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http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
WHAT YOU CAN'T SAY
Paul Graham
<snip>
I can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look at
how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they
adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to see it
at work in our own time.
Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions are.
Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the
whim of some influential person.
The fashion for broad-toed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began
because Charles VIII of France had six toes on one foot. The fashion for
the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a
tough mill town in Indiana. Moral fashions more often seem to be created
deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often because
some group doesn't want us to.
The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The irony
of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating
Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't. In fact, Copernicus was a
canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. But by
Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation
and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas.
To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and
power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not
considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the
English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo.
Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be numerous or energetic
enough to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle.
I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power
struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where
you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough
to need them.
<snip>
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