I. Taboos
Taboos regulate our sexual conduct, race relations, political
institutions, and economic mechanisms - virtually every realm of our life.
According to the 2002 edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica",
taboos are "the prohibition of an action or the use of an object based on
ritualistic distinctions of them either as being sacred and consecrated or as
being dangerous, unclean, and accursed".
Jews are instructed to ritually cleanse themselves after
having been in contact with a Torah scroll - or a corpse. This association of
the sacred with the accursed and the holy with the depraved is the key to the
guilt and sense of danger which accompany the violation of a taboo.
In Polynesia, where the term originated, says the
Britannica, "taboos could include prohibitions on fishing or picking fruit
at certain seasons; food taboos that restrict the diet of pregnant women;
prohibitions on talking to or touching chiefs or members of other high social
classes; taboos on walking or travelling in certain areas, such as forests; and
various taboos that function during important life events such as birth,
marriage, and death".
Political correctness in all its manifestations – in
academe, the media, and in politics - is a particularly pernicious kind of
taboo enforcement. It entails an all-pervasive self-censorship coupled with
social sanctions. Consider the treatment of the right to life, incest, suicide,
and race.
II. Incest
In contemporary thought, incest is invariably associated
with child abuse and its horrific, long-lasting, and often irreversible
consequences. But incest is far from being the clear-cut or monolithic issue
that millennia of taboo imply. Incest with minors is a private - and
particularly egregious - case of paedophilia or statutory rape. It should be
dealt with forcefully. But incest covers much more besides these criminal acts.
Incest is the ethical and legal prohibition to have sex with
a related person or to marry him or her - even if the people involved are
consenting and fully informed adults. Contrary to popular mythology, banning
incest has little to do with the fear of genetic diseases. Even genetically
unrelated parties (a stepfather and a stepdaughter, for example) can commit
incest.
Incest is also forbidden between fictive kin or
classificatory kin (that belong to the same matriline or patriline). In certain
societies (such as certain Native American tribes and the Chinese) it is sufficient
to carry the same family name (i.e., to belong to the same clan) to render a
relationship incestuous. Clearly, in these instances, eugenic considerations
have little to do with incest.
Moreover, the use of contraceptives means that incest does not
need to result in pregnancy and the transmission of genetic material.
Inbreeding (endogamous) or straightforward incest is the norm in many life
forms, even among primates (e.g., chimpanzees). It was also quite common until
recently in certain human societies - the Hindus, for instance, or many Native
American tribes, and royal families everywhere. In the Ptolemaic dynasty, blood
relatives married routinely. Cleopatra’s first husband was her 13-year-old
brother, Ptolemy XIII.
Nor is the taboo universal. In some societies, incest is
mandatory or prohibited, according to the social class (Bali, Papua New Guinea,
Polynesian and Melanesian islands). In others, the Royal House started a
tradition of incestuous marriages, which was later imitated by lower classes
(Ancient Egypt, Hawaii, Pre-Columbian Mixtec). Some societies are more tolerant
of consensual incest than others (Japan, India until the 1930s, Australia).
The list is long and it serves to demonstrate the diversity of attitudes
towards this most universal practice.
The more primitive and aggressive the society, the stricter
and elaborate the set of incest prohibitions and the fiercer the penalties for
their violation. The reason may be economic. Incest interferes with rigid
algorithms of inheritance in conditions of extreme scarcity (for instance, of
land and water) and consequently leads to survival-threatening internecine
disputes. Most of humanity is still subject to such a predicament.
Freud said that incest provokes horror because it touches upon
our forbidden, ambivalent emotions towards members of our close family. This
ambivalence covers both aggression towards other members (forbidden and
punishable) and (sexual) attraction to them (doubly forbidden and punishable).
Edward Westermarck proffered an opposite view that the
domestic proximity of the members of the family breeds sexual repulsion (the
epigenetic rule known as the Westermarck effect) to counter naturally occurring
genetic sexual attraction. The incest taboo simply reflects emotional and
biological realities within the family rather than aiming to restrain the
inbred instincts of its members claimed Westermarck.
Both ignored the fact that the incest taboo is learned - not
inherent.
We can easily imagine a society where incest is extolled,
taught, and practiced - and out-breeding is regarded with horror and revulsion.
The incestuous marriages among members of the royal households of Europe were
intended to preserve the familial property and expand the clan's territory.
They were normative, not aberrant. Marrying an outsider was considered
abhorrent.
III. Suicide
Self-sacrifice, avoidable martyrdom, engaging in life
risking activities, refusal to prolong one's life through medical treatment,
euthanasia, overdosing, and self-destruction that is the result of coercion -
are all closely related to suicide. They all involve a deliberately
self-inflicted death.
But while suicide is chiefly intended to terminate a life –
the other acts are aimed at perpetuating, strengthening, and defending values
or other people. Many - not only religious people - are appalled by the choice
implied in suicide - of death over life. They feel that it demeans life and
abnegates its meaning.
Life's meaning - the outcome of active selection by the
individual - is either external (such as God's plan) or internal, the outcome
of an arbitrary frame of reference, such as having a career goal. Our life is
rendered meaningful only by integrating into an eternal thing, process, design,
or being. Suicide makes life trivial because the act is not natural - not part
of the eternal framework, the undying process, the timeless cycle of birth and
death. Suicide is a break with eternity.
Henry Sidgwick said that only conscious (i.e., intelligent)
beings can appreciate values and meanings. So, life is significant to
conscious, intelligent, though finite, beings - because it is a part of some
eternal goal, plan, process, thing, design, or being. Suicide flies in the face
of Sidgwick's dictum. It is a statement by an intelligent and conscious being
about the meaninglessness of life.
If suicide is a statement, then society, in this case, is
against the freedom of expression. In the case of suicide, free speech
dissonantly clashes with the sanctity of a meaningful life. To rid itself of
the anxiety brought on by this conflict, society cast suicide as a depraved or
even criminal act and its perpetrators are much castigated.
The suicide violates not only the social contract - but many
will add, covenants with God or nature. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the
"Summa Theologiae" that - since organisms strive to survive - suicide
is an unnatural act. Moreover, it adversely affects the community and violates
the property rights of God, the imputed owner of one's spirit. Christianity
regards the immortal soul as a gift and, in Jewish writings, it is a deposit.
Suicide amounts to the abuse or misuse of God's possessions, temporarily lodged
in a corporeal mansion.
This paternalism was propagated, centuries later, by Sir
William Blackstone, the codifier of British Law. Suicide - being self-murder -
is a grave felony, which the state has a right to prevent and to punish for. In
certain countries, this still is the case. In Israel, for instance, a soldier is
considered to be "military property" and an attempted suicide is
severely punished as "a corruption of an army chattel".
Paternalism, a malignant mutation of benevolence, is about
objectifying people and treating them as possessions. Even fully-informed and
consenting adults are not granted full, unmitigated autonomy, freedom, and
privacy. This tends to breed "victimless crimes". The
"culprits" - gamblers, homosexuals, communists, suicides, drug
addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes – are "protected from themselves" by
an intrusive nanny state.
The possession of a right by a person imposes on others a
corresponding obligation not to act to frustrate its exercise. Suicide is often
the choice of a mentally and legally competent adult. Life is such a basic and deep-set
phenomenon that even the incompetents - the mentally retarded or mentally
insane or minors - can fully gauge its significance and make
"informed" decisions, in some’s view.
The paternalists claim counterfactually that no competent
adult "in his right mind" will ever decide to commit suicide. They
cite the cases of suicides who survived and felt very happy that they have - as
a compelling reason to intervene. But we all make irreversible decisions for
which, sometimes, we are sorry. It gives no one the right to interfere.
Paternalism is a slippery slope. Should the state be allowed
to prevent the birth of a genetically defective child or forbid his parents to
marry in the first place? Should unhealthy adults be forced to abstain from
smoking, or steer clear from alcohol? Should they be coerced to exercise?
Suicide is subject to a double moral standard. People are
permitted - nay, encouraged - to sacrifice their life only in certain, socially
sanctioned, ways. To die on the battlefield or in defence of one's religion is
commendable. This hypocrisy reveals how power structures - the state,
institutional religion, political parties, national movements - aim to
monopolize the lives of citizens and adherents to do with as they see fit.
Suicide threatens this monopoly. Hence the taboo.
IV. Race
Social Darwinism, socio-biology, and, nowadays, evolutionary
psychology are all derided and disparaged because they try to prove that nature
- more specifically, our genes - determine our traits, our accomplishments, our
behaviour patterns, our social status, and, in many ways, our destiny. Our
upbringing and our environment change little. They simply select from ingrained
libraries embedded in our brain.
Moreover, the discussion of race and race relations is
tainted by a history of recurrent ethnocide and genocide and thwarted by the
dogma of egalitarianism. The (legitimate) question "are all races
equal" thus becomes a private case of the (no less legitimate) "are
all men equal". To ask "can races co-exist peacefully" is thus
to embark on the slippery slope to slavery and Auschwitz. These historical
echoes and the overweening imposition of political correctness prevent any
meaningful - let alone scientific - discourse.
The irony is that "race" - or at least race as
determined by skin colour - is a distinctly unscientific concept, concerned
more with appearances (i.e., the colour of one's skin, the shape of one's head
or hair), common history, and social politics - than strictly with heredity.
Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, noted in his work in the 1970s that
the popularity of the idea of race is an "indication of the power of
socioeconomically based ideology over the supposed objectivity of knowledge."
Still, many human classificatory traits are concordant.
Different taxonomic criteria conjure up different "races" - but also
real races. As Cambridge University statistician, A. W. F. Edwards, observed in
2003, certain traits and features do tend to cluster and positively correlate
(dark-skinned people do tend to have specific shapes of noses, skulls, eyes,
bodies, and hair, for instance). IQ is a similarly contentious construct, but
it is stable and does predict academic achievement effectively.
Granted, racist-sounding claims may be as unfounded as
claims about racial equality. Still, while the former are treated as an
abomination - the latter are accorded academic respectability and scientific
scrutiny.
Consider these two hypotheses:
That the IQ (or any other measurable trait) of a given race
or ethnic group is hereditarily determined (i.e., that skin colour and IQ - or
another measurable trait - are concordant) and is strongly correlated with
certain types of behaviour, life accomplishments, and social status.
That the IQ (or any other quantifiable trait) of a given
race or "ethnic group" is the outcome of social and economic
circumstances and even if strongly correlated with behaviour patterns, academic
or other achievements, and social status - which is disputable - is amenable to
"social engineering".
Both theories are falsifiable and both deserve serious,
unbiased, study. That we choose to ignore the first and substantiate the second
demonstrates the pernicious and corrupting effect of political correctness.
Claims of the type "trait A and trait B are
concordant" should be investigated by scientists, regardless of how
politically incorrect they are. Not so claims of the type "people with
trait A are..." or "people with trait A do...". These should be
decried as racist tripe.
Thus, medical research shows the statement "The traits
of being an Ashkenazi Jew (A) and suffering from Tay-Sachs induced idiocy (B)
are concordant in 1 of every 2500 cases" is true.
The statements "people who are Jews (i.e., with trait
A) are (narcissists)", or "people who are Jews (i.e., with trait A)
do this: they drink the blood of innocent Christian children during the
Passover rites" - are vile racist and paranoid statements.
People are not created equal. Human diversity - a taboo
topic - is a cause for celebration. It is important to study and ascertain what
are the respective contributions of nature and nurture to the way people -
individuals and groups - grow, develop, and mature. In the pursuit of this
invaluable and essential knowledge, taboos are dangerously counter-productive.
V. Moral Relativism
Protagoras, the Greek Sophist, was the first to notice that
ethical codes are culture-dependent and vary in different societies, economies,
and geographies. The pragmatist believes that what is right is merely what
society thinks is right at any given moment. Good and evil are not immutable.
No moral principle - and taboos are moral principles - is universally and
eternally true and valid. Morality applies within cultures but not across them.
But ethical or cultural relativism and the various schools
of pragmatism ignore the fact that certain ethical precepts - probably grounded
in human nature - do appear to be universal and ancient. Fairness, veracity,
keeping promises, moral hierarchy - permeate all the cultures we have come to
know. Nor can certain moral tenets be explained away as mere expressions of
emotions or behavioural prescriptions - devoid of cognitive content, logic, and relatedness to certain facts.
Still, it is easy to prove that most taboos are, indeed,
relative. Incest, suicide, feticide, infanticide, parricide, ethnocide,
genocide, genital mutilation, social castes, and adultery are normative in
certain cultures - and strictly proscribed in others. Taboos are pragmatic
moral principles. They derive their validity from their efficacy. They are
observed because they work because they yield solutions and provide results.
They disappear or are transformed when no longer useful.
Incest is likely to be tolerated in a world with limited
possibilities for procreation. Suicide is bound to be encouraged in a society
suffering from extreme scarcity of resources and over-population.
Ethnocentrism, racism and xenophobia will inevitably rear their ugly heads
again in anomic circumstances. None of these taboos is unassailable.
None of them reflects some objective truth, independent of
culture and circumstances. They are convenient conventions, workable
principles, and regulatory mechanisms - nothing more. That scholars are
frantically trying to convince us otherwise - or to exclude such a discussion
altogether - is a sign of the growing disintegration of our weakening society.
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