QotD [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

From "What You Can't Say", an essay by Paul Graham about heresy and taboo, beliefs of past generations which seem ridiculous to us now, and how to try to spot the beliefs of our era which may seem silly to our descendants:

Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. It seems fitting to us that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. The picture we give them of the world is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds, but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think.

[...]

I'm not arguing for or against this idea here. It is probably inevitable that parents should want to dress up their kids' minds in cute little baby outfits. I'll probably do it myself. The important thing for our purposes is that, as a result, a well brought-up teenage kid's brain is a more or less complete collection of all our taboos -- and in mint condition, because they're untainted by experience. Whatever we think that will later turn out to be ridiculous, it's almost certainly inside that head.

(Thanks to krikket for mentioning the essay.)

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Oddly, my childhood is remembered as: mostly being a ridiculously naive and clueless teenager (I didn't understand all the sexual references that my friends made jokingly until I was in my mid-twenties). It wasn't so much that there was a big taboo as that my parents just DIDN'T talk about such things. My mother didn't "tell me" (I already knew, of course) about menstruation until my paternal grandmother insisted that she did (I was 11ish, reasonably mature physically, and about to fly to NC to visit my grandparents, and my grandmother thought it would suck for my period to start before my mother had even bothered with that talk). My mother tried to give me the other talk right before I married my first husband!

When I was a very small child, the mention of death was verboten -- words like "kill," "die," etc. were forbidden. My parents wouldn't take me to my great-grandmother's funeral for this reason. I don't really know their reasons for this. I think it would have been easier for me to handle various pet and family (one and the same to my way of thinking) deaths later in life if the topic of death hadn't been so hush-hush.

And people wonder why I am such a loon! :-)

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Worth reading the whole thing. Generated the following thoughts:

1. The huge example of "moral fashion" that sprang to mind was birth control. It was condemned and outlawed, even for married couples who already had plenty of children, not that long ago. Today, it is considered immoral NOT to use it. Large families have gone from being good to bad.

2. You can tell who has young children because when they drop something or stub their toe they yell "Poop!" instead of whatever word they yelled when they were childless. This does include me.

3. #2 is not necessarily a bad thing. Our kids DO learn all the cuss words, how to spit and make fart noises, etc. They also pick up that you DO need to censor your use of these delights. The ability to not say cuss words in front of your mother develops skills for not using them in front of cops, judges, whatever.

4. Actually, one of my favorite pastimes is challenging my children when they parrot some piece of common knowledge. Especially the 14 year old. Even if I agree with the position he is expressing, I take perverse pleasure in showing him other possible viewpoints.

One of the cute things about the article is the picture at the top. When I looked at it whilst starting to read it I just looked like a kewl illustration that someone had just whipped up. Later I realized that it is a crop job of American Gothic painting (farmer w/ pitchfork & wife in front of farmhaus; Grant Wood 1930, Oil on "beaverboard") that most americans have seen at least once in their lives.

I agree with the closed thoughts and open face prescription of the author. Just the other week I heard two of my cow orkers saying that if all the non "god-fearing" people in america just went somewhere else, everything would be just fine. I suspect that I would qualify as non "god-fearing" cause I haven't been to a set foot in a church in about five years (quaker meeting - N of dupont cir washington DC - waykewl even if you're not a quaker or even a christian). I was so tempted to say "ok you're on, I'm moving to Holland" and leave. I suspect that that would have been the start of no end of dischord had I chose to go back.

He writes like a hard-core Libertarian or some other type of self-described radical -- all blacks and whites and no greys in between. What about the "test"? Do we have any opinions we'd be afraid to express in front of our peers? If the answer's "no," then we're obviously conformists. Isn't fear of ostracism a conformist attitude? I guess because I absorbed Harlan Ellison's theory of being immune to emotional blackmail (shorter Ellison: Don't keep secrets.), I don't actually hold any opinions I wouldn't be afraid to express in at least some company. There are things I wouldn't say in front of some people, but that would be to avoid inflaming *their* prejudices and offending them. I'm not afraid of being ostracised; in fact, I'm rather used to it. (Besides which, if one is certain enough that the other side is factually wrong, or even just idiots, one can handle it.)

Secondly, you can't put a quantitative value like "mistake" on a relativistic construct like a "moral map." Morals are other-derived, culturally-determined, and inconstant. They're also, as Saussure said about language, arbitrary and conventional. Even large-scale 'moral failings' (although I'd even go so far as to argue that term's a misnomer) as the Holocaust can't really be termed "mistakes." The vocabulary's just inaccurate. (Then again, I'm amoral and function by ethics, so *all* morals seem arbitrary and relative to me.)

Well, I won't keep Fisking this one here. As they say over on Eschaton, smarter, less pretentious monkeys, please

Less pretentious monkeys still fling poo.

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I pretty much agree with this. I found the article irritating. Like so many people who take it upon themselves to chide others "Think for yourself" the author really means "You aren't coming to the conclusion I think is right, so try again."

"Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?"

There is a very variable item in that question: "peer."

My "peers" are not the general run of folks on the street. I have a lot of opinions I would express freely among my peers that I keep behind my teeth in the general public. But my peers will think things through instead of leaping on a dissident with tooth and claw.

Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

QotD

Taboos

Excellent article

I Agree

Stupid False Dichotomists

less pretentious monkeys (was Re: Stupid False Dichotomists)

Re: Stupid False Dichotomists

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January