6 ms·

There's no need for convoluted explanations. A good taboo, understood as a restriction on certain kinds of behavior or speech at least in certain circumstances,

There's no need for convoluted explanations. A good taboo, understood as a restriction on certain kinds of behavior or speech at least in certain circumstances, exists to protect some good. It's the same reason (or one of the reasons) we partition our houses into rooms by purpose. Human flourishing requires certain limits, not letting it all hang out. The latter is more akin to the liberal notion of freedom understood as "do what thou wilt" and limitless indulgence of the appetites and desires. The classical understanding of freedom is the ability to do what you ought. Guess which leads to happiness and which leads to misery.

el_nahual 4y ago
"limitless indulgence of the appetites and desires" has a different word. That's not freedom, that's called debauchery and has absolutely nothing to do with "liberalism" in the political science meaning of the term.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > "limitless indulgence of the appetites and desires" has a different word. That's not freedom, that's called debauchery and has absolutely nothing to do with "liberalism" in the political science meaning of the term. Could you explain more? From what I can tell, there is no inherent separation between freedom and debauchery aside from someone's judgement about whether particular choices where good for the person who made them.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    I'm not the parent, but I assume it's along the lines of a pretty famous quote by pope JP2: "Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." I think I agree with this on a certain level, but also debauchery is fun and can be useful.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    I enjoy some debauchery as much as or more than the next guy, but clearly the difference between freedom and debauchery is that people don't automatically go for debauchery just because they can, because we still have societal norms that most people follow most of the time. But we're free because we get to make that choice for ourselves.
    - GauntletWizard 4y ago
      Quite frankly, you're assuming facts not in evidence. An awful lot of people will go full debauchery; not everyone, but enough to be a problem.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        "People don't automatically go for debauchery because they can" and "no people go for debauchery" are not the same statement. You're constructing a strawman.
- r00fus 4y ago
  The more apt words would be hedonist/libertine.
  - el_nahual 4y ago
    right! I was struggling to translate "libertine" into the noun related to the act itself. ie, free -> freedom; hedonist -> hedonism; libertine -> ? In romance languages there's a word "libertinaje", but the best translation I could find into english was debauchery which I agree has too many connotations of "partying." Wantonness perhaps?
ravenstine 4y ago
> There's no need for convoluted explanations. I don't see how it's at all convoluted. If anything, it's too reductive. Taboos, traditions, etc., don't need to exist because of a reason that's explicit. Sometimes, they do, but that doesn't explain the taboos that don't make obvious sense. A taboo can be more or less a form of "cultural neuron" that doesn't have an explicit purpose but incidentally changes the balance of the system towards something that society at a given time may benefit from without even knowing it. A religion featuring more ornate hats than others may have more true believers, or perhaps the other way around for all we know. If that's at least plausible, if not true, that wouldn't necessarily mean a reverend at one point decided to declare a certain kind of hat wearing because of the "good of the church." The inverse can also be true. Take for instance the taboo of sexism. Makes sense, right? Given modern western principles, why should culture allow for discrimination based on sex? On the other hand, there's evidence that many women, regardless of their political positions, actually appreciate men who are "benevolently sexist." It's a phenomenon compelling enough that even Psychology Today, a publication heavily biased against anything unflattering to women, has reported on it more than once. By making sexism a taboo, and far more taboo as of late, society has raised the bar for just how confident a man has to be to attract a woman. We really don't need a study to demonstrate that, on average, women are attracted to confidence. An effect of making sexism taboo is it changes the signal to noise ratio, allowing women to better identify which men they'll actually be attracted to. Maybe there were some people arguing against sexism with this in mind, but I imagine they are an extreme minority. Most anti-sexists probably weren't thinking along those lines. At least that taboo makes some reasonable sense in isolation, and even the fashion of religious garb can be made sense of, but what about a taboo that makes no sense? What about merely making a mouth-noise that comes out sounding like "shit?" It makes little explicit sense that saying the word "shit" be a faux pas. You can say poop, doodie, scat, dung, and even crap, but shit is considered a curse word. It's really pretty stupid. Except I would argue that having any form of taboo can have a positive effect, even if it barely makes sense. By having cultural limits of any kind, it puts the society on the same page and creates a mindset where individuals try to at least maintain some level of basic class as a mindset. Personally, I like saying the word shit, but adding virtually any variable to a chaotic system can have effects that weren't explicitly predicted.
- 4y ago

el_nahual 4y ago

"limitless indulgence of the appetites and desires" has a different word. That's not freedom, that's called debauchery and has absolutely nothing to do with "liberalism" in the political science meaning of the term.

nordsieck 4y ago
> "limitless indulgence of the appetites and desires" has a different word. That's not freedom, that's called debauchery and has absolutely nothing to do with "liberalism" in the political science meaning of the term. Could you explain more? From what I can tell, there is no inherent separation between freedom and debauchery aside from someone's judgement about whether particular choices where good for the person who made them.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  I'm not the parent, but I assume it's along the lines of a pretty famous quote by pope JP2: "Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." I think I agree with this on a certain level, but also debauchery is fun and can be useful.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  I enjoy some debauchery as much as or more than the next guy, but clearly the difference between freedom and debauchery is that people don't automatically go for debauchery just because they can, because we still have societal norms that most people follow most of the time. But we're free because we get to make that choice for ourselves.
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    Quite frankly, you're assuming facts not in evidence. An awful lot of people will go full debauchery; not everyone, but enough to be a problem.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      "People don't automatically go for debauchery because they can" and "no people go for debauchery" are not the same statement. You're constructing a strawman.
r00fus 4y ago
The more apt words would be hedonist/libertine.
- el_nahual 4y ago
  right! I was struggling to translate "libertine" into the noun related to the act itself. ie, free -> freedom; hedonist -> hedonism; libertine -> ? In romance languages there's a word "libertinaje", but the best translation I could find into english was debauchery which I agree has too many connotations of "partying." Wantonness perhaps?

ravenstine 4y ago

> There's no need for convoluted explanations. I don't see how it's at all convoluted. If anything, it's too reductive. Taboos, traditions, etc., don't need to exist because of a reason that's explicit. Sometimes, they do, but that doesn't explain the taboos that don't make obvious sense. A taboo can be more or less a form of "cultural neuron" that doesn't have an explicit purpose but incidentally changes the balance of the system towards something that society at a given time may benefit from without even knowing it. A religion featuring more ornate hats than others may have more true believers, or perhaps the other way around for all we know. If that's at least plausible, if not true, that wouldn't necessarily mean a reverend at one point decided to declare a certain kind of hat wearing because of the "good of the church." The inverse can also be true. Take for instance the taboo of sexism. Makes sense, right? Given modern western principles, why should culture allow for discrimination based on sex? On the other hand, there's evidence that many women, regardless of their political positions, actually appreciate men who are "benevolently sexist." It's a phenomenon compelling enough that even Psychology Today, a publication heavily biased against anything unflattering to women, has reported on it more than once. By making sexism a taboo, and far more taboo as of late, society has raised the bar for just how confident a man has to be to attract a woman. We really don't need a study to demonstrate that, on average, women are attracted to confidence. An effect of making sexism taboo is it changes the signal to noise ratio, allowing women to better identify which men they'll actually be attracted to. Maybe there were some people arguing against sexism with this in mind, but I imagine they are an extreme minority. Most anti-sexists probably weren't thinking along those lines. At least that taboo makes some reasonable sense in isolation, and even the fashion of religious garb can be made sense of, but what about a taboo that makes no sense? What about merely making a mouth-noise that comes out sounding like "shit?" It makes little explicit sense that saying the word "shit" be a faux pas. You can say poop, doodie, scat, dung, and even crap, but shit is considered a curse word. It's really pretty stupid. Except I would argue that having any form of taboo can have a positive effect, even if it barely makes sense. By having cultural limits of any kind, it puts the society on the same page and creates a mindset where individuals try to at least maintain some level of basic class as a mindset. Personally, I like saying the word shit, but adding virtually any variable to a chaotic system can have effects that weren't explicitly predicted.

4y ago