Free New Taboos by John Shirley

to understand one premise: a thing being forbidden on the surface is not the same as its being truly taboo. A real taboo, worked into the weft and weave of the social fabric, programmed into the very conceptual master-molecule of psychological drives, is much more powerful than simple superficial disapproval.
    How do you feel, in your gut, if someone violates a basic taboo and literally craps on your doorstep? Your revulsion, most likely, is profound. That’s the profundity of taboo—and it’s partly an aesthetic reaction. Violations of taboos are also violations of our aesthetic sense—Damn, that thing is ugly! It may well be that the most refined, evolved taboos are deep aesthetic responses.
    We have attached a certain cachet and glamour to “taboo-breaking”—I’ve basked in that dubious glamour myself. And some taboos are indeed pointless, even socially toxic. The old taboo against talking about sex was surely destructive to healthy psychological development.
    But taboos are a tool, and any social tool has its constructive application. Japan has more than its share of taboos, some unhealthy, some healthy. Shoplifting is, happily, so taboo in Japan that security guards in department stores are nearly unknown. In the 1990s, when a Texas college marching-band visited Japan, it was detained before it could return to the States because literally dozens of thesesterling American students had shoplifted thousands of dollars’ worth of electronic goods from the underguarded Japanese stores. The Japanese were horrified that anyone would do such a thing.
    A new slate of taboos could be designated by general proposal and consensus, then imprinted in children through parental drill and kindergarten classes. We would incorporate the new taboos along with such older ones as the taboo against defecating on the sidewalk, public masturbation, peeing on people from rooftops, or more gravely: murder, child molestation, arson, wife-beating, cruelty to animals, and the like. Some of these behaviors still persist despite the taboos—but they are not so prevalent as backward business ethics and greed.
    It is unlikely, should we apply this curative, that we’ll use the term “taboo” for it, since the term has an atavistic ring. I use it here for clarity. We’ll call them something else, but taboos they will be.
    A short list of some needed taboos:
    It shall be T ABOO to toxify the environment. In the short run the severest application of this taboo will be against major polluters; in the long run the other great polluter, the individual who uses household toxins, will also accrue a black mark, less harshly meted.
    It shall be T ABOO to lie or I N ANY FASHION DECEIVE in the process of accumulating money. Business and deception should go together like adult sexuality and children: not at all.
    The thought of deceiving people to make money off them should be sickening to us. Currently it’s regarded as “marketing skill.” It shall be especially taboo to manipulate children into wanting things they don’t need, to force them into gender roles … or to make small children appear in “pageants” that actually parade parental sexual neurosis.
    It shall be T ABOO to use political influence for personal gain. It’s already disapproved of, even illegal—but to make it taboo is another step. Taboo, remember, goes to the core of our beings, because of the way it’s incorporated into society, by doleful repetition and psychological reinforcement, early on.
    It shall be T ABOO to hide someone else’s theft fraud, corporate dishonesty, or criminal pollution, in order to protect one’s own part in the system. Only a deeply entrenched psychological revulsion for this sort of thing can eradicate this almost universal tendency.
    It shall be T ABOO to discriminate on the basis of race or gender or sexual orientation. Self-explanatory.
    It shall be T ABOO to make