T A B O O
Taboo, i.e., "not allowed," was the foundation of the feudal system on the islands of Polynesia and consisted in recognizing cer t ain persons (for instance, chiefs and priests) as well as some places and objects as untouchable. Because of Dr. Freud and his successors, we learned to associate the word "taboo" with sex, yet the islanders had no idea that some bodily functions could be forbidden. This became in Hawaii a significant factor in the encounter with the white man's civilization. A young British sailor, Thomas Manby, who found himself in Hawaii in 1791 , describes (with relish) a group of girls on the deck of his ship-they got there in canoes or by swimming and stayed for a few days. When Protestant missionaries appeared in Hon olulu, they were particularly severe toward this custom, and there were scandals when ship captains requested entertain ment for their crews.
When, in a few dozen years, the taboo, the violation of which was punished by death, gradually disappeared on the Hawaiian Islands, it was equivalent to the end of their civilization, and the (awful) Protestant missionaries confronted a society in a state of utter decay, without any orientation as to how to live. They introduced the notion of sin, and it encompassed not only sex but also dances and games, for which the penalty was Hell.
The history of our civilization is a history of changing taboos. In our century, utopias such as the Soviet state used the taboo to protect themselves, and the gradual disintegration of prohibitions was a sign that what had happened to Hawaiian feudalism would repeat itself there.
The breaking of barriers in a "permissive society" is limited mainly to sex, not without comic efforts to discover sexual acts drastic enough to boost sales. Freedom seems to be total and thus numerous taboos in other realms are beyond people's awareness.
I boast of being aware of taboos which are binding in the place and time assigned to my life. It is better, I feel, to be aware than to submit unconsciously. Sometimes I have an itch to test how much freedom is allowed, but I stifle this urge for various reasons. What those taboos are, I prefer not to reveal; I would expose myself too much. Other people, in the proper season, which is not the season of my life, will take care of that.
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B E L I KE O T H E R S
Wherever you lived-in the city of Pergamum at the time of the Emperor Hadrian, in Marseilles under Louis XV, or in the New Amsterdam of the colonists-be aware that you should consider yourself lucky if your life followed the pattern of life of your neighbors. If you moved, thought, felt, just as they did; and, just as they, you did what was prescribed for a given moment. If, year after year, duties and rituals became part of you, and you took a wife, brought up children, and could meet peacefully the darkening days of old age.
Think of those who were refused a blessed resemblance to their fellow men. Of those who tried hard to act correctly, so that they would be spoken of no worse than their kin, but who did not succeed in anything, for whom everything would go wrong because of some invisible flaw. And who at last for that un deserved affliction would receive the punishment of loneliness, and who did not even try then to hide their fate.
On a bench in a public park, with a paper bag from which the neck of a bottle protrudes, under the bridges of big cities, on sidewalks where the homeless keep their bundles, in a slum street with neon, waiting in front of a bar for the hour of opening, they, a nation of the excluded, whose day begins and ends with the awareness of failure. Think, how great is your luck. You did not even have to notice such as they, even though there were many nearby. Praise mediocrity and rejoice that you did not have to associate yourself with rebels. For, after all, the rebels also were bearers of disagreement with the laws of life, and of exaggerated hope, just like those who were marked in advance to fail.
Quote from the book Road-side Dog
By Czeslaw Milosz
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