New Taboos (9 page)

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 these
sterling 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 an unreasonably large profit—which is arguably a form of theft. But what constitutes “unreasonable?”

I'm talking about thirty-dollar aspirins in hospitals, multi-million-dollar CEO salaries, and undertaxed corporate profits by the major corporations.

The operating of sweatshops and underpaying laborers shall be T
ABOO.
Some formula will be agreed upon, respecting percentage of profits, to decide what degree of low payment is taboo.

It shall be T
ABOO
to permit unnecessary health risks for workers just for the sake of cutting costs. From factories to movie productions.

Torture even for “the greater good” will be T
ABOO.

It shall be T
ABOO
for national leaders to take a country to war through the use of deception, and it shall be taboo to go to war for any reason other than the most dire necessity.

Taking Care of Business is one thing; one must be tough and competitive in order to be responsible to oneself and one's family. But lying, cheating, and homicide by negligence (or by sheer cost-cutting callousness) do not constitute Taking Care of Business.

I now seem to hear the voices of people with tattoos of Don't Tread on Me flags; they're reacting to my proposals with weary irritation, or even fury. “Just what we need, another way to impose on us, more people telling us what to do. Or not to do.”

But taboos should be used (till we mature past the need), only for those social issues most of us agree on—issues that even the most Libertarian, Don't Tread on Me types would agree on, if they thought it through. Look at my proposals, and you will see that I've only taken basic kindergarten rules of behavior and extended them to the bigger playing fields of commerce and politics: You don't poison the other children. You don't lie, children, and you don't steal. You don't hurt the other kids just to get what you want. You don't take more than your share of the dessert.

On the adult scale, we have laws against some of these social transgressions, but much of the time they're unenforceable. Taboos—if we really integrate them into our society—enforce themselves, for the majority of people. If the taboos are deeply ingrained enough, we don't need the laws.

But how do we punish those, in our hypothetical new system of taboos, who are in violation? If the new taboos are really in place, it will be literally revolting to do business with a polluter. Just to think of it might make you physically ill. Do business with someone who, in the long haul, is responsible for increasing leukemia in children? What a revolting thought! They'll have a social stench about them.

The very concept of pollution will be repugnant. Nowadays we think with horror on the gutters full of
feces of medieval Europe. Someday people will think the same way of our own sluicing of pesticides into the rivers and seas, of our toxification of the air, and our radical diminution of forests. How could they have done that? It's … sickening! That's the way we should react, as well, to corporate ripoffs, like the defense industry's treasonous willingness to sell bad parts (often imported from China) that risk the lives of young men and women in the armed forces. It should truly, deeply, sicken us. We should react to our marrow.

In order to lend weight to our reactions, we must respond, as a society, to violations of serious ethical and environmental taboos in ways that are clear-cut and strikingly apparent.

Hence, as indicated, taboos for some violations should come equipped with very serious consequences. One is tempted to suggest electric shock, ghastly medications—and was tarring and feathering such a bad idea? But no! We won't stoop to barbarism. The enforcement of New Taboos will begin with economic and social ostracism. Repulsion. Institutions for enforcing New Taboos will be unnecessary. Society's reaction to the stench of such corruption will be the punishment.

Taboos are necessary for now, but they should not be necessary forever. They are a sociological mechanism designed to modify behavior. If we were what we have the potential to be, taboos would be superfluous.

There are those of us who believe that most people are in some degree asleep, even when they suppose themselves to be awake. That is, they go about their day in a kind of trance. According to this theory, far more of our
responses are mechanical—purely automatic—than we realize. The exploitation of others is a conditioned reflex; the rationalization of corporate theft or environmental ravage is also conditioned—and partly instinctive. This mechanism is implicitly difficult to escape without the powerful leverages of such tools as taboos and harsh laws.

But there are also those of us who believe that these destructive, psychologically mechanical responses fall away if we recognize our state of walking, waking sleep and strive to awaken from it. If we seek to be more mindful, more conscious, then real consciousness will awaken. And conscience with it.

And then we won't need taboos, old or new.

1.

I
T'S A CONTRADICTION IN
terms—two singularities. But there are two: there's the fanciful technological singularity of the imagination, and the singularity that's likely to come about. The false singularity, supposed to come between 2035 and 2045, is almost a “supernatural event” in the minds of many people. With its dream of technologically achieved eternal life, it has the reek of religious mythology about it, the unconscious fear of mortality; the second singularity, the Real Singularity, is more modest but impressive enough …

But all technological convergences, revolutions, renaissances, taking place in the next fifty years will happen against the backdrop of social and environmental crises. Multiple simultaneous crises will create shortages, which will further concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, bifurcating the world, separating most of the humanity from the breakthroughs of “singularity” level tech and biotech.
This could result in a powerful and eccentric technocrat class with its own elitist rationale for dominance of the technologically underprivileged through control of media and mechanism. Generally, the moneyed class will be the technologically equipped class; and with some exceptions the disenfranchised financially will be the disenfranchised technologically, despite the cell phones we see now in many remote villages.

Let me be clear that I do not foresee the downfall of civilization. I do not expect my son to have to emulate the Mel Gibson character in
Road Warrior.

But it's going to be a long slog. Just a few weeks ago the most thorough analysis yet of the world's energy infrastructure, from the International Energy Agency, reported that without significant reduction in greenhouse gases the next
five years
will take us to a point where it will be impossible to hold global warming to relatively safe levels—and the last chance of stopping disastrous climate change will be “lost forever.” The door is closing, says their chief economist, in
five years.

Does anyone think we're going to get global warming under control in
the next five years?
With all the entrenched denialists backed by big oil and the intransigence of companies that profit from burning coal—no! Sadly, it's not going to happen. We
will
feel the full consequences of global warming. When tropical diseases and pests move northward, when monsoons take place in regions unprepared for them, when radical changes in climate impact agriculture, causing dust bowls in some areas and catastrophic flooding in others, we will see a gigantic surge of refugees, hundreds of millions of people, totaling billions
globally, moving away from these areas, desperately migrating toward more protected areas.

Oceans provide much of the world's food. Global warming contributes to the acidification of the ocean, which adds to the attrition of fish stocks. Globally, fish supply 60 percent of the protein consumed by the human race, and we have already harmed fish stocks by destructive methods of fishing and pollution.

Food stocks will be radically challenged as climate change increasingly damages agriculture—as it's already doing in Africa. We can anticipate famines that make current food shortages seem like the good old days. And you think western nations are dealing with a lot of refugees now? They are a drop in the bucket.

The social cost of all this will be brutally intimidating. With seven billion people on the Earth, we have about a billion going to bed hungry
right now,
with billions more people coming … And it's been observed that the poorest people on earth contribute
least
to climate change but will feel its hand the
heaviest,
since they have the fewest resources with which to adapt and respond.

The massive shifts of large populations will put unprecedented stress on infrastructure and social systems—especially food sources, water, and housing—and will doubtless result in military confrontations. A Pentagon study concluded that under pressure to find new sources of food and safe housing in harsh climate change conditions, some countries will find excuses to invade other countries.

And of course there are other environmental crises arising. It's becoming clearer that fracking to access
hydrocarbons does cause earthquakes, and we're doing more and more fracking; this and the reduction in ice pressure on tectonic plates caused by global warming may well cause a great many more earthquakes. And don't forget the
black winds
—toxic fronts of synergized pollutants capable of killing large numbers of people—quite possibly being formed in the upper atmosphere, like an aerial complement to that corresponding giant whirlpool of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. Then there's the delightfully diverse soup of pharmaceuticals (along with other random industrial chemicals) we're finding in aquifers and drinking water. We all know about drugs combining dangerously (“Don't mix those two drugs, dude, bad news!”) but we're combining hundreds of them randomly in our water. Sure, they're somewhat diluted, but one wonders when some general, cumulative compound will develop, some drug mix of birth-control pill hormones, steroids, Prozac (one of the most common pollutants in water), antihistamines and antibiotics. What interesting collective neurological side effects might appear? The Romans had their leaded dinner plates …