Thursday, April 18, 2013

Purity and Danger A Movable Feast


A classic work on the taboo among humans is Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger. In all societies, there are clean and unclean things, things sacred and things profane. The content changes, but the structure never does. It names what is dangerous as impure and tries to keep us safe from it. In our regime of progress and enlightenment, inclusion, diversity, open-mindedness and multicultural sensitivity, we pride ourselves on having overcome the irrational realm of superstition, of clean and unclean.

Good luck with that one.

VDH has an eye for inconsistencies and lists the arcane, complex and irrational rules of our current Victorian puritan regime. John Kekes has noted some of them as well.

Postmodern Prudes | National Review Online


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