Taboos are a special paradox for Americans. However much we may
long for tradition and order, our longings are subverted by the
inescapable fact that our country was founded upon a break with tradition
and a challenge to order--which is to say, the United States was founded
upon the violation of taboos. Specifically, this country was founded upon
the violation of Europe's most suffocating taboo: its feudal suppression
(still enforced in 1776, when America declared its independence) of the
voices of the common people. We were the first nation on earth to write
into law that any human being has the right to say anything, and that
even the government is (theoretically) not allowed to silence you.
At the time, Europe was a continent of state-enforced religions,
where royalty's word was law and all other words could be crushed by law.
(Again: taboo was a matter of enforced silence.) We were the first nation
to postulate verbal freedom for everyone. All our other freedoms depend
upon verbal freedom; no matter how badly and how often we've failed that
ideal, it still remains our ideal.
Once we broke Europe's verbal taboos, it was only a matter of time
before other traditional taboos fell too. As the writer Albert Murray has
put it, Americans could not afford piety in their new homeland: "You
can't be over respectful of established forms; you're trying to get
through the wilderness of Kentucky." Thus, from the moment the Pilgrims
landed, our famous puritanism faced an inherent contradiction. How could
we domesticate the wilderness of this continent; how could peasants and
rejects and "commoners" form a strong and viable nation; how could we
develop all the new social forms and technologies necessary to blend all
the disparate peoples who came here--without violating those same Puritan
taboos which are so ingrained, to this day, in our national
character?
It can't be over-emphasized that America's fundamental stance
against both the taboos of Europe and the taboos of our own Puritans, was
our insistence upon freedom of speech. America led the attack against
silence. And it is through that freedom, the freedom to break the
silence, that we've destroyed so many other taboos. Especially during the
last 40 years, we've broken the silence that surrounded ancient taboos of
enormous significance. Incest, child abuse, wifebattering, homosexuality,
and some (by no means all) forms of racial and gender oppression, are not
merely spoken of, and spoken against, they're shouted about from the
rooftops. Many breathe easier because of this inevitable result of free
speech. In certain sections of our large cities, for the first time in
modern history, gay people can live openly and without fear. The feminist
movement has made previously forbidden or hidden behaviors both speakable
and doable. The National Organization of Women can rail against the
Promise Keepers all they want (and they have some good reasons), but when
you get a million working-class guys crying and hugging in public, the
stoic mask of the American male has definitely cracked. And I'm old
enough to remember when it was shocking for women to speak about wanting
a career. Now virtually all affluent young women are expected to want a
career.
Fifty years ago, not one important world or national leader was
black. Now there are more people of color in positions of influence than
ever. Bad marriages can be dissolved without social stigma. Children born
out of wedlock are not damned as "bastards" for something that wasn't
their fault. And those of us who've experienced incest and abuse have
finally found a voice, and through our voices we've achieved a certain
amount of liberation from shame and pain.
These boons are rooted in our decidedly un-Puritan freedom of
speech. But we left those Puritans behind a long time ago--for the
breaking of silence is the fundamental political basis of our nation, and
no taboo is safe when people have the right to speak.
KEEPER OF YOUR SILENCE
In the process, though, we've lost the sanctity of silence. We've
lost the sense of dark but sacred power inherent in sex, in nature, even
in crime. Perhaps that is the price of our new freedoms.
It's also true that by breaking the silence we've thrown ourselves
into a state of confusion. The old taboos formed part of society's
structure. Without them, that structure has undeniably weakened. We are
faced with shoring up the weakened parts, inventing new ways of being
together that have pattern and order--for we cannot live without some
pattern and order--but aren't so restrictive. Without sexual taboos, for
instance, what are the social boundaries between men and women? When are
they breached? What is offensive? Nobody's sure. Everybody's making
mistakes. This is so excruciating that many are nostalgic for some of the
old taboos. But once a taboo is broken, then for good or ill it's very
hard, perhaps impossible, to reinstate it.
But there is another, subtler confusion: yes, enormous taboos have
fallen, but many taboos, equally important, remain. And, both as
individuals and as a society we're strained enough, confused enough, by
the results of doing away with so many taboos in so short a time, that
maybe we're not terribly eager for our remaining taboos to fall. We may
sincerely desire that, but maybe we're tired, fed up, scared. Many people
would rather our taboos remain intact for a couple of generations while
we get our act together again, and perhaps they have a point. But the
price of taboo remains what it's always been: silence and
constriction.
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