In a column a few years back I mentioned in the context of grumbling about the marriage tax that my boyfriend and I had lived together for seven years without getting married in affirmative avoidance of that tax. Without knowing whether I was a good neighbor, a diligent employee, a dependable friend, a loving and loyal partner or a dutiful daughter, without knowing anything more about me beyond marital status, these readers had marked me immoral. I'd broken a social taboo, albeit one that holds little of the vigor it once did. Social taboos and the social pressures they engender are remarkably effective instruments of behavior modification and virtually every human society past and present has them. To me, it marked a defining moment in human enlightenment.
Social taboos are the goose-step of values.
Collectively we are brainwashed to follow rules set out for us by our religion, ethnic traditions or social circle without questioning whether they truly will make us better, more decent people. Yet it is only by examining these assumptions and demanding that social taboos operate rationally that we will advance as moral beings. It took hundreds of years for American sensibilities to acknowledge the moral superiority of liberating women from their consigned role as wife and mother. The bludgeon of social dictate was replaced by individual choice, giving our country the tolerance dividend of women's contribution to the economy as well as generations of mothers who happily signed up for the duty. In an educated society, notions of decency evolve because even social taboos, as stubbornly affixed as they are, need rational justifications to hold moral suasion.