Fearful Silences
By Otto Scott
Taken from the Chalcedon Report, January 1992
My copy of Webster's Second Unabridged (1950) is not only difficult to replace, it has become an almost historical source, which contains observations now fading not only from the language, but from the everyday thought of this nation.
Take, for instance, the word taboo, on page 2564. Webster's says it means:
Today, however, the knowledge of primitive taboos and restrictions, of the arbitrary and mindless murders by tribal chiefs and the savage penalties they imposed seems to have faded from the world's memory. The people of the South Seas, who lived in fear, are now portrayed as having dwelled in unspoiled paradises, with unrestrained sex amid joyous celebrations, as happy as gamboling lambs until the arrival of the white man - and Christianity. The age-old myths of a past Golden Age have, in this modern recasting of fact into fiction, been transferred from Homeric Greece to any primitive society. This turn led to the rise of such fantasists as Margaret Mead and, even more recently, the author of Black Athena, who argues that all the learning and science of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece was "stolen" from the tribes of black Africa. (The explanation does not include how these advances were wiped from the memory of their supposed originators in the black tribes, but that's a cavil.)
What is closer to the subject is that there was an exhibit of African art in the early years of this century attended by Picasso and a number of other rising Parisian artists. To say that they were impressed is to understate. The strange distortions, the elongations, the dark, blood-scented images of ancient primitive idols carried with them an unmistakable sense of dread, mystery and power.
These men, with Picasso in their lead, left the exhibition inspired. Bored in their youth with the culture that had spoiled them in childhood, they began to abandon the rules and forms of the art they had learned and turned toward the distortions they later made famous. Toward, in other words, primitivism - which was hailed as novelty, as newness personified; as an eruption of genius - and the next, logical stage in modern art.
That Parisian movement paralleled one already in progress in Vienna and Berlin, where the art world had already followed the lead of German scholars whose archeology had led them into a fascination with the savage peoples they studied, and where scandalizing the bourgeoisie had become an artistic privilege - and pleasure.
The shift of this fashion from the visual arts to music spread to serious musical composers who discarded the traditional rules of harmony, abandoned melody and deliberately adopted dissonance, retaining mainly drums. Literature took a bit longer to succumb: James Joyce's Ullyses - with its very title a jeer at tradition - took longer to succeed, but it set the goal.
The toppling of traditional standards led, of course, to the rise first of semi-pornography and then the emergence of the hardcore. That this should be defended by the same sort of people who argue that the descriptions of such pornography constituted the sexual harassment of Anita Hill remains a rare irony. At a time when children in the lower elementary grades are taught about sexual practices more explicitly than any newspaper dare report is merely one result of the primitive fashion that has moved from art to culture to Academe, and that threatens to topple over everyone as soon as the older generation passes from the scene.
The general argument defending these trends is that they are signs of freedom: that pornography is a harmless release for some who might otherwise be plagued by discipline - and the rise in rapes is held to be coincidental and "not scientifically proven."
What is most remarkable, however, is that the toppling of traditional restraints has not resulted in more freedom, but in less in the areas once held to be essential to civilization. We have, for instance, lost our freedom of speech regarding the behavior and attitudes of minorities. This is a tremendous loss from which all other losses flow, because it permeates all areas of discussion and permissible observation. We are forbidden to notice that rudeness is now allowed some groups but denied to the majority. We are forbidden to respond when Christians are insulted, while being lectured on how to respect the tender sensibilities of non-Christians - in the name of tolerance(!).
We have, in other words, taboos. (The Polynesians were also forbidden to utter certain names, on pain of death.) The taboos that now overshadow our lives have, in similar fashion, spread to cover certain territories as well as subjects. There are regulations barring wilderness areas from human entry, to protect the animals, trees and insects.
One area in San Bernardino County, for instance, is the habitat of the kangaroo rat. Causing the death of a single one of these rats calls for fine up to $50,000. One firm has had to construct, at enormous expense, an underground as well as above ground wall to keep such rats from penetrating its plant or grounds, to protect the rats from even accidental harm - and the humans safe from our government. (Even this is not, of course, perfect protection.)
Eco-freaks, in other words, have created environmental taboos in the name of Science, whose operations are identical with those of primitive tribes. From time to time our masters inform us that chemicals once ruled taboo are actually harmless (such as dioxin), but such announcements are usually coupled with others that are named - and ruled - taboo.
We have, in other words, taboos that govern our social interactions, our right to observe (such as inequalities in individuals), our right to comment (such as 'politically correct' speech), our right to react (such as 'inappropriate laughter') and even our right to admire such (such as 'lookism'). Our right to move about freely in our native land is circumscribed; our right to physical safety is violated at an increasing tempo in every large city and we are denied the right to freely discuss the reasons - and the perpetuators. In every direction we see the benefits of civilization diminished and the number of taboos rising. How can societal problems be confronted if they cannot be freely discussed?
We have taboos against free discussion. We all know them. Nobody dare violate them lest their reputations be destroyed, their careers blighted - their persons attacked. This taboo and others have risen among us not only in this century, but in recent decades. The controlled conditions of college students, who are subject to all of these taboos under threat of being sent to re-education classes, or of being demoted, denounced, suspended or expelled, threatens to become the fate of our entire society as the rationales of Academe spread, through its graduates, to the professions and, finally, all our institutions.
That is why a fearful silence in all areas beyond technology prevails.
Taken from the Chalcedon Report, January 1992
My copy of Webster's Second Unabridged (1950) is not only difficult to replace, it has become an almost historical source, which contains observations now fading not only from the language, but from the everyday thought of this nation.
Take, for instance, the word taboo, on page 2564. Webster's says it means:
A sacred interdiction laid upon the use of certain things, or words, or the performance of certain actions, the action of imposing a state of being subject to such interdiction. Taboos may be designed to prevent pollution, as in the prohibition to use certain foods, touch a corpse, etc., or to secure certain privileges or properties as when afield is tabooed against trespass.... The use of taboos is found among most races of primitive culture. 2. to debarfrom use, practise or intercourse by authority of social or class convention, as, their names are strictly tabooed.It was at one time generally accepted that the difference between a civilized society and a primitive one is that civilizations allow freedoms unknown to primitives. These include freedom of discussion, freedom of movement - and freedom from arbitrary or artificial constraints. I recall reading, when I was a boy, of the fearful restrictions imposed upon their people by the Polynesian leaders and seeing illustrations of African tribal areas where forbidden sections of land were fenced by poles with skulls atop. I shuddered at these and felt grateful to be living in the U.S.A.
Today, however, the knowledge of primitive taboos and restrictions, of the arbitrary and mindless murders by tribal chiefs and the savage penalties they imposed seems to have faded from the world's memory. The people of the South Seas, who lived in fear, are now portrayed as having dwelled in unspoiled paradises, with unrestrained sex amid joyous celebrations, as happy as gamboling lambs until the arrival of the white man - and Christianity. The age-old myths of a past Golden Age have, in this modern recasting of fact into fiction, been transferred from Homeric Greece to any primitive society. This turn led to the rise of such fantasists as Margaret Mead and, even more recently, the author of Black Athena, who argues that all the learning and science of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece was "stolen" from the tribes of black Africa. (The explanation does not include how these advances were wiped from the memory of their supposed originators in the black tribes, but that's a cavil.)
What is closer to the subject is that there was an exhibit of African art in the early years of this century attended by Picasso and a number of other rising Parisian artists. To say that they were impressed is to understate. The strange distortions, the elongations, the dark, blood-scented images of ancient primitive idols carried with them an unmistakable sense of dread, mystery and power.
These men, with Picasso in their lead, left the exhibition inspired. Bored in their youth with the culture that had spoiled them in childhood, they began to abandon the rules and forms of the art they had learned and turned toward the distortions they later made famous. Toward, in other words, primitivism - which was hailed as novelty, as newness personified; as an eruption of genius - and the next, logical stage in modern art.
That Parisian movement paralleled one already in progress in Vienna and Berlin, where the art world had already followed the lead of German scholars whose archeology had led them into a fascination with the savage peoples they studied, and where scandalizing the bourgeoisie had become an artistic privilege - and pleasure.
The shift of this fashion from the visual arts to music spread to serious musical composers who discarded the traditional rules of harmony, abandoned melody and deliberately adopted dissonance, retaining mainly drums. Literature took a bit longer to succumb: James Joyce's Ullyses - with its very title a jeer at tradition - took longer to succeed, but it set the goal.
The toppling of traditional standards led, of course, to the rise first of semi-pornography and then the emergence of the hardcore. That this should be defended by the same sort of people who argue that the descriptions of such pornography constituted the sexual harassment of Anita Hill remains a rare irony. At a time when children in the lower elementary grades are taught about sexual practices more explicitly than any newspaper dare report is merely one result of the primitive fashion that has moved from art to culture to Academe, and that threatens to topple over everyone as soon as the older generation passes from the scene.
The general argument defending these trends is that they are signs of freedom: that pornography is a harmless release for some who might otherwise be plagued by discipline - and the rise in rapes is held to be coincidental and "not scientifically proven."
What is most remarkable, however, is that the toppling of traditional restraints has not resulted in more freedom, but in less in the areas once held to be essential to civilization. We have, for instance, lost our freedom of speech regarding the behavior and attitudes of minorities. This is a tremendous loss from which all other losses flow, because it permeates all areas of discussion and permissible observation. We are forbidden to notice that rudeness is now allowed some groups but denied to the majority. We are forbidden to respond when Christians are insulted, while being lectured on how to respect the tender sensibilities of non-Christians - in the name of tolerance(!).
We have, in other words, taboos. (The Polynesians were also forbidden to utter certain names, on pain of death.) The taboos that now overshadow our lives have, in similar fashion, spread to cover certain territories as well as subjects. There are regulations barring wilderness areas from human entry, to protect the animals, trees and insects.
One area in San Bernardino County, for instance, is the habitat of the kangaroo rat. Causing the death of a single one of these rats calls for fine up to $50,000. One firm has had to construct, at enormous expense, an underground as well as above ground wall to keep such rats from penetrating its plant or grounds, to protect the rats from even accidental harm - and the humans safe from our government. (Even this is not, of course, perfect protection.)
Eco-freaks, in other words, have created environmental taboos in the name of Science, whose operations are identical with those of primitive tribes. From time to time our masters inform us that chemicals once ruled taboo are actually harmless (such as dioxin), but such announcements are usually coupled with others that are named - and ruled - taboo.
We have, in other words, taboos that govern our social interactions, our right to observe (such as inequalities in individuals), our right to comment (such as 'politically correct' speech), our right to react (such as 'inappropriate laughter') and even our right to admire such (such as 'lookism'). Our right to move about freely in our native land is circumscribed; our right to physical safety is violated at an increasing tempo in every large city and we are denied the right to freely discuss the reasons - and the perpetuators. In every direction we see the benefits of civilization diminished and the number of taboos rising. How can societal problems be confronted if they cannot be freely discussed?
We have taboos against free discussion. We all know them. Nobody dare violate them lest their reputations be destroyed, their careers blighted - their persons attacked. This taboo and others have risen among us not only in this century, but in recent decades. The controlled conditions of college students, who are subject to all of these taboos under threat of being sent to re-education classes, or of being demoted, denounced, suspended or expelled, threatens to become the fate of our entire society as the rationales of Academe spread, through its graduates, to the professions and, finally, all our institutions.
That is why a fearful silence in all areas beyond technology prevails.
