Listen / Read
Last week I suggested that Morris sounded like a cross between David Dickinson and Johnny Ball. So to hear him embarking jauntily on the topic of Josef Fritzl tickled me pink.
‘Taboos’ were mentioned by David Winter recently and with their being mentioned again and compared to ‘abominations’, it has occurred to me that, in my mind at least, there might be some confusion about the meaning of the word. Winter discussed death as the last great taboo, by which he meant that it’s a subject we don’t like to discuss and a reality we’re don’t like to deal with. In the past sex in general was something of a taboo in that people didn’t talk openly about it. But people clearly still did it or we wouldn’t be here now. This is the meaning I’m personally more familiar with.
Incest isn’t something we like to talk about, but for the most part it’s not something we do. Unlike sex or dying, it’s a crime. Under no circumstances is incest seen as necessary or acceptable. That’s more than just a taboo, to my mind. Abomination does seem to come closer to describing what incest is to us. And there’s truth in the fact that, amongst Fritzl’s other crimes, incest is perceived as the superlatively abominable component. We, like most living creatures, are born and raised to borne and raise, so incest is the inversion of the basic human biological purpose. That’s why incest is taboo in this abominable sense. Our biological evolution depends on it being so.
And I don’t know or care what DJ Dickinballs went on to say. Something about dignity, something about the economy, and then he seemed to stop talking before he’d actually finished what he was saying. Something to be thankful for, I suppose.