Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Taboo, censoring and the human brain 251
attitudes, exploit such fears to extend their power base among the populus.
The crusading Religious Right administration of US President George
W. Bush censors news about so-called terrorist actions and, in the name of
freedom, denies human rights to people in the prison camp at Guantanamo
Bay and other institutions; it is strongly backed by the Australian government
(also controlled by the Religious Right) which, while loudly propagating
a fair go for all, holds asylum seekers in Australian prisons indefinitely
without trial. As we write, these repressive measures are directed against
perceived foes in the manner reminiscent of the authorities in Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-four. 36 But the cancer of oppression, and the attendant
censorship, is spreading into our communities. The power base of the
crusading Religious Right has led television networks in the United States
to ban films such as Saving Private Ryan because soldiers in it use the kind
of language that soldiers are wont to use; the networks have even banned an
advert from a church that explicitly welcomes gays and lesbians because the
government and its supporters believe such people to be irredeemable
sinners. It is the same kind of intolerance that fired the Salem witch trials
of 1692 and McCarthyism in the early 1950s. Old taboos are applied to new
demons, and hate and fear are whipped up to the detriment of everyone
except those wielding power.
Other fear-based taboos seem more benign by comparison. We tend to
despise those body parts, bodily functions, acts and actions that remind us that
we are part of nature. We live within a fragile temporal frame, and disease and
death are natural processes. Our minds dream of immortality, but we are at the
same time painfully aware of the inevitable extinction of both body and
consciousness. 37 In an attempt to cope with this dilemma, and perhaps even
to overcome it, we have created religion and philosophy, science and medicine;
and we have screened off the calls of nature with taboos and prohibitions.
It helps us disregard our natural mortal condition. Nonetheless, we
should not ignore Jonathan Swift’s warning against immortality: on the island
of Luggnagg, Lemuel Gulliver learns of the immortal Struldbrugs. He fancies
that they must have the opportunity to accumulate vast wealth and extensive
learning, and so wield great power. He is disabused by learning that the
Struldbrugs keep on aging and growing more decrepit so that, from the age
of eighty, they are no longer allowed property or other legal and civil rights.
They lead an utterly dismal existence and envy the escape that death brings to
mortals. 38 Surely the Dean of St Patrick’s was absolutely right: immortality
would be hell on earth.
Taboos will persist, even when people are unaware of reasons that might
have led to their establishment. We know that the repulsion we feel for bodily
effluvia is not instinctive, because children and animals do not find them so