Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Hotheads 385ruminants like sheep, cattle, and goats, which can live off scraggly desertplants. In India, cattle are too precious to slaughter because they areused for milk, manure, and pulling plows. Harris' theory is as ingeniousas the rabbis' and far more plausible, though he admits that it can'texplain everything. Ancient tribes wandering the parched Judaean sandswere hardly in danger of squandering their resources by herding shrimpand oysters, and it is unclear why the inhabitants of a Polish shtetl or aBrooklyn neighborhood should obsess over the feeding habits of desertruminants.Food taboos are obviously an ethnic marker, but by itself that observationexplains nothing. Why do people wear ethnic badges to begin with,let alone a costly one like banning a source of nutrients? The social sciencesassume without question that people submerge their interests tothe group, but on evolutionary grounds that is unlikely (as we shall seelater in the chapter). I take a more cynical view.In any group, the younger, poorer, and disenfranchised members maybe tempted to defect to other groups. The powerful, especially parents,have an interest in keeping them in. People everywhere form alliances byeating together, from potlatches and feasts to business lunches anddates. If I can't eat with you, I can't become your friend. Food taboosoften prohibit a favorite food of a neighboring tribe; that is true, forexample, of many of the Jewish dietary laws. That suggests that they areweapons to keep potential defectors in. First, they make the merest preludeto cooperation with outsiders—breaking bread together—an unmistakableact of defiance. Even better, they exploit the psychology ofdisgust. Taboo foods are absent during the sensitive period for learningfood preferences, and that is enough to make children grow up to findthem disgusting. That deters them from becoming intimate with theenemy ("He invited me over, but what will I do if they serve . . . EEEEU-UUW"!!"). Indeed, the tactic is self-perpetuating because children grow upinto parents who don't feed the disgusting things to their children. Thepractical effects of food taboos have often been noticed. A familiartheme in novels about the immigrant experience is the protagonist's tormentover sampling taboo foods. Crossing the line offers a modicum ofintegration into the new world but provokes open conflict with parentsand community. (In Portnoy's Complaint, Alex describes his mother aspronouncing hamburger as if it were Hitler.) But since the elders have nodesire for the community to see the taboos in this light, they cloak themin talmudic sophistry and bafflegab.