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

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Ho<strong>the</strong>ads 385ruminants like sheep, cattle, and goats, which can live off scraggly desertplants. In India, cattle are too precious to slaughter because <strong>the</strong>y areused for milk, manure, and pulling plows. Harris' <strong>the</strong>ory is as ingeniousas <strong>the</strong> rabbis' and far more plausible, though he admits that it can'texplain everything. Ancient tribes wandering <strong>the</strong> parched Judaean sandswere hardly in danger of squandering <strong>the</strong>ir resources by herding shrimpand oysters, and it is unclear why <strong>the</strong> inhabitants of a Polish shtetl or aBrooklyn neighborhood should obsess over <strong>the</strong> 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 <strong>the</strong>ir interests to<strong>the</strong> group, but on evolutionary grounds that is unlikely (as we shall seelater in <strong>the</strong> chapter). I take a more cynical view.In any group, <strong>the</strong> younger, poorer, and disenfranchised members maybe tempted to defect to o<strong>the</strong>r groups. The powerful, especially parents,have an interest in keeping <strong>the</strong>m in. People everywhere form alliances byeating toge<strong>the</strong>r, 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 <strong>the</strong> Jewish dietary laws. That suggests that <strong>the</strong>y areweapons to keep potential defectors in. First, <strong>the</strong>y make <strong>the</strong> merest preludeto cooperation with outsiders—breaking bread toge<strong>the</strong>r—an unmistakableact of defiance. Even better, <strong>the</strong>y exploit <strong>the</strong> psychology ofdisgust. Taboo foods are absent during <strong>the</strong> sensitive period for learningfood preferences, and that is enough to make children grow up to find<strong>the</strong>m disgusting. That deters <strong>the</strong>m from becoming intimate with <strong>the</strong>enemy ("He invited me over, but what will I do if <strong>the</strong>y serve . . . EEEEU-UUW"!!"). Indeed, <strong>the</strong> tactic is self-perpetuating because children grow upinto parents who don't feed <strong>the</strong> disgusting things to <strong>the</strong>ir children. Thepractical effects of food taboos have often been noticed. A familiar<strong>the</strong>me in novels about <strong>the</strong> immigrant experience is <strong>the</strong> protagonist's tormentover sampling taboo foods. Crossing <strong>the</strong> line offers a modicum ofintegration into <strong>the</strong> new world but provokes open conflict with parentsand community. (In Portnoy's Complaint, Alex describes his mo<strong>the</strong>r aspronouncing hamburger as if it were Hitler.) But since <strong>the</strong> elders have nodesire for <strong>the</strong> community to see <strong>the</strong> taboos in this light, <strong>the</strong>y cloak <strong>the</strong>min talmudic sophistry and bafflegab.

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