Taboo Series Quotes

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...

Life is a series of urgent choices demanding firm commitment to this or to that.

The part of our being (mentality, feeling, physicality) which is free of all control let's call our 'unconscious'. Since it's free of control, it's our only defense against institutionalized meaning, institutionalized language, control, fixation, judgement, prison. Ten years ago, it seemed possible to destroy language through language: to destroy language that normalizes and controls by cutting that language. Nonsense would attack the empire-making (empirical) empire of language, the prisons of meaning. But this nonsense, since it depended on sense, simply pointed back to the normalizing institutions. What is the language of the 'unconcious'? (If this ideal unconscious or freedom doesn't exist: simply pretend that it does, use fiction, for the sake of survival, for all of our survival.) Its primary language must be taboo, all that is forbidden. Thus an attack on the institutions of prison via language would demand the use of language or languages that are which aren't acceptable, which are forbidden. Language, on one level, constitutes a series of codes and social and historical agreements. Nonsense doesn't per se break down the codes; speaking precisely that which the codes forbid breaks the codes.

This is all your life is, just a series of bad pain days over and over and over again. What is the point? How will you be able to do this for another ten years? Why would anyone ever want to spend their life with you if this is how it is? How would you ever be able to start a family if you wanted one? What is the point of your life? Why do you even exist if you’re just going to be in pain all the time? People are tired of hearing you complain about it. It’s endless. It’s all you talk about. It’s all you are.

Robert Underwood Johnson, should advocate “dignity, moderation and purity of expression” and oppose “vulgarity, sensationalism, meretriciousness, lubricity and other forms of degeneracy.” The academy should also resist “the tyranny of novelty,” said Johnson, and consider drawing up “well considered lists of words or meanings taboo.” Academicians inveighed against “polyglot corrupters” of Anglo-Saxon English, and insisted that fiction uplift coarse and sordid people, not describe them.

The apostle of interracial justice among highly prejudiced fellow citizens resembles in many ways the missionary conversing with a foreign people bound by ancient tribal customs and taboos. Direct assault will not dislodge the fetishes. The idols will bow out only when people have become sufficiently enlightened to wish to remove them of themselves.

By the time I'm done she'll have so much cum falling out of her you could use her as a condiment.

Hindu treatise on the art of government, the Arthashastra, lays down the rules of policy for the complete tyrant, describing the organization of his palace, his court, and his state in such fashion as to make Machiavelli seem a liberal. The first rule is that he must trust no one, and be without a single intimate friend. Beyond this, he must organize his government as a series of concentric circles composed of the various ministers, generals, officers, secretaries, and servants who execute his orders, every circle constituting a degree of rank leading up to the king himself at the center—like a spider in its web. Beginning with the circle immediately surrounding the king, the circles must consist alternately of his natural enemies and his natural friends. Because the very highest rank of princes will be plotting to seize the king’s power, they must be surrounded and watched by a circle of ministers eager to gain the king’s favor—and this hierarchy of mutually mistrusting circles must go all the way out to the fringe of the web. Divide et impera—divide and rule. Meanwhile, the king remains in the safety of his inmost apartments, attended by guards who are in turn watched by other guards hidden in the walls. Slaves taste his food for poison, and he must sleep either with one eye open or with his door firmly locked on the inside. In case of a serious revolution, there must be a secret, underground passage giving him escape from the center—a passage containing a lever which will unsettle the keystone of the building and bring it crashing down upon his rebellious court. The Arthashastra does not forget to warn the tyrant that he can never win. He may rise to eminence through ambition or the call of duty, but the more absolute his power, the more he is hated, and the more he is the prisoner of his own trap. The web catches the spider. He cannot wander at leisure in the streets and parks of his own capital, or sit on a lonely beach listening to the waves and watching the gulls. Through enslaving others he himself becomes the most miserable of slaves.

The only perv that is going to hit on my little girl is me!

The concept of the "state of nature" or the concept of the "social contract" are metaphysical hypotheses of political philosophers that have never existed in real social history. In the real historical process, it is neither the "sovereign" nor the "people" who assume the role of "God" in the structure of "crime and punishment". It is "society" or "culture". It is "society" or "culture" that really plays the role of God in modern society, for they set the rules of crime and punishment to which people in modern society are subjected by a kind of supra-personal power. It is in the two objects of "society" and "culture", which can be analyzed scientifically, that the "basic forms of religious life" play their role, and it is no longer political philosophy but religious philosophy that lays the foundation for crime and punishment. As a result, the "sin" of crime, though not "original sin" (in religion), is a violation of the common cultural and moral feeling of a particular society (offense), and when this moral feeling is turned into a clear rule, this violation becomes a crime in the legal sense. Therefore, "crime" is not an objective existence, but a specific social culture of a class of intolerable behavior of the class, with a series of taboos or norms constructed by the existence.

The single most important text in the authorship debate is the First Folio, the authoritative collection of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623, seven years after the Stratford man’s death. Until then, only half of the plays had been published, in individual, pamphlet-like editions called quartos. The Folio collected all thirty-six plays, half of which might have otherwise been lost, and set up Shakespeare as a figure of cultural prestige, hailing him in a series of prefatory pages as the triumph of Britain—a poet “not of an age but for all time!” Scholars argue that this praise of Shakespeare in the First Folio, seven years after his death, confirms the Stratford man’s authorship.

In the Hawaiian paradise called Kalana i Hau-ola, there grew the Ulu kapu a Kāne, the forbidden bread-fruit tree, and the ‘Ōhi‘a Hemolele, the sacred apple-tree. The ancient priests believed that the trouble and death of the first man and woman were connected to these trees. This was apparently corrupted over time by the Marquesans to necessitate human sacrifice. A Marquesan sacrificial chant frequently alludes to the “red apples eaten in Naoau,” and to the “tabooed apples of Atea,” as the cause of death, wars, pestilence, famine, and other calamities. The chant also says that “these can only be atoned for by human sacrifice.

To consolidate his power, Pa‘ao instituted human sacrifices and changed the Hawaiians’ religious rituals. He built the first luakini (human sacrifice) heiau (temple) on the Big Island (Hawai‘i) at Waha‘ula.5 Fornander wrote that “…there was a time before that, when human sacrifices were not only not of common occurrence, and an established rule, but were absolutely prohibited. Kapu ke kanaka na Kāne, ‘sacred is the man to Kāne’…”6 Pa‘ao instituted the oppressive kapu (tapu or taboo) system and the worship of elemental spirit gods such as Pele. Fornander says that Pele worship in Hawai‘i is only subsequent to this migratory period. The Pele cult was unknown to the purer faith of the older inhabitants and her name does not even appear in the creation accounts.

For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, ‘Now, I’ve arrived!’ Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.” ― Alan Watts ― The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Let us turn now to a study of a small Newfoundland fishing village. Fishing is, in England at any rate – more hazardous even than mining. Cat Harbour, a community in Newfoundland, is very complex. Its social relationships occur in terms of a densely elaborate series of interrelated conceptual universes one important consequence of which is that virtually all permanent members of the community are kin, ‘cunny kin’, or economic associates of all other of the 285 permanent members. The primary activity of the community is cod fishing. Salmon, lobster, and squid provide additional sources of revenue. Woodcutting is necessary in off-seasons. Domestic gardening, and stints in lumber camps when money is needed, are the two other profitable activities. The community's religion is reactionary. Women assume the main roles in the operation though not the government of the churches in the town. A complicated system of ‘jinking’ – curses, magic, and witchcraft – governs and modulates social relationships. Successful cod fishing in the area depends upon highly developed skills of navigation, knowledge of fish movements, and familiarity with local nautical conditions. Lore is passed down by word of mouth, and literacy among older fishermen is not universal by any means. ‘Stranger’ males cannot easily assume dominant positions in the fishing systems and may only hire on for salary or percentage. Because women in the community are not paid for their labour, there has been a pattern of female migration out of the area. Significantly, two thirds of the wives in the community are from outside the area. This has a predictable effect on the community's concept of ‘the feminine’. An elaborate anti-female symbolism is woven into the fabric of male communal life, e.g. strong boats are male and older leaky ones are female. Women ‘are regarded as polluting “on the water” and the more traditional men would not consider going out if a woman had set foot in the boat that day – they are “jinker” (i.e., a jinx), even unwittingly'. (It is not only relatively unsophisticated workers such as those fishermen who insist on sexual purity. The very skilled technicians drilling for natural gas in the North Sea affirm the same taboo: women are not permitted on their drilling platform rigs.) It would be, however, a rare Cat Harbour woman who would consider such an act, for they are aware of their structural position in the outport society and the cognition surrounding their sex….Cat Harbour is a male-dominated society….Only men can normally inherit property, or smoke or drink, and the increasingly frequent breach of this by women is the source of much gossip (and not a negligible amount of conflict and resentment). Men are seated first at meals and eat together – women and children eating afterwards. Men are given the choicest and largest portions, and sit at the same table with a ‘stranger’ or guest. Women work extremely demanding and long hours, ‘especially during the fishing season, for not only do they have to fix up to 5 to 6 meals each day for the fishermen, but do all their household chores, mind the children and help “put away fish”. They seldom have time to visit extensively, usually only a few minutes to and from the shop or Post Office….Men on the other hand, spend each evening arguing, gossiping, and “telling cuffers”, in the shop, and have numerous “blows” (i.e., breaks) during the day.’ Pre-adolescents are separated on sexual lines. Boys play exclusively male games and identify strongly with fathers or older brothers. Girls perform light women's work, though Faris indicates '. . . often openly aspire to be male and do male things. By this time they can clearly see the privileged position of the Cat Harbour male….’. Girls are advised not to marry a fisherman, and are encouraged to leave the community if they wish to avoid a hard life. Boys are told it is better to leave Cat Harbour than become fishermen....

Sex is so profound that it underpins politics, economics and psychological well-being. Sex belongs to the dimension of revolution. Any new society must have a revolutionary approach to sex. Sexual liberation is toxic to authoritarian systems. It is no accident that all dictatorships are sexually repressive. It is no accident that the authoritarian, patriarchal Abrahamic religions despise and fear sex. The elite control the sexual space and through that they control you. A free society is sexually free – not just in name but in deed. One of the primary aims of any healthy society should be to promote the highest quality sex, and to remove all of the restrictions and taboos that are imposed on it.

But this does not mean that the transition from our present to a convivial mode of production can be accomplished without serious threats to the survival of many people. At present the relationship between people and their tools is suicidally distorted. The survival of Pakistanis depends on Canadian grain, and the survival of New Yorkers on world-wide exploitation of natural resources. The birth pangs of a convivial world society will inevitably be violently painful for hungry Indians and for helpless New Yorkers. I will later argue that the transition from the present mode of production, which is Overwhelmingly industrial, toward conviviality may start suddenly. But for the sake of the survival of many people it will be Tools for Conviviality Page 7 Document developed using Purpledesirable that the transition does not happen all at once. I argue that survival in justice is possible only at the cost of those sacrifices implicit in the adoption of a convivial mode of production and the universal renunciation of unlimited progeny, affluence, and power on the part of both individuals and groups. This price cannot be extorted by some despotic Leviathan, nor elicited by social engineering. People will rediscover the value of joyful sobriety and liberating austerity only if they relearn to depend on each other rather than on energy slaves. The price for a convivial society will be paid only as the result of a political process which reflects and promotes the society-wide inversion of present industrial consciousness. This political process will find its concrete expression not in some taboo, but in a series of temporary agreements on one or the other concrete limitation of means, constantly adjusted under the pressure of conflicting insights and interests.