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Thinking bad thoughts
S. Paul McNamara
I'm afraid I might be a homophobe. Maybe a racist, a metrophobe, and probably a misogynist. Why? Because I've been thinking taboo thoughts recently. They were accidental, but nonetheless, the thought police should be pulling up soon.
Think the thought police are only a problem if you live in Huxley's or Zamyatin's version of the future? Sorry, but you're wrong. Thought police are everywhere, except they don't have the ultra-futuristic uniforms with cool pull-down face shields we all expect. Instead, they're disguised as college professors, hucklepublicans, militant leftist youth, ardent young ultraconservatives, and sentiment-spewing gasbags on television. Each group has a list of thoughts and ideas that one is never, ever allowed to question or consider. If you do, it's treasonous to the cause.
George Orwell wrote about banned thoughts with remarkable prescience. In 1946 he said, “Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind. Because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought.”
Arriving at these taboos happens a lot. For example, I like sports cars with good lines. Historically, Italians build cars that look like girls in tight sweaters. I think Italians make the best cars. Right there—that's a taboo thought. Now I must be a racist.
Raising pious eyebrows and moralistic tempers here wouldn't be hard. The war on drugs hasn't really worked. More people ruin themselves with the bottle than the bong. Maybe we should consider decriminalizing some soft drugs. Oops, did it again
A few weeks ago every viable Democratic candidate for president spoke in support of gay marriage at a debate in Boston. Since this was a special “youth” debate, I got to see what's on the mind of my peers. They wanted to talk about gay rights and the like. After watching the debate, I got the idea that if I wasn't 100 percent in support of gay marriage as an equal to the nuclear family, I was being a homophobe. But I'm not a homophobe. And I'm not going to say that civil unions are the same as traditional marriages.
The Episcopalians just made Gene Robinson their first openly gay bishop. Look in the Bible and you'll see that's not exactly supposed to happen. But keep your mouth shut, because if you question it you're a homophobe too.
It would be nice to have the leeway to stick to my beliefs without getting classified as a racist or a homophobe or a pro-drug nut job, but I'm afraid that's impossible. That's the nature of taboo thoughts. There's no room for discussion, because you either have to accept them completely or reject them.
Education is full of banned thoughts. Textbook and test censors are the closest things we have to thought police today. They prevent terrible, degrading stereotypes like this: women as wives and mothers, men working, boys playing sports, women as more nurturing than men.
Notice something? What's taboo is what's traditional. So now it's taboo to praise women for raising children. If an Asian American worked hard in a laundry to send his kids to college, we couldn't talk about that either.
How is any child supposed to make it through public “education” with any idea of what's what, when they're beset by censors on all sides? They can't. Issues like race, gender roles and familial structure require free thought more than others, and they are the most censored and shunned topics.
Tradition as taboo is a venomous idea. Some things just work best traditionally. Most women I know could out-nurture me hands down, and I applaud them for it. But if things went pear-shaped, I know that I'd keep my cool a while longer than most of them. It's not just traditional; it's practical. Men and women compliment each other well, that's the way of it.
Like Orwell said, one taboo thought has a ripple effect on a mind. Limiting thought on one subject will necessarily spill over into censoring yourself on related topics. More ideas become forbidden daily, and it's just a matter of time until we have a serious problem on our hands.
My solution: Damn the thought police, whatever side they may be on. If someone tells you not to think something, ask why. Counter their forbidden ideas with one of your own; see how they like it. I'll bet they don't. Oh, and watch your back. The thought police have you in their sights, one way or another. |
