Word: tabu
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...chance upon a bowl of plantains or beetle larvae or some such delicacy, had thanked his tutelar deity for the good fortune and had dined with gusto. But his gastronomic joy was short-lived. A few hours later, a horror stricken fellow tribesman informed him that he had violated tabu, that he had eaten of the dish destined for the alimentation of his holiness the king. The news struck he poor victim like a charge of the Four Horsemen. He turned pale. His knees shook. He seemed visibly to wither away. Shortly he sank to the ground, spasm after spasm...
Today the best example is birth control, though tomorrow it will be something else. At first the very mention of birth control was tabu. It violated the convention of secrecy shrouding all matters of sex and reproduction since time immemorial. I don't know that any one died from the shock; but emotional disturbance was common enough, and quite real. Most of us have passed beyond this stage today. In Massachusetts recently a candidate was defeated because the opposition called him a sexagenarian; but this, I take it, is exceptional. The idea of children by choice instead of chance...
...will come. The forces on the other side are the forces of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. They are the same forces that caused the poor savage of the Polynesian wilds to die of fright because he ate the king's food unwittingly. Are we to be ruled forever by tabu...