The most important thing to know about taboos is that they are not logical.

In a way, it’s kind of amazing that the human brain can be programmed by society to react with outrage and disgust at literally anything. Anything at all.

For example, in North America and most of Europe, a woman’s bare breasts are taboo. We, as a society, have deemed the female breast to be inherently sexual in nature (even though they are meant for infants) and therefore to bare them in public is both socially scandalous and against the law.

Even though men can walk around with bare chests with no problem. That’s how arbitrary ridiculous (and sexist) this taboo is.

But there are parts of the world where the female breasts is not taboo. Ironically, these are often the same places where a woman’s FACE is taboo.

That might seem ridiculous to us, but is our aversion to breasts any more reasonable? A woman from that culture would be as embarrassed to have her face bare in public as a woman from our culture would be to have her breasts bare in public.

It’s all so arbitrary and meaningless. There is nothing inherently wrong or dirty or inappropriate about women’s breasts OR faces.

It’s all just rules we made up at some point.

And yeah, taboo is incredibly powerful. Once that part of our mind is programmed to see something that way, it’s incredibly hard to change.

And people will vociferously and with great passion (and possible violence) their ingrained taboos, and insists that they are logical and rational because some things are just “obviously” wrong.

Take interracial marriage. People used to think that was tantamount to bestiality. And based on that, they defended anti-miscegenation like their lives depended on it.

They called it “obviously wrong” and “unnatural” and against God’s will and all the other logic free bullshit that people come up with when they believe something strongly that they know cannot be justified logically whatsoever.

Yet somehow, we got over it. The races mix freely and nobody bats an eye except for a few old reactionaries.

And even they only talk about it in private.

And we could get over this aversion to interracial marriage precisely because there was no rational, sensible, believable justification for it. The arguments against it were pathetically absurd and so obviously went against the basic morality of equality and freedom that our society is built on that they could not stand.

Now imagine if that revolution never happened. What if interracial marriage was still as taboo today What would the internet look like?

Anyone who dared to suggest that there might be circumstance in which at least interracial sex was okay would get angrily shouted down, vilified, flamed, doxxed, possibly lose their job and their marriage, and might even be killed.

And the people doing all this would be just as convinced they are right for reasons that are “obvious” as anyone defending a modern taboo (like the female breast) would be.

All the evidence they would need is that thinking about it upsets and disgusts them, even those they only feel that way because of the taboo.

As far as they are concerned, the taboo justifies itself. Any sexual or romantic contact between people of different races is obviously and patently wrong, disgusting, immoral, and revolting to any right-minded person.

Imagine how hard it would be to stick up for interracial marriage in such a society. It wouldn’t matter what is right or wrong. All that matters is that sticking up for what we know to be right could absolutely destroy your life in a matter of minutes.

Makes you wonder how many of our modern taboos are similarly irrational.

More after the break.

Still not normal

Well, I still have no idea WTF is up with my urinary system.

I mean, I’m not bleeding and there’s almost no pain when I pee.(just the tiniest twinge), but all day my urine was coming out the color of apple cider vinegar.

What the hell is the “MOTHER”?

You know, it’s kinda funny how we’re in an age where products have to tout their total lack of preparation.

“Raw! Unfiltered! Unpasteurized! Untested! Unstable! Uncertain it’s really made of apples! Unhinged! Unhealthy! Unable to control the trembling! Uncertain! Unclear! Under house arrest for that thing with the kid! This isn’t even a real bottle! WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS!”

You know…. healthy.

Damn, I’m funny.

Anyhow, my urine has gone back to its traditional “weak lemonade” color now, so IO guess there was just blood and/or other gunk left in the pipeline from last night’s lovely encounter with exsanguination.

As you can imagine, last night’s “uh oh” has me a tad spooked. I mean, I know it’s nothing serious. They did enough tests to establish that. And the fact that it cleared up on its own with no antibiotics testifies to that.

The ER doctor (I swear, they’re all start looking alike to me^[1]) said that everything looked good and they will just await the result of the urine cultures and contact me if anything untoward comes up.

You can’t rush those. Bacteria et al reproduce at their own rate and so you have to wait for them to do their thing.

So much for TV show science. 🙂 On CSU they would get that shit back in an hour.

A part of me is a little pissed off that this weird and disturbing thing happened (peeing blood) and we still have no idea why, but meh.

I am just glad to be home and healthy. Ish.

I’m just glad to be home and back to my baseline level of sickness.

Now I can relax, kick back, burn my brain with video games, and await the next flurry of medical appointments and/or catastrophes.

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.