On taboos and heresy, here’s an essay worth reading:
“What you can’t Say”
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Years ago (approx 2004) I read this essay. At the time I framed it in the context of my (then) current lived experience as a young man living in NYC. Seemed so relevant then, but oh how trivial that time seems now.
Every 5 years or so I’d come back to it and at that present time, it seemed more prescient than ever. In a sense, the “looking back factor” is the nail that the essay ultimately hammers.
But it wasn’t until December 2020 that I dusted it off, re-read it, and realized that it hit every beat.
The below captioned quote sums it up:
“I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.”