To urgh is human
2004-08-09 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
archershipshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1265921,00.html
To urgh is human
Disgust is an adaptation for survival but what is the point of it now, asks Paul Bloom
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian
What, precisely, is so bad about sex between adult siblings, bestiality, and the eating of corpses? Most people insist such acts are morally wrong, but when psychologists ask why, the answers make little sense. For instance, people often say incestuous sex is immoral because it runs the risk of begetting a deformed child, but if this was their real reason, they should be happy if the siblings were to use birth control - and most people are not. One finds what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "moral dumbfounding", a gut feeling that something is wrong combined with an inability to explain why.
Haidt suggests we are dumbfounded because, despite what we might say to others and perhaps believe ourselves, our moral responses are not based on reason. They are instead rooted in revulsion: incest, bestiality and cannibalism disgust us, and our disgust gives rise to moral outrage.
Some see disgust as a reliable moral guide. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's commission on bioethics, wrote an article in 1997 called "the wisdom of repugnance" where he concedes that this revulsion is "not an argument", but then goes on to argue: "In some crucial cases, however, it is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond wisdom's power completely to articulate it." This conclusion has practical implications: Kass argues that the idea of human cloning is disgusting, and he sees this as good reason to ban it. Some from both sides of the political spectrum, would agree.
Disgust has humble origins. At root, it is a biological adaptation, warding us away from ingesting certain substances that could make us sick. This is why faeces, vomit, urine and rotten meat are universally disgusting; they contain harmful toxins. We react strongly to the idea of touching such substances and find the notion of eating them worse. This Darwinian perspective also explains why we see disgusting substances as contaminants - if some food makes even the slightest contact with rotting meat, for instance, it is no longer fit to eat. After all, the microrganisms that can harm us spread by contact, and so you not only should avoid disgusting things, you should avoid anything that the disgusting things make contact with. For these reasons, the psychologist Steven Pinker has described disgust as "intuitive microbiology".
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Some of our disgust is hard-wired, then. This does not mean babies experience disgust. They are immobile and it would be a cruel trick of evolution to have them lie in perpetual self-loathing, unable to escape their revolting bodily wastes. But when disgust first emerges in young children, it is a consequence of brain maturation, not early experience or cultural teaching.
Children are prepared to do some learning, because while some things are universally dangerous, others vary according to the environment. This is particularly the case for animal flesh, and so in the first few years of life, children monitor what adults around them eat and establish the boundaries of acceptable (and hence non-disgusting) foods. By the time one is an adult the disgust reactions are fairly locked in, and it is difficult for most adults to try new foods, particularly new meats. (Most readers of this piece, for instance, would be queasy at the idea of eating grubs, cockroaches or dogs.)
If disgust were limited to food, it would have little social relevance. But, as a perverse evolutionary accident, this emotion that evolved for our protection has turned on us - we can be disgusted by ourselves and others.
The history of disgust is an ugly one. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who is the main critic of a disgust-based morality, observes that "throughout history, certain disgust properties - sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness - have repeatedly and monotonously been associated with Jews, women, homosexuals, untouchables, lower-class people - all of those are imagined as tainted by the dirt of the body".
The Nazis evoked disgust by depicting Jews as vermin, as unclean and as engaging in filthy acts. Male homosexuals are an easy target here; Nussbaum points out that when she was involved in a trial concerning gay rights in Colorado, opponents of gay rights testified that gay men drank blood and ate faeces.
Disgust is not entirely sordid. It can be used as well to motivate a spiritual existence, by eliciting a negative reaction to our material bodies. St Augustine, for instance, was influenced by Cicero's vivid image of the Etruscan pirate's torture of prisoners by strapping a corpse to them, face to face. This, Augustine maintained, is the fate of the soul, chained to a physical body as one would be chained to a rotting corpse.
You cannot talk someone out of disgust. But it can be defeated by other emotions. After Stephen Fry outlines what he sees as the disgusting nature of sexual intimacy - "I would be greatly in the debt of the man who could tell me what would ever be appealing about those damp, dark, foul-smelling and revoltingly tufted areas of the body that constitute the main dishes in the banquet of love" - he notes that sexual arousal can override our civilised reticence: "Once under the influence of the drugs supplied by one's own body, there is no limit to the indignities, indecencies, and bestialities to which the most usually rational and graceful of us will sink."
Love can have a similar effect - consider a parent changing a child's diaper, or the Catholic depictions of saints cleaning the wounds of lepers.
Disgust can also fade as it begins, through association and imagery, through positive depictions of once-reviled objects. In the 1960s, most Americans and Europeans disapproved of interracial marriage, and revulsion at such couplings played no small role. This has changed considerably, as has the reaction to homosexual relationships. It is not abstract argument driving this change in cultural values; it is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight.
Does this conclusion go too far? Commenting on the sadistic abuse of Iraqi prisoners, George Bush expressed "deep disgust" and said the images made him sick to his stomach. This common reaction seems to be the right one; disgust is more apt than anger or dismay or even shame. In fact, disgust plays a double role here. Not only are the images of torture disgusting to those who view them - and their sexual nature plays no small role in this regard - but also part of the torture inflicted on the prisoners was their forced participation in acts they found revolting. Wouldn't the staunchest critic of disgust agree that here at least this emotion does tell us something about right and wrong?
Not necessarily. What was wrong about Abu Ghraib had to do with the suffering of the prisoners and the sadism of those who caused this suffering. It would have been just as wrong if there were no visual record. It also would have been worse if the prisoners had been shot dead. But news of simple murder does not usually prompt disgust, and would never have led to the same sort of moral outrage. Even in cases like these, we are better off without the distraction of disgust.
· Paul Bloom is professor of psychology at Yale University. To buy Descartes' Baby: How child development explains what makes us human (Heinemann, £20), for £17
To urgh is human
Disgust is an adaptation for survival but what is the point of it now, asks Paul Bloom
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian
What, precisely, is so bad about sex between adult siblings, bestiality, and the eating of corpses? Most people insist such acts are morally wrong, but when psychologists ask why, the answers make little sense. For instance, people often say incestuous sex is immoral because it runs the risk of begetting a deformed child, but if this was their real reason, they should be happy if the siblings were to use birth control - and most people are not. One finds what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "moral dumbfounding", a gut feeling that something is wrong combined with an inability to explain why.
Haidt suggests we are dumbfounded because, despite what we might say to others and perhaps believe ourselves, our moral responses are not based on reason. They are instead rooted in revulsion: incest, bestiality and cannibalism disgust us, and our disgust gives rise to moral outrage.
Some see disgust as a reliable moral guide. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's commission on bioethics, wrote an article in 1997 called "the wisdom of repugnance" where he concedes that this revulsion is "not an argument", but then goes on to argue: "In some crucial cases, however, it is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond wisdom's power completely to articulate it." This conclusion has practical implications: Kass argues that the idea of human cloning is disgusting, and he sees this as good reason to ban it. Some from both sides of the political spectrum, would agree.
Disgust has humble origins. At root, it is a biological adaptation, warding us away from ingesting certain substances that could make us sick. This is why faeces, vomit, urine and rotten meat are universally disgusting; they contain harmful toxins. We react strongly to the idea of touching such substances and find the notion of eating them worse. This Darwinian perspective also explains why we see disgusting substances as contaminants - if some food makes even the slightest contact with rotting meat, for instance, it is no longer fit to eat. After all, the microrganisms that can harm us spread by contact, and so you not only should avoid disgusting things, you should avoid anything that the disgusting things make contact with. For these reasons, the psychologist Steven Pinker has described disgust as "intuitive microbiology".
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Volunteer Internationally
Experience a country from a whole new perspective by signing...
crossculturalsolutions.org
Volunteer in 24 Countries Worldwide
Volunteer travel and TEFL training. Projects in...
hypertracker.com
Borgen Project
Join the movement to make poverty, famine and other global...
borgenproject.org
Some of our disgust is hard-wired, then. This does not mean babies experience disgust. They are immobile and it would be a cruel trick of evolution to have them lie in perpetual self-loathing, unable to escape their revolting bodily wastes. But when disgust first emerges in young children, it is a consequence of brain maturation, not early experience or cultural teaching.
Children are prepared to do some learning, because while some things are universally dangerous, others vary according to the environment. This is particularly the case for animal flesh, and so in the first few years of life, children monitor what adults around them eat and establish the boundaries of acceptable (and hence non-disgusting) foods. By the time one is an adult the disgust reactions are fairly locked in, and it is difficult for most adults to try new foods, particularly new meats. (Most readers of this piece, for instance, would be queasy at the idea of eating grubs, cockroaches or dogs.)
If disgust were limited to food, it would have little social relevance. But, as a perverse evolutionary accident, this emotion that evolved for our protection has turned on us - we can be disgusted by ourselves and others.
The history of disgust is an ugly one. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who is the main critic of a disgust-based morality, observes that "throughout history, certain disgust properties - sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness - have repeatedly and monotonously been associated with Jews, women, homosexuals, untouchables, lower-class people - all of those are imagined as tainted by the dirt of the body".
The Nazis evoked disgust by depicting Jews as vermin, as unclean and as engaging in filthy acts. Male homosexuals are an easy target here; Nussbaum points out that when she was involved in a trial concerning gay rights in Colorado, opponents of gay rights testified that gay men drank blood and ate faeces.
Disgust is not entirely sordid. It can be used as well to motivate a spiritual existence, by eliciting a negative reaction to our material bodies. St Augustine, for instance, was influenced by Cicero's vivid image of the Etruscan pirate's torture of prisoners by strapping a corpse to them, face to face. This, Augustine maintained, is the fate of the soul, chained to a physical body as one would be chained to a rotting corpse.
You cannot talk someone out of disgust. But it can be defeated by other emotions. After Stephen Fry outlines what he sees as the disgusting nature of sexual intimacy - "I would be greatly in the debt of the man who could tell me what would ever be appealing about those damp, dark, foul-smelling and revoltingly tufted areas of the body that constitute the main dishes in the banquet of love" - he notes that sexual arousal can override our civilised reticence: "Once under the influence of the drugs supplied by one's own body, there is no limit to the indignities, indecencies, and bestialities to which the most usually rational and graceful of us will sink."
Love can have a similar effect - consider a parent changing a child's diaper, or the Catholic depictions of saints cleaning the wounds of lepers.
Disgust can also fade as it begins, through association and imagery, through positive depictions of once-reviled objects. In the 1960s, most Americans and Europeans disapproved of interracial marriage, and revulsion at such couplings played no small role. This has changed considerably, as has the reaction to homosexual relationships. It is not abstract argument driving this change in cultural values; it is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight.
Does this conclusion go too far? Commenting on the sadistic abuse of Iraqi prisoners, George Bush expressed "deep disgust" and said the images made him sick to his stomach. This common reaction seems to be the right one; disgust is more apt than anger or dismay or even shame. In fact, disgust plays a double role here. Not only are the images of torture disgusting to those who view them - and their sexual nature plays no small role in this regard - but also part of the torture inflicted on the prisoners was their forced participation in acts they found revolting. Wouldn't the staunchest critic of disgust agree that here at least this emotion does tell us something about right and wrong?
Not necessarily. What was wrong about Abu Ghraib had to do with the suffering of the prisoners and the sadism of those who caused this suffering. It would have been just as wrong if there were no visual record. It also would have been worse if the prisoners had been shot dead. But news of simple murder does not usually prompt disgust, and would never have led to the same sort of moral outrage. Even in cases like these, we are better off without the distraction of disgust.
· Paul Bloom is professor of psychology at Yale University. To buy Descartes' Baby: How child development explains what makes us human (Heinemann, £20), for £17
no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 04:06 pm (UTC)Anyway, I have lots of random comments about this post.
This is why faeces, vomit, urine and rotten meat are universally disgusting; they contain harmful toxins.
Urine is sterile. Being able to drink your own urine can save your life in an emergency situation where you would otherwise die of dehydration.
Regarding rotten meat, this doesn't explain why we eat other fermented foods, such as wine and cheese. We even eat cheese with mold on it! And in some South American countries the meat gets moldy before it is eaten.
when disgust first emerges in young children, it is a consequence of brain maturation, not early experience or cultural teaching
Based on the fact that many toddlers enjoy playing with their feces, I have to question this notion. Are some toddlers simply more mature than others?
By the time one is an adult the disgust reactions are fairly locked in, and it is difficult for most adults to try new foods, particularly new meats
I try new foods all the time, but not new meats. I've often wondered why meats are particularly revolting, but not vegetables or fruits.
The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight
Exactly.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 06:40 pm (UTC)I'm not saying that sex is not a necessity but I will surely die of hunger before I die from being sexless.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-11 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-11 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 09:22 pm (UTC)Spend a few days on a farm and I'm sure your eyes would be opened to what many people call 'unnatural acts.'
no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 11:57 pm (UTC)I just wonder if the unnatural part of what society is disturbed about is the interspecies aspect or to conveniently find sex with another species rather than to interact with a human.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 08:05 pm (UTC)Several customers I have encountered enjoy eating their own shit. I wonder what that's about.
xoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
P.S. They generally report that it tastes a lot like liver. The shit, I mean.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 09:33 pm (UTC)... The thought of that disgusts me.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:00 pm (UTC)---
Several customers I have encountered enjoy eating their own shit. I wonder what that's about.
Some people will be born without a strong disgust response, just as some people are born retarded or without arms or legs. Or perhaps it's overwhelmed by associating it with sex. After all, if you saw Otto's cock in an anonymous lineup (before you knew him), I would bet you would be repulsed by it. But now that it's associated with someone you love, you regard it with affection (or at least, not disgust).
no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 09:16 pm (UTC)This looks like just another example of why negitave motivation, or aversion tactics tend to hurt more than help. Why not advocate moving tward the positive rather than away from a negitive? When people move away from an idea or experince it propels them in an unguided direction, perhaps to an even greater evil. Hence all the runaways who end up in worse conditions than what they ran away from. But to strive tward somthing seems to bring out the best in people, and with a minimum of injustice twards ourselves, and others.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 01:49 am (UTC)And furthermore
Date: 2004-08-10 08:14 am (UTC)Re: And furthermore
Date: 2004-08-10 07:08 pm (UTC)I don't think legalization would necessarily reduce demand for child porn. After all, the legal porn industry appears to enjoy a healthy demand, even though it is readily, and legally available.
Re: And furthermore
Date: 2004-08-11 08:20 am (UTC)Re: And furthermore
Date: 2004-08-25 11:09 pm (UTC)Some cases of child sexual assault have involved newborn babies, incapable of even comprehending what is done to them. In a sense, if they aren't physically harmed, there's no real psychological or emotional damage. Except the issue of an adult using a child for sexual gratification.
There are definitely gray areas... Is it child porn if two teenagers videotape themselves having sex? Such cases have occured, and usually charges are dismissed if both teens were consenting and under age. But possession of the videotape would still constitute child pornography.
Russia has a thriving child pornography market. After the collapse, people turned to whatever could generate them money. Time (or newsweek, can't recall) had an article about a Russian man with a young boy he'd adopted. THe boy was basically a prostitute, but the arrangement was actually satisfactory to both the boy and the man since it meant they had a place to live, food, etc... Somewhat disturbing.
I think you'll find the social taboos about child sex are strongest. Incest is not even illegal in parts of the US and other countries. Bestiality, while illegal in many cases, generally doesn't enflame moral outrage as child porn does. Would I want to kill someone who tried to have sex with my cat? Probably not. Would I want to kill someone who molested my daughter? Yes, and I might even do it depending on the circumstances...
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 01:54 pm (UTC)