You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (4 page)
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Authors: Robert Arthur
G
IVE
M
E
S
OME
S
KIN
Mexico City, fifteenth century A.D....
Nervous anticipation prickles as you watch the ceremony with the other successful Aztec warriors. Poyec, your first captive, is next in the procession. Ignoring the blood seeping past his feet, he steadily climbs the steep stone steps of the temple to Huitzilopochtli singing loudly the songs of his city, “Already here I go: you will speak of me there in my home land . . .”
After the lengthy ascent under the blazing Mexican sun, Poyec’s body shines as the priests stretch it over the altar. His placid visage warps momentarily as the flint knife swiftly saws beneath his sternum. But not a sound departs from his mouth, even as the head priest rips his heart from its soupy moorings and holds the trembling, gurgling muscle up for the Fifth Sun to consume.
As the “most precious water” floods the chasm in Poyec’s yawning chest his eyes watch the sky. Through this Flowery Death he is now an Eagle Man and his spirit’s eight-day journey to the warriors’ paradise in the Sun has begun. As your captive, your “beloved son,” Poyec has honored you with his stoic exit. His heartless cadaver, left earthbound, is tossed down the temple steps and will be honored further . . .
Later that day a solemn dinner at your home ends. Your extended family had a simple meal featuring Poyec’s flesh. It was a tearful affair. Although you have brought status to your family, they, like all Aztecs, openly recognize that it is only a period of time before
their
warriors will die the glorious Flowery Death on the battlefield or the killing stone.
You depart when Poyec’s skin is delivered. As you pull on his husk, “the container of all that is human,” its moist interior sticks to your surface. You work it until it stretches and slides into place. As your father ties Poyec’s face around your own, you feel almost as alive as when you grappled with its owner.
In your new suit you will go door to door throughout the neighborhood begging. This ritual allows the citizenry to give you gifts. At homes with infants, you will take them in your arms and perform a brief ceremony to bless them. The night’s celebrations will also involve you and other successful warriors dancing with your captives’ skinned heads.
Although most of the rituals surrounding your taking of a prisoner of war have been completed, for the next twenty days you will continue to wear Poyec’s skin as it rots, hardens, and cracks. Only after twenty days will you remove the putrid and foul casing, or what remains, and be born anew. Through this you will learn the process of death.
1
A
ZTEC
S
ACRIFICE
F
OOD
F
OR
T
HOUGHT
An expert on Aztec demography estimated that the Aztecs sacrificed 250,000 people a year, or roughly one percent of the population.
2
,
3
In one famous 1487 sacrifice, the dedication of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), possibly 20,000 people were sacrificed.
4
Only the observances of three of the eighteen holidays/months in the Aztec calendar did not involve human sacrifices.
The opening passage describes the “Feast of the Flaying of Men” ceremony that occurred in the Aztecs’ second month. The most common type of Aztec sacrifice was portrayed, that is, a captured enemy warrior having his heart removed. However, the
Aztecs not only sacrificed enemy warriors. They also sacrificed slaves, criminals, and innocent Aztec women, children, and infants.
The Aztecs used an array of sacrificial methods that included beheading, slitting the neck, drowning, death by arrows, entombment, starvation, hurling from heights, strangulation, burning, and combinations thereof. For example, one ceremony required that a newlywed couple be thrown into a fire and burned alive, but before they died they were pulled out and had their hearts removed. As shown in the opening narrative, the Aztecs were also creative in their use of the carcasses.
Today these gory practices appear cruel and irrational. Sacrificing innocent people to satisfy bloodthirsty gods? Waging wars on neighboring nations solely for the purpose of capturing prisoners to sacrifice? Cannibalism? However, every cultural practice must be examined in context. Fortunately for its later inhabitants, Eurasia’s early societies did not hunt their large herbivores, such as cattle, sheep, and pigs, into extinction before domesticating them. This was not the case in the Mexican region settled by the Aztecs.
Lower-class Aztecs had to survive as almost strict vegetarians. Modern-day vegetarians can get all their nutritional requirements from the vast selection of produce available to them, but the Aztecs were in a more precarious situation. They were frequently short of essential nutrients, particularly during famines.
5
According to the Aztec religion, catastrophes like famine were a sign of the gods’ disapproval and therefore more sacrifices than normal were necessary to bring back the gods’ favor. Appeased gods would then provide for them through the sun, earth, and rain. Ironically, the sacrifices themselves were a “godsend,” cutting down on the mouths to feed while simultaneously providing needed proteins and fats to the remaining population. In this context, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and the religious system supporting them assisted the Aztecs’ survival.
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The Aztecs Hernando Cortés ruthlessly conquered for Spain in the sixteenth century were probably ignorant about the economic function of their religious rites. Despite this, the Aztecs did not question the bloodshed—being sacrificed in a Flowery Death was a high honor. To them it was rational. The Aztecs provided for the gods so that the gods provided for the Aztecs.
As the narrator, Mixtli, explains to the appalled Spanish friars in the historical novel
Aztec
:
So, yes, we slew countless [people] . . . But try to look at it as we did . . . Not one man gave up more than his own one life. Each man of those thousands died only the once, which he would have done anyway, in time. And dying thus, he died in the noblest way and for the noblest reason we knew . . . it seems there is a similar belief among Christians. That no man can manifest greater love than to surrender his life for his friends.
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D
EFINITION OF
T
ABOO
S
HUT
U
P
If an Aztec questioned her religion’s rites she would probably have been severely punished. Religion was, and continues to be, taboo. A taboo is a topic that a culture prevents its people from discussing freely. The population has been subtly taught from birth that the prevailing view on the subject is natural, unquestionable, and correct.
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Taboo
can also refer to the thing or action suppressed.
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Widespread ignorance is characteristic of taboos. Often the rules of the taboo have been ingrained at such a young age, sometimes before the baby learns how to talk, that its reasoning is never explained. When the child grows up the taboo seems natural and is never critically examined.
People are not exposed to arguments challenging a taboo, and if they are, they are presented unfairly so they can easily be lampooned. Accurate information supporting opposing views is difficult to find, so that even those with the moxie to do independent research cannot get the whole picture. For example, it is unlikely the Aztecs ever tested whether droughts ended more quickly with or without sacrifices.
A second characteristic of taboos is that broaching them unsettles people. The mere mention of a taboo can make people nervous. Violating weak taboos elicits nervous laughter, light ridicule, and comments like “inappropriate,” “disgusting,” “infantile,” “gross,” and “immature.” Violating stronger taboos elicits anger, violence, and comments like “sick,” “offensive,” “vulgar,” and “immoral.”
CANNIBALISM
My Nipples Look Forward to Your Stomach
Not all views protected by taboos are irrational. For example, cannibalism is a modern taboo that is arguably rational, because unlike the Aztecs we easily have enough food to avoid a practice that could encourage murder. However, even if all taboos were logical, we would still be better off without them because free and open debate can improve rational policies as well as irrational ones.
For example, human meat is said to taste delicious—similar, but superior, to pork. Should it be unlawful to eat the meat of people who died naturally or accidentally? If Ms. X offered money to Mr. Y for the right to eat him upon his natural death and he agreed, would both parties not be happier?
If this sounds fantastic, consider the case of Armin Meiwes. In 2004, the German Meiwes ate and killed Bernd-Jürgen Brandes at Brandes’ request. Brandes was a successful forty-three-year-old corporate manager and this fulfilled his sexual fantasy. A Brandes e-mail read, “My nipples look forward to your stomach,” and prior to Brandes’ death both men ate Brandes’ sautéed penis.
The German courts grappled with treating this as euthanasia, manslaughter, or murder. Meiwes’ initial conviction of manslaughter with an eight-and-a half-year prison sentence was overturned as too lenient, and in 2006 he was convicted of murder and given life in prison.
If the fear of encouraging murder appears overriding in criminalizing Ms. X’s behavior, consider the lawful practice of organ donation and its effects in impoverished parts of the world. For another culture’s view of cannibalism, consider the Wari’, a people who ate their dead. They viewed letting their departed rot in the cold dark dirt just as repulsive as we find eating ours. (Missionaries forced an end to this practice in the 1960s.)
—William Miles, “Pigs, Politics and Social Change in Vanuatu,”
Soc. Anim
., 5(2), 1998.
Strong taboos protect the assumptions around which people have built their lives. People do not like these assumptions challenged. The more vested an interest they have in their views, the angrier they will react. It is particularly unsettling when lifestyle issues are involved. People do not like to even consider that how their parents lived, how they have lived, and how they are raising their kids to live might not make sense.
If a free-thinking Aztec told other Aztecs that their sacrifices had no bearing on nature’s behavior, she would likely provoke anger. The suggestion that they were killing people simply for protein and to rid the population of some hungry mouths, rather than to nobly honor the gods, would probably not lead to friendly debate. Unless the listener was a particularly open-minded and courageous Aztec, she would probably not give the radical’s theory the slightest consideration for fear of punishment from the gods, and perhaps more importantly, other Aztecs.
These two characteristics of taboos—the ignorance that surrounds them and their unsettling nature—feed off one another. Unsettling people serves as an enforcement mechanism. When irritated people get angry at or mock the taboo transgressor, the transgressor is less likely to address the taboo. When no one addresses the taboo, people remain ignorant. The more ignorant people are about a taboo, the more likely they are to be disturbed by those trying to bring it into the open. It is a self-perpetuating cycle.
S
PITTING
D
AYS
O
F
P
HLEGM
Taboos start as a point of view. In the beginning, supporters make arguments and defend their positions against opposing arguments. Of course, if the people who want to institute their view are more powerful than their opponents, no persuasion is necessary—the view is instilled by force.
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Slowly, over generations, as the view on the issue becomes more and more accepted, rational arguments cease to be made. Opposing views are easily shot down with vague words such as “improper,” “offensive,” and “immoral.” Eventually the issue does not have to be defended at all. Opponents are so rare and public opinion is so ingrained that the fairness expected in other debates is disregarded. Anyone who examines the issue at this point is open to character assassination and harassment. The issue is now highly taboo.
The evolution of a taboo can be observed in the Western view of spitting.
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As recently as the Middle Ages it was a generally felt
need
to spit frequently. It was polite to spit at the dinner table and at any other time. The only prohibitions were that among the genteel one should spit under the dining table instead of on it, and not spit in the washbasin.
In 1530 Erasmus of Rotterdam introduced the social grace of stepping on your spit if it contained phlegm, and also of turning away from people while spitting, so as not to accidentally spit on them. Erasmus also criticized those who spat at every third word in conversation. (This signals how frequently polite people spat, if it only became disagreeable at every third word.)
In 1558 Della Casta of Geneva recommended that spitting be refrained from altogether at meals. By 1672 it was indecent to spit in front of people of rank, such as the nobility. The late 1600s was also the time when handkerchiefs were coming into general use among the upper class. By the early 1700s, the only proper way to spit among the well-bred was directly into one’s handkerchief.