What is prohibited, what is not accepted, all behavior that is not morally honored by society, the meaning of the taboo is taken into account both for a collective and for a specific minority group. Properly, the taboo refers to a concept that embraces all that is unnatural, framing actions censored by human consensus due to different factors that make up the rest of its dynamics. It is worth pointing out the relationship and concreteness that it has maintained over the course of each century, because taboos are maintained more than ever governing each task of the beings that make up a social groupregardless of the changes in each story or the development achieved by each community.
There is a wide range of taboos, covering different stages of human life, including from the monitoring of food to the same activities of intimacy, or the forms of expression. Its content can be varied, being religious, political, or cultural.having forever the common denominator that should not be based on unfounded prejudice. There are those who, for violating a taboo, they receive a punishment either at the social level, or also legalwell there are communities in which breaking certain taboos is punished as if they were just another crime.
Among the specific taboos, they can be considered the kosher diet, religious vegetarianism, and even cannibalism, such as food order prohibitions. On the other hand, according to life as a couple, or the individual enjoyment of sexuality, Topics like masturbation, premarital sex, pornography, and even homosexualityare still prohibited within different societies.
The etymology of the word taboo comes from the Tahitian word ‘Tapú’and was transferred to other languages such as English and French. In primitive civilizations, healers had the duty to protect ancestral superstitions and customs from reactions and behaviors that offended them.
Although at present, there are certain customs that do not reconcile with ancestral crimes, This is because the ancestral ‘tapú’ were more of a sin than the violation of a law foundedbeing established its sanctions, in the same way, that corresponds to religious acts.
Within the fidelity to the established dogmas, since the beginning of history, the man already considered that if he violated some taboo he should have an inevitable punishment, accepting the consequences, without demanding to mediate between logic, ethics, or morals, according to the effect that their actions had provoked, since custom had strengthened his belief that he had to comply to the letter with the penalty imposed.
The difference that currently exists in the meaning and weight that breaking a taboo entails lies in the intelligent selection of today’s societybeing able to allow the continuity of those restrictions, which by their nature have been of some social utility, Therefore, instead of being framed by the halo of religiosity, those same dogmas were framed within the legality.