Social Forums: The 3 Taboo Topics
Recently, some one asked me about what I meant by "the 3 taboos". 10 years ago everyone would have known exactly what I meant, but in today's world with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., the Internet has become extremely large with only a very small percentage knowing anything about it's past. It used to be that Politics, Sexual Orientation, and Religion were taboo topics on almost every site. The main reason for these taboos was to ensure that discussions did not get out of hand in what used to be very tight communities. Any discussion in any of these taboo topics could lead to the breakup of a community; therefore, it became a standard rule (many times unwritten) on all sites.
Politics is not always an easy one for people to understand, even in today's world where almost all employers do not allow political discussions at the work place. There is nothing black and white about it either, just varying shades of gray that range to both extremes. A simple example is when people start talking about the "Death Penalty", which obviously leads to discussions on killing and people confusing it with murder. I won't go into the differences, as that is not the purpose of this post, but killing and murder have 2 completely different meanings. The only commonality between the 2 is death, but just thinking about this you can see how the discussion of politics can get way out of hand.
As for Sexual Orientation, this is now a no brainer. The Federal Government has declared derogatories against Sexual Orientation as hate, which can land you a very long sentence in a Federal Prison. This topic is still taboo today, on almost every site, with the exception of sites dedicated to the topic. One thing that I should say is that jokes qualify as a discussion and are included in all of the taboos. There is an exception here as well, but it only covers those who are a part of the topic that they are making fun of (i.e. making fun of themselves). There are extreme limitations though, as those who are not covered by the topic, are not allowed to participate in the discussions on the topic. This alienates many users, and alienation is generally not allowed in any forum.
Our final topic of the 3 taboos is Religion. This is probably the most controversial topic of all as the United States Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights give Freedom of Religion even more status than Freedom of Speech due to the Separation of Church and State. There is no right and wrong, black and white, or even shades of gray. Either you believe in religion, a religion, or you don't. The only thing that may even come close to shades of gray is whether or not you agree that what is being called a religion, is actually a religion. Coming from a Catholic high school (I consider myself an Agnostic Atheist) where I was forced to take non-denominational studies (heavily influenced by the Catholic Church). I learned quite a bit about the Catholic Church and "The Bible" that I doubt the majority of you are aware and the rest of this post will better explain why religion is one of the taboos.
Did you know that if you were to add up all of the deaths due to wars that are based on religious beliefs and compare that to all of the deaths due to war that have nothing to do with religion at all, that the deaths due to religious beliefs far out numbers the others? It's not 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, or 10:1. It's not even 100:1. The number exceeds 1,000:1. For those who don't know what that means, it means that less than one death out of every 1,000 deaths due to war is from a war that is not in any way related to religious beliefs and that more than 999 of those deaths are related to religous beliefs. From a Catholic point of view that is rather disturbing as "Thou shalt not kill" is one of the Ten Commandments, and other religions have similar ideologies; however, that hasn't stopped religious wars.
So, what are all these people fighting over? For Catholics, it's a book whos title simply means "the book", "The Bible". Most people know that "The Bible" is not an exact accounting of history. Many know that it is at best an accounting of revisionist history, but very few people truly know what this means. The Catholic church acknowledges that it destroyed more than 90% of all the documents that were found while compiling "The Bible", and reworded many of those that they included. The documents that were found were written by many different people, but it is unknown for what purpose that each document was written. The church did not keep any records of what was destroyed, or reworded. Shortly before "The Bible" was completed, there was a fire that destroyed the entire monestary and almost all of the remaining documents. Only a very few exist to this date.
"The Bible" is not chronologically written either. Some of the books are, some are not, but the over all layout of "The Bible" is a disjointed accounting of events and stories. Many of its books overlap the time frames of others. You might be asking, 'Why am I saying so much about Religion, when I didn't say all that much for the other topics?" It is not simple to explain why Religion has been a taboo topic, unless you understand the background for the item that almost all of the discussions would be based, but is usually never discussed. Knowing what you now know about "The Bible", can you see how ridiculous it is to have a discussion about it? Even if you can't see this, you should at least understand that your lack of understanding is a reason for not discussing it.
Those are the "3 Taboo Topics" in a nut shell. There have been many debates on the issues created by allowing them to be discussed, but for most communities it is best to not allow the discussions in the first place. I'm going to leave the comments open, but with moderation. I will make sure that all comments stay on topic, and I will not allow the comments on any specifics of any of the topics.