Civilizational progress converts once-necessary behaviors into taboos and abominations.

Evidence

From the reflex of disgust at excrement or human flesh to the suspicion of fanaticism, laziness, and poverty, whether intellectual or material, there is a long line of modes of behavior which were metamorphosed from the adequate and necessary into abominations. This is the line both of destruction and of civilization. Each step forward on it represents some progress, a stage of enlightenment. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 82

Categorization

• XREF: Anticipates Norbert Elias’s ‘civilizing process’ thesis about the internalization of disgust and shame; also evokes Freud’s account of civilization and instinctual renunciation. — connects to: Civilization condemns as repellent the very mimetic gestures it once enforced.; Modern civilization idealizes itself while being constitutively built on incorporated violence — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 236; Scarcity-forced habits can evolve into self-imposed ethical codes of character. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 627
• SEED: An essay angle: mapping specific modern taboos (e.g. disgust at body products, suspicion of laziness) as ‘metamorphosed’ survival behaviors — each a trace of an older mode of social life.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Civilization condemns as repellent the very mimetic gestures it once enforced.; Modern civilization idealizes itself while being constitutively built on incorporated violence — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 236; Scarcity-forced habits can evolve into self-imposed ethical codes of character. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 627

Broader Connections

• Modern civilization idealizes itself while being constitutively built on incorporated violence #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 236