I was listening to a CD lecture about the Old Testament the other day, and the topic was the food and purity laws, in Leviticus and other books. Ugh, booh, thumbs down. That’s how most modern folk feel about ancient purity codes. But to be charitable, we say that perhaps they had a good reason at the time. E.g., don’t eat pigs because they cause trichinosis when not cooked right, or shellfish gets infected by poisonous bacteria very quickly.

But the lecturer made a good counterpoint, by referring to an article written by anthropologist Mary Douglas. Dr. Douglas points out that these ancient codes and rituals cannot be explained as having some practical purpose at the time (even if they incidentally did). No, what was really going on was an ancient culture’s way of dealing with an unpredictable world, dealing with the fact that we don’t fully understand the world. Nothing gets people more upset than strangeness (recall that great song by Jim Morrison and the Doors: “people are strange, when you’re a stranger, faces look ugly when you’re alone”). One way that ancient people dealt with strangeness was to come up with strict laws with strict rules and categories. This is right, anything else is wrong. If it’s not expected, it’s not good, if it doesn’t fit into the way we understand the world, stay away from it. Pigs have cloven hoofs but don’t chew cud, so they’re strange. Shellfish are water creatures without fins. Strange stuff. So don’t mess with it.

[This also explains the Biblical injunctions against homosexuality. It wasn’t what the majority would do, sexually. We now know that about 1 in 25 people have the urge for their own gender. Four percent is definitely a minority. Since ancient people couldn’t understand it, they called it strange and banned it. As though it were in fact bannable.]

In modern times, we have science and know a lot more about stuff. We have much more detailed ways of classifying and understanding things. So we don’t need to adopt such “overspecifications” against things such as shellfish, which might in fact be OK for us (given modern refrigeration). Hopefully, homosexuality is coming out of the social fear zone, and into the “we understand it, nothing to fear” region. But, Dr. Douglas pointed out that we modern folk here in the USA and Western Europe still have some hang-ups about things being in the right place. One example she cited was dirt. Suburban people go out of their way to keep dirt and insects out of their houses. They say this is unhealthy. But actually, most dirt and most insects won’t hurt you (but yes, roaches can spread disease; they remain unwelcome).

So, I was sweeping my kitchen floor this morning, and I pondered the fact that the linoleum is old and is permanently dirty. Most people (including my brother) don’t like this. But hey, so long as there aren’t any mice or black widow spiders around, it’s fine by me. Some dirt, some dust, some leaves, some beetles or grey spiders – what’s the problem?

Well, the ancient closed-mindedness missed a lot of things. The old purity laws didn’t allow the mixing of fabrics, like wool and linen. Today, just about everything we wear is a mix of fabrics. It’s a “best of both worlds” thing to us. But still, I will admit, there are still times and places where categories may be good, and category confusion may be bad. Cops do need to be tough and hard when dealing with bad guys. It’s good for our progeny that women assume nurturing roles with children (although men admittedly also need to help out in that regard). It’s good to teach the 95% of kids who are heterosexual that homosexuality is not evil, but not good to imply that they’re free to experiment with it. Doctors do need to be authoritative (much as I hate that some times), and teachers do need to take the attitude that they know more than their students. Categories still play a role in the functioning of society.

Footnote: I once tried to teach an economic class as a one-day substitute for my boss, who was an adjunct college professor. I totally bombed out. I thought I knew the materials, but when the kids started asking questions, I completely lost my balance and was reduced to a blithering idiot. My boss must have gotten complaints from the kids, as he never had me do that again; and just as well, I figured.

The main sin of the ancient Biblical Jews was closed-mindedness. Leviticus assumes that the community leaders know how the world should be broken down, and thus have enough authority to condemn various things (including all homosexuals; women didn’t do so well either, if they went “outside the box” in their behavior). Perhaps today we go too far the other way at times. As various thinkers have said, it’s all in finding the right balance; i.e., Aristotle’s Golden Mean.