Comment by randallsquared
15 years ago
Even if I didn't subscribe to the taboos of my culture (which I do, at least in this case), there are lots of excellent reasons to use a facility meant to handle human waste.
Because of that, this is a bad example.
Instead, we should be using an example of something which doesn't require any special facility, we have no cultural taboos against displaying[1], and isn't illegal, but which people want to hide, anyway. I'm not sure I can think of anything.
[1] As someone who was raised fundamentalist Christian, I can assure you that habits learned in childhood can still have lots of force in adulthood, even if you no longer agree with the reasons for them.
The only think i can think of is illness or weakness in the presence of someone you don't trust.
I believe it is universal, although I'm willing to accept there may exist cultures that don't have this desire.
In any case, everyone knowing everyone else's state of health sounds ok, until i think about people i don't like. It's a little too enticing to know about how X is sick, and i don't want X to know that i am sick.
Maybe this is to abstract to be useful.