Taboo — Taboo Heat

The power of forbidding both feeling and speech about feeling is its efficiency: it keeps social order in the short term. But efficiency is not the same as health. Societies that name and process their heat—who allow grief, lust, fury, and longing to be spoken of and regulated—tend to be more resilient. Exposure reduces the mystique of forbidden feeling; when people realize they’re not alone in their heat, they gain access to tools and norms for tempering it.