Promiscuous Disgust

Richard Beck points out in Unclean that disgust is “promiscuous”: It “has a degree of plasticity; it is molded to fit a given culture.” In this, disgust differs from other emotions: “The core triggers for happiness, fear, sadness, or anger appear to be fairly stable and consistent across cultures. But disgust stimuli can be highly variable from culture to culture” (18).

The reason, he suggests, is that disgust has a “sensitive period.” Very young children don’t have much of a disgust response. Taste not, touch not is not part of their vocabulary. Over time, they learn to find things disgusting, including things that, in themselves, are perfectly healthy and nutritious – “bugs, worm, dogs, animal brains” (17). Beck notes that “the delayed onset of disgust allows us to acquire food preferences across a diversity of ecosystems, fitting taste to environment.” 

In this way, disgust acquisition is somewhat like language-learning: “As with an openness to all foodstuffs, a child is born with the facility to learn any human language,” but that facility is “locked in” on the  mother tongue over time. After that initial acquisition, people can learn new languages and new food preferences, but “this has to be done in a more effortful and deliberate manner” (17).

It doesn’t seem to me that Beck is consistent on this point. He writes regularly in the book about the “toxicity” of disgust psychology, and the need to keep it in check and regulate it. He also recognizes that there have to be boundaries in any community, and that fosters the possibility of disgust. Unless he thinks that the existence of boundaries in the church is an unfortunate necessity, it seems that he must affirm some sort of proper use of disgust: Some things should be expelled, it would seem. If disgust is plastic, though, it can be retrained; it would seem that the issue is not regulating disgust but finding ways to mold it. That is a huge practical difficulty, but on his own terms it seems possible to diminish the “toxicity” of disgust psychology.

In any case, the promiscuity and plasticity of disgust has important theological and pastoral implications. On the one hand, it heightens the importance of early discipleship for children. On the other hand, it highlights the challenge of training older people to adjust their acquired psychology of disgust, which is as difficult as Jews of the first century learning to eat unclean foods.