You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos

by Robert R. Arthur

A book that vigorously defends heroin users and sex workers? In You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos Robert Arthur does that and more to demonstrate that taboos are not relics of primitive societies. America has its own ridiculous phobias and beliefs that cause tedium, suffering, and death. The government and the media use these taboos to lie and mislead. It is not a conspiracy, but by pushing panic for votes and viewers they thwart our pursuit of happiness.

You Will Die exposes the fallacies and the history behind our taboos on excrement, sex, drugs, and death. Arthur uses racy readability and rigorous documentation to raze sacred shrines of political correctness on the left and of conventional wisdom on the right. From the proper way to defecate to how to reach nirvana, anticipate the unexpected. It is not simply a novel exploration of sex and drugs, but also of individuality, liberty, and the meaning of life. You Will Die gives readers a new way of seeing their world and allows them to make a more informed choice about living an authentic life.

Winner of the 2008 Montaigne Medal awarded for most thought-provoking independent book.

“… ya gotta fight back against the Sarah Palin ‘idiot herd’ with something.”
Wayne Coyne, Lead Singer, The Flaming Lips

“… one of my favorite books …”
Mark Frauenfelder, Editor, Boing Boing

“This book is a MUST READ! I loved it.”
Dr. Mark Benn, Psychologist, Colorado State University

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, Cultural, Social Issues

418 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2007

Reviews

[Emma Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex, drugs, and death. Woot!

This book is a joy to read. The author's voice is so engaging and refreshingly blunt that I'm not even going to pick the hell out of his chapter on women's sex drives (not even the research on page 61). So while I don't agree with every assertion in the book, I love the way Arthur makes his points.

The book opens with cannibalism, but second up is snot and boogers, and it was truly the most difficult reading I've ever experienced to make myself actually get through these pages. OMG ick ick ick! It was worse than the ear thing in Zero Tolerance. I support other readers should they choose to skip chapter two. But I still read it! The writing was that good.

I'd give the book a four, but the exceptionally awesome referencing gets it the extra star.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't stop talking about this book to all my friends! I seriously think everybody should read it. You Will Die is hilarious, well written, clever and insightful. I learned so many things I don't even know where to start. He cites all of his information and I'm planning on reading some of his resources because they sound really interesting as well.

The book is separated into different categories but most of the book focuses on sex and drugs. The information is really eye opening and made me realize the extent of all the lies everyone believes and how damaging the "war on drugs" has been on this country and the rest of the world.

[David Becker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of a baloney sandwich on artisan bread. It starts off promisingly enough with an insightful discussion of the nature of taboos in general and details of specific ones such as cannibalism. Ends with a welcome but way too brief musing on death customs. In between, though, it’s a clumsy recitation of familiar libertarian arguments for legalizing prostitution and drugs. Which I’m mostly in agreement with, but how about coming up with a new insight or two? And presenting them with some degree of clarity and linear thinking? In the end, a missed opportunity and another strong case for the value of skilled editors.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so thought provoking and informative. I love any kind of weird non-fiction, and this certainly fit all my criteria for an entertaining read.

One of the most entertaining facts I got out of this book: Martin Luther used to eat a tablespoon of his own feces daily as a prophylactic. Read it! You will find your own amusing fact gems to wow your friends and cause uncomfortable silence around the dinner table.

[Gavin Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man I really loved this book. I was really impressed by the citations, and really enjoyed reading those, as well. Just really entertaining, really insightful book with a TON of stuff about everything that has some huge significance in our lives. The damage this whole "war on drugs" nonsense, and how religion and the government are out to destroy us, more or less.

[Kimi Tallant · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I won’t attest to agreeing with every argument this book presents (some questionable interpretations of feminism in there, though I’m not above admitting my own defensiveness about the subject has skewed how I perceive critique of it), the arguments presented were a fascinating look at the morally charged and totally off base criminalization of sex and drugs in America. This book detailed the history of the human relationship with sex and drugs from ancient times until now and how that history morphed into our current interpretation of taboo subjects, pointing out over and over the hypocrisy and repetitive nature of the lies and propaganda pushed on American culture.

Especially interesting if you are a supporter of legalized SW and ending the War on Drugs.

TLDR; Time is a flat circle, everyone is a hypocrite, America’s war on drugs is racist AF (obviously), legalize everything

[Michael Salmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly informative and thought provoking, I read this book some three or four years ago and still remember pieces of it that continue to influence my life today. Robert's book brings to the front issues that are mostly taken for granted as fact, and allows readers to critically evaluate where their opinions from and, perhaps, change their minds.

Apologies in advance for language:

This book also gave the best account of "Slut vs Stud" mentatlity I've ever read (from memory it was done rather indirectly too). It showed that sexual repression is a hangover from the oppressive Victorian age and that to subscribe to that way of thinking in what is a rather more enightened time (although ocassionally that doesn't seem to be the case) is completely facile.

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a bait and switch. Opens with great chapters on nose picking and pooping, only to then spend most of the book lamenting American drug policy and attitudes towards sex.

I agree with most of the author’s points (the war on drugs should never have happened, and abstinence-only education is a travesty), but the fact that this is marketed as a book on taboos feels dishonest.

[Ben Serviss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb, clear-headed explainer of how modern US societal mores got to be how they are. The numerous sources cited at the end of every chapter are also excellent if you want to do any further research yourself.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why taboos lead to corruption and human misery

I read this book a few years ago when Arthur self-published it (copyright 2007) and distributed it with covers made from breakfast cereal boxes! This latest edition from Feral House is your usual paperback and is effectively the same book as the one from 2007.

However, in addition to a more attractive cover and overall design, there are three significant differences.

One, the amateurish drawings are gone. Too bad. They added to the quirky, kinky experience of reading the book. I definitely miss them!

Two, the hundreds of footnotes are now endnotes at the conclusion of each chapter instead at the bottom of the relevant page. That’s the contemporary practice, but I’m not sure it’s an improvement especially when many of the notes contain additional information not just a reference. It’s annoying having to flip back and forth between the page you are reading and the end of the chapter in order to read an addition comment.

Three, there’s a new chapter, the fourteenth entitled “The End: Death,” near the start of which there is this striking sentence: “The guillotine is tender in comparison to the innate cruelty of pathogens and predators.”

True, and this is the kind of observation that would seem to give the lie to a benevolent creator of the universe.

However this fourteenth chapter is actually not so much about death as it is about how to live life. Arthur makes the point that a conscious awareness of death can help us to better appreciate being alive which will allow us to get more out of life. He talks about “flow” remarking that “Flow can occur whenever someone is using skills to achieve a challenging and clear goal” and that “When in flow the action is being undertaken for the sake of the action itself. Ulterior motives like money, recognition, or winning are forgotten.” (p. 374) This idea is similar to karma yoga found in Hinduism’s “Bhagavad Gita.”

Arthur recommends the destruction of the ego (if you can manage it! I might observe). He writes that this “process is aided by visualizing yourself in the third person” so that “personal failures and setbacks are seen as trivial” as if one is in a play. He adds the very Buddhist-like observation that “Beneath this final layer is the full awareness that links you to all people, all life, and the cosmos. Your separateness from the universe is a deceit of the ego, a deceit that ends when the ego is vanquished by either death or enlightenment. Like a drop of spray returning to the ocean, when the ego dissolves completely nirvana is reached.” (p. 375)

I would say that Arthur’s long study of human taboos may have led him to something like enlightenment! At any rate there is a tone in this last chapter that seems to me to be the culmination of what he has learned about life and about himself.

Now, here is my review of the cereal box edition. Most of what I wrote still applies:

This is a sensational book, and I mean that in the widest sense of the word "sensational." It's explosive and amazingly informative. You will not be able to read this book without being amazed--amazed at the hypocrisy of human beings, amazed at the history of human hypocrisy and corruption, amazed at the corruption currently extant in this once great nation, and amazed at the lies you have been, and are being told, by just about everybody in any position of power or influence. This is a book that combines the racy readability of the tabloid style with the rigorous research and documentation of a PhD dissertation.

Arthur is effective because he writes extremely well and because he has great energy in his expression. His style is straightforward. The pages practically turn themselves. The secret to this kind of writing is a lot of simple declarative sentences packed with interesting facts. He footnotes just about everything. There are hundreds of footnotes, and I found myself reading them because some of them contained not just the source but some additional and very interesting addenda (that of course he might have kept on the page!). This brings me to the weaknesses in the book: (1) My book cover is made of the cardboard from a Rice Krispies cereal box! (Arthur binds his own books.) (2) While Arthur's self-editing is almost as good as his writing, which is first rate, the proofreading is...well, not good. There are plenty of typos, footnote numbers amiss, and some needless repetition and miss wording. (3) The extensive "artwork" is an acquired taste. Initially I found it crude and amateurish. After a couple hundred pages I still found it crude but with some redeeming functionality since it wonderfully augments the trashy aspects of the subject matter. (4) The title, "You Will Die" applies to Arthur's second volume, as yet unfinished, with the meaning that one of the most pervasive human taboos pertains to the fact of death.

To quote from Arthur's Website: "The thesis of this book is that taboos are a burden on society .... [T]abooed topics lack open discussion and accurate information. Without these two tools, irrational views cannot be changed. By protecting irrational views taboos hinder progress towards greater happiness."

Arthur begins with the taboo about picking your nose and all the mendacity associated with mucus, urine and excrement. He devotes several page-turning chapters to sexual hypocrisy, and ends with a very fine delineation of the fraudulent and debilitating "war on drugs." There are five appendices, one a scandalous expose on "Great Philanderers" including some juicy stuff on our ex-presidents. I particularly enjoyed the dirt on Ronnie Reagan, but you might find the stuff on Bill Clinton more to your taste. Incidentally, Arthur does a nice job of explaining why some people like George W. Bush have changed their tune with time: "Older people are led to believe that they control their behavior better because they are wiser, and wisdom can be taught to youth. However, this is a hypocritical stance regarding sex because they now have a lower sex drive, and a lower sex drive cannot be taught to youth." (p. 309)

What Arthur does especially well is not only explain the various taboos and the attendant governmental blunders, corruptions and stupidities, but why the taboos and corruption continue to exist and how they developed in a historical sense, and who benefits. He shows how the war on drugs has become a full employment program for law enforcement, the judiciary, and most government agencies as well as serving to keep the trade profitable for the people that supply and sell the drugs. In other words, how wonderfully well our government and the drug cartels work hand-in-hand! With this information we can see that the "war on drugs" is like the perpetual wars of Orwell's "1984": a fraudulent business that serves to further empower the government and is therefore unlikely to ever end.

From my point of view, one of the worst aspects of the war on drugs (at least from a Constitutional perspective) comes from the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1984 which allows "law enforcement to confiscate any property or money they believe to be tainted by drugs" on mere suspicion. "The burden is then on the owner to institute expensive legal proceedings to prove the property is clean." (p. 466) Arthur rightly likens this to practices rampant during the Spanish Inquisition when inquisitors seized the property of the accused.

Another consequence of the war on drugs is to make drugs more potent. "With the danger of arrest," Arthur writes, "it is important to make something concealable for possession, use, and transportation." He adds, "Potent forms of a drug carry less risk because they weigh less than milder forms" since "punishments are based on quantities with larger weights receiving more severe penalties." (p. 347)

Ironically, it is the war on drugs itself that has made doing drugs dangerous. Arthur shows that most of the deaths associated with drug use are the result of criminalization. Overdoses would seldom occur if drugs were legal and regulated, not to mention that drug dealers would not be shooting people in turf wars. Furthermore, terrorists would have to find another way to finance their terrorism, since a large percentage of their funding comes from the illegal drug trade.

Robert Arthur has been a public defender and an inner city school teacher. He is eloquent, compassionate and fired with the kind of energy that we need to fight against the corruption around us. I hope that a major book publisher recognizes the enormous value in this book, both in a humanitarian sense and commercially, and gives Arthur a royalty contract to manufacture and distribute the book on a large scale so that it might reach a wider readership. Tip: buy a copy now. It might be a collector's item when a more professionally packaged product comes out.

—Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Arthur has a penchant for facts and contextualization. Beginning with the background of Aztec ritual sacrifices to the modern taboos about death, Arthur gives you fact, history, anecdote explaining how a lot of what one thinks one knows is wrong. Arthur has his weak spots, because of covering the entirety of European and US relationships to Christianity, he has to over-simplify a bit in those chapters and collapses some distinctions about church history away. Although even in this section, he makes some keen observations: Protestantism and the beginning of love marriage actually correlates to the one of the most restrictive periods in regards to things like extra-martial sex and prostitution. Prior to the encouragement of love matches, such things as brothels were considered necessary evils and were even ran by the church itself in some areas. The section that is the strongest is Arthur's chapters on the drug war and what drugs actually do. I thought I was familiar with the topic but discovered that I was not nearly as much as I would like as I apparently over-estimated the danger of some narcotics. Arthur ends on a speculation about the taboo against directly viewing death in modern society, which is the most speculative part of the book. It is still interesting. A powerful book that will probably challenge even the most secular on some point or other, it as a very worthwhile read.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most frustrating part is that even though the book is stuffed with references, the conclusions he pulls are sometimes nonsensically simple and don't follow from the material he cites. He's good at sourcing but not at constructing or supporting an argument. I liked the idea of this book, but I've seen better, more logical analyses of the many of same sources and this material deserves better handling.

[Caty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate it when someone uses really facile stupid logic to argue for things I passionately support.
It's got some interesting factoids, though. I much prefer this guy's blog.

[Robb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good source for facts and history behind why we're not "supposed" to do the things most people usually do.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Really interesting and well sourced. I don't always agree with his analysis or conclusions, but can see his perspective.

[Hobart Frolley · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is absolutely nothing in this book that I hasn’t been written already (and better) elsewhere. The defensive tone and socially irresponsible statements like “heroin is harmless”, “getting addicted to drugs is actually pretty hard”, and “kicking heroin is like having the flu” were huge turn-offs to me and had me not wanting to support something I am moderately supportive of (decriminalization of drugs). The author is also down right insulting towards people that don’t do drugs even resorting to juvenilia like calling them “squares”.
In addition to all of this, research means nothing if you go into it with confirmation bias. He stated elsewhere that he wrote this book to find out if the taboo things he was doing were normal so clearly he was seeking studies that confirmed this outcome. I have tried to find back up evidence for some of his resources and have mostly failed or come upon studies so vague they are wildly open to interpretation.
Also, with a title like You Will Die, one expects an exploration of the death taboo but even when we get one it is brief and used to further defend drug use.
This topic is tricky and writing a lengthy diatribe in a way that makes it sound like a bitter teenage boy’s livejournal entry with absolutely no new information is not contributing in any meaningful way to the conversation at all

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating topics. But - while I agree with most of his main points, the delivery was shoddy in my opinion. Some of the facts he brings up warranted more explanation but the author was in too much of a hurry to get to his point. Facts and history are just slapped together, too many little things quickly thrown in that never get fully examined. Subheadings upon subheadings didn't help much with the general sense of disorganization.
Especially irritating, there were sentences here and there that just made no sense... I mean, I had to reread them and try to figure out what in the hell he's trying to say. Sometimes these were frustrating and confusing errors in syntax. Occasionally no sense could be found and I just had to skip forward.

[Brodie Rake]

Despite being about Taboos, 1/3 of the book centres around sex, and another 1/3 centres around drugs. I wish there had been a bit more focus on the titles titular taboo, death. That being said it was still a very engaging read. I learnt a lot throughout. The book does a great job dispelling a lot of cultural myths we have living in the western world. Although the book has a very libertarian bias, I think most people could gain some perspective on just how altered and controlled our current ways of being are, and how detached we’ve become in what makes us human in the first place.

[Shanni · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Arthur starts the book off strong, covering topics such as feces and mucus, he spends most of the book talking about the taboos surrounding sex and drugs, dedicating about a third of the book to each topic. Otherwise, it was an interesting read, though not anything that was particularly impressive.

[Erik Marsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an enlightening and well-researched critique of taboos against boogers, shit, piss, sex, and drugs. The title is a little misleading as most of the book is about the fascinating history of sex and drugs and really poorly-informed US government policies. Overall, excellent. I learned a lot.

[Kevin C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the historical analysis and read around these modern taboos.

I understood the basic underlying history and attitudes but this really gave alot more insight around why socieites and mindsets are the way they are espeacially around sex and drugs

[Trent · Rating 5 out of 5]

phenomenal book

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

It challenged some of my beliefs that had never been challenged before. I value that in a book.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much needed book for an uptight society with a penchant for forgetting applicable history.

While this book goes through a handful of taboos; snot, sex, feces, drugs, and death; the sex and drugs sections were by far the largest portions. I felt there could be so much more to be said about death, as well as a few taboos that didn't get mention.

So many references were put into this book with additional quotes and comments in the endnotes that I spent time reading through those for every chapter. This is a pro for the book as well as a con. The author did his research and made sound arguments with supporting evidence. These were not subjective opinions. The downside was that with as much evidence as he throws at you, it takes longer to absorb. I feel this needs to be read again just to get quality comprehension.

The two appendicis are fantastic. Especially the list of US Presidents and their list of infidelities. America cares not for the moral framework of our political representatives, just our neighbors, I suppose.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting, challenging read, challenging many assumptions with rational, precise discussions. The brief section on mucus was hard to read, simply via the factoid that the average human swallows a quart of mucus a day. Blurgh! But in all seriousness, this examination of modern taboos is thought-provoking in all ways. The Sex and Drugs sections get the most space, though the final taboo discussed, Death, was given a limited examination.

[James]

It's a very interesting book but I think he belabors the point in the sex chapters.

[Matthew Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and incredibly interesting.

[Jon Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastically written and compulsively readable stuff. A must if you have bad dreams and poop a lot.