But any idea that’s considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we’re mistaken about. For example, at the high-water mark of political correctness in the early 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure saying, among other things, that it was inappropriate to compliment a colleague’s or student’s clothes. No more “nice shirt.” I think this principle is rare among the world’s cultures, past or present.
