When did suicide cease to be morally repugnant?

The great Theodore Dalrymple once came up with the theory that there is a fixed level of righteous indignation in any society. As soon as we become more relaxed about one area — say, drug taking — we get much more prudish and finger-wagging about something else — smoking, for example.

Sometimes one taboo easily takes the place of a previous one. Race, for example, has become the new sex, with the F-word and C-word de-stigmatised and replaced by the N-word and P-word as no-nos (the new taboo also comes with its own hypocrisies, obviously, and few of today’s moral leaders send their kids to vibrant inner-city schools).

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Jeff Fynn-Paul

The myth of the ‘stolen country’

But in other cases, whole moral frameworks are inverted. When this happens, the proponents of the latest status quo become insufferably sanctimonious, desperate to prove their moral worth with a deluge of empathy.