Interesting Tangent to the Purity Discussion

I found it interesting that many of the items on the list of things which are widely known to disgust people, as shown in this video, are also on the list of things which negatively affect purity as defined in the Kemetic faith. We spend a lot of time trying to convince people new to this faith that impurity does not equal “bad” or “immoral”. However, if this research done by psychologists is any indication, it may be a losing battle to try and convince people of that. It seems that the emotion of disgust makes us (as humans) more judgmental and conservative in our views and actions:

 I found it particularly noteworthy that one of the experiments showed that even being reminded to wash their hands made people judge certain relatively harmless behaviors as being immoral—much more so than the control group.

 I think this has important implications in how we speak about purity. Maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised when, in the face of so much talk about being clean and “pure” people seem so inclined to swing to the opposite extreme, associate purity with worthiness, and get “purity anxiety” as a result. That seems to be a natural psychological reaction.