What are the topics that writers of the blogosphere avoid addressing, and why? What issues are so sensitive that we consider them relatively untouchable by us, the people of the world that regularly share our opinions openly?

Having debated the differences of science and religion more than once, and seen the sensitivity that engulfs the issue (even when addressed politely) — I know that many avoid all mention of issues regarding religion, either because of fear of the response or simply out of consideration to those that might get offended. Knowing this, it made me wonder what other untouchable topics were out there, and what made them untouchable.

On a discussion thread with the intelligent crowd over at 9Rules I asked the fellow bloggers to share what they considered were their untouchable topics. The results aren’t really surprising, but I was delighted to see how many would write about anything, provided that they were interested and knowledgeable on the subject.

The pie chart below is a very unscientific estimate of what people mentioned (small group, unprecise answers). Don’t take it too literally, I just include it to get an idea of what came up often. The top untouchable topics cited were religion and politics. Religion I understand, it’s very hard to debate the undebatable without offending someone. But ideally, politics should be something to talk about — after all, politics are based on reason and reasonable debate forges good decisions. Perhaps the current war situation is making the political discussion more sensitive. It would be interesting to see research on public mentality towards politics during war times, I’m quite sure it changes dramatically in many ways.

I’ve collected the main causes mentioned for rendering topics untouchable. These are umbrella concepts. Almost every blogger has his own reasons for avoiding conflict, or for maintaining confidentiality — too keep their readers, to keep their jobs, or to fit the theme of a blog — for example. But the following few should generally cover the spectrum.

• Consideration for others
• Conflict avoidance
• Lack of knowledge on a subject
• Lack of interest
• Confidentiality
• Blog not a proper outlet for the subject

Personally, I feel that there shouldn’t be anything that we can’t talk about, provided that the issues are addressed in a polite and intelligent manner. Given humanities flaws, it’s hard to accomplish — but ideally, it should be our goal. If anything needs the spotlight, we should turn it on.

How about you, what’s your untouchable topic?

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