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Originally Posted by slayda
I'm curious as to the other reasons. I know that most religions teach it is wrong and even non religious moralists believe it but other than someone in authority saying it is wrong (which was most probably based on the afore mentioned genetic defects) I am not aware of any "other reasons" for incest taboos. There have been some cultures in which it has not only not been taboo but was expected. E.g. some of the south seas islanders, the Egyptian Pharaohs, European nobility.  |
Yes, and the ones in which it was expected tended to a pay a price, as witness some of the European royal families. In the case of the Egyptians and the Europeans, inbreeding was almost impossible to avoid. If you were a royal, you pretty much had to marry another royal, and chances were good they were a relative... The available pool of suitable partners was too small.
As for reasons other than recessives, the best one I know of is simple. In any society at any time, it was effectively impossible to be self-sufficient. In order to survive and prosper, you needed the assistance of others. What would motivate others to assist? One of the strongest motivations is blood kinship - they're your relatives.
Consider the institution of arranged marriages still practiced in some cultures. They aren't love matches, they are political and economic alliances between families, arranged by the families for the benefit of the families. It's a perfect example of the above.
"Keeping it in the family" reduces your available ties with others, and in the long term is anti-survival.
Now, you can argue that the advanced technology available to Lazarus Long and company lessened the strength of that argument, too, but RAH doesn't seem to have ever considered it as a factor.
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Dennis