In thinking about the incest taboo, it seems to me to be much more natural than cultural. Obviously, the incest taboo is a natural, universal human trait because it's in every culture, spanning the entire human-populated world. And most cultures (perhaps all) make incest even more taboo by making rules and laws against it.
However, there are exceptions to the rule; some people do engage in incestuous acts. And when I try to think about why, the answers seems to lean towards reasons of deviations from the natural norm. I mean, yeah, when a person engages in an incestuous act it is also a deviation from the cultural norm, but it seems that the cultural norm is only there because the natural norm is there. After all, why would a culture make incest forbidden? What's wrong with incest? The thought of it gives me the shivers, but that's because it's part of my nature to avoid it, plus it has been ingrained in me, through culture, as something horrible and disgusting. And the reason it's part of our culture is because it's maladaptive for our natures (the offpring of two organisms very close in DNA usually turn out to be sick, either physically, mentally, or both).
There are two ways I can understand how/why someone would engage in an incestuous act, one dealing with nature and one dealing with nurture (a binary opposition in psychology), yet both really go back to physical nature.
The first way is if the person has some sort of psychological disorder, which would be a result of a chemical imbalance or genetic mutation, or something of that sort; basically, the person's "nature" is messed up, deviating from the norm of the rest of the human population. This would explain why a person could/would defy a universal human trait.
The second way is if the person was conditioned by some traumatic life event (or many) to either become habituated to incest, or to associate it with positive emotions -- in either case this changes the brain's neural networking (the brain has quite a bit of plasticity), making the incestuous acts a result of physical deviations from the normal/average human.
So it seems that nature has much more to do with incest, both in upholding the taboo and in explaining those who engage in incestuous acts. Culture adds to nature, but it doesn't seem to carry enough weight to oppose nature in a true binary system.
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2 comments:
Your absolutely right about the whole taboo thing. If sane, seemingly normal people willingly engage in incestious acts, one of the main aphrodisiacs must be because it is forbidden. I forget if it was brought up in this class or another english class, but think about the puritans. They were not even allowed to think about sex. However the idea that you are engaging in something "forbidden" could possibly make it all the more exciting. Even outside of sex people live outside the laws/rules strictly because of the rush, becuase they get off on it. Incest is "naughty" i know that sounds disgusting, but there are those out there that cant resist that idea. Especially considering that incest is socially prohibited in all cultures throughout the world
I like how you took a more psychological approach at viewing the incest taboo. Also, I like how you associated the taboo with the rules and laws of society.
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