Are taboo's based upon emotions or reason?

S

silver 2039

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Societies have a wide variety of taboos, take for instance:

-Dietary taboos-Halal, Kosher, fobbing cow meat for Hindus, and pork for Muslims
-Sexual taboos: Pre-marital intercourse, incest, adultery, necrophilia, pedophilia, etc…
-Other taboos: Certain society’s have taboos regarding corpses a person who touches a corpse will be cut off from the rest of society

Are these taboos based upon any logical reaon or are they merely based upon emotion?
 
I suggest you read Claude Levi-Strauss... But basically taboos often have a rational background that's been obfuscated by milleniums of myths, legends and tales...
 
A lot of things like dietary taboos originally had very good reasons. The problem is when people forget the original reasons and keep the taboos because it is tradition.

Many sexual taboos have or had good reasons. Genetic diversity=good, therefore incest=bad. Premarital sex before reliable contraceptives used to (and still is at times) dangerous.
 
Masquerouge said:
I'm not convinced about that one. Why exactly was premarital sex more dangerous than marital sex?
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If a woman is married and becomes pregnant it is her husband's responsibility to take care of the her and her child.

If a woman is not married and becomes pregnant she has no husband to take care of her or her child and other men probably wouldn't want her if since she is "spoiled goods" and he would have to care of another man's child.
 
Fugitive Sisyphus said:
If a woman is married and becomes pregnant it is her husband's responsibility to take care of the her and her child.

If a woman is not married and becomes pregnant she has no husband to take care of her or her child and other men probably wouldn't want her if since she is "spoiled goods" and he would have to care of another man's child.
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Ah, silly me. I was thinking about diseases and STD, and forgot the most important :)
 
Masquerouge said:
Ah, silly me. I was thinking about diseases and STD, and forgot the most important :)
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Well Herpes and HIV weren't around in biblical times, but there were still STD problems....

And yes, taboos have a logical component, or at least, once did.
 
Fugitive Sisyphus said:
Many sexual taboos have or had good reasons. Genetic diversity=good, therefore incest=bad.
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What's odd about that is in modern times, many people consider relationships between cousins incest. Indeed, iirc, only the US bans such marriages (and only in some states).

Cousin marriages wouldn't've turned an eye in Biblical times.
 
PlutonianEmpire said:
Emotion. Definitely emotion.
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How could it be just emotion? In our body and mind, is there an ingrained repulsion to premarital sex? How could there be, there's no ingrained concept of marriage!

No, it's an emotional reaction based on something learned, be it from our parents, society, religion.... Such traditions didn't materialize out of thin air. As Masquerouge said, they had a logical reason at one point, even if you (or anyone else) does not agree with that logic today.
 
I suspect it is somewhat like a game of "telephone". The first person tells the second something that clearly makes sense; the second tells the third either what he thought he heard, or what he thinks the first person should have said, and so on. Taboos are basically observations that got memetically mutated.
 
there's no ingrained concept of marriage!
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There is, in a way. We are ingrained to pair up as a species. That's why we fall in love with one person.
Taboos are basically observations that got memetically mutated.
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It's the same way we know what to eat and what not to eat. One person eats poison berries and dies. Someone else doesn't. Eventually it's said that a higher power told us to not eat poison berries and an entire story is made about why not to do that. So there is a taboo against poison berries. A lot of taboos occured this way.
 
GeorgeOP said:
There is, in a way. We are ingrained to pair up as a species. That's why we fall in love with one person.
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That's debatable. For sure, many primates are socially monogamous (ie: one partner for life) but that does not mean they are sexually monogamous (ie: they are known to mate outside this partnership).

Take for example... me! I'm married, and it is out of loyalty and love that I would never cheat on my wife. That doesn't mean there wouldn't be a time I wouldn't want to cheat on my wife.

It's a societal influence that has made that idea repulsive to us both. It's not biological.
 
Eran of Arcadia said:
I suspect it is somewhat like a game of "telephone". The first person tells the second something that clearly makes sense; the second tells the third either what he thought he heard, or what he thinks the first person should have said, and so on. Taboos are basically observations that got memetically mutated.
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Nice post.

It's somehow concerning that this comes from a mormon though.
 
Its really a little of both. Starts out with a logical reasoning, even if its faulty, and ends up as what it is with time.

@Premarital sex- This one has to be a logical reason. If we trusted our emotions concerning this, atleast for me and probably 99% of other guys ages 13+, we would have non-stop sex with every attractive person. But reason tells us that this might lead to problems (blah blah blah blah) and so marriage comes about to mark the time when it becomes okay, as people would find someone that is right for them and would lead to no exceptionally significant problems.
 
augurey said:
That's debatable. For sure, many primates are socially monogamous (ie: one partner for life) but that does not mean they are sexually monogamous (ie: they are known to mate outside this partnership).

Take for example... me! I'm married, and it is out of loyalty and love that I would never cheat on my wife. That doesn't mean there wouldn't be a time I wouldn't want to cheat on my wife.

It's a societal influence that has made that idea repulsive to us both. It's not biological.
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Yeah, exactly. (I ninjaed you on the debatable part ;) )
 
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