Hard agree. The genetic problems are really not that bad.
Incest is bad because of the massive power imbalances within families and this is not a cultural thing at all. A parent/child relationship can never be really consensual because of the immense emotional dependency at all ages, and with young adults often financial dependency as well. Older siblings have immense influence on younger siblings as well.
Additionally, we are genetically hardcoded not to want to fuck people we grew up with. It's pretty impossible to feel actual romantic attraction to family members, including step-siblings because of this. If a dad abuses his daughter, it's not because of actual attraction, it's because he's getting off on the power.
The only exceptions to this are estranged family members who specifically didn't grow up together, those can and do occasionally develop feelings for each other. When you see an article about some 30-year-old dude being in love with his 50-something mom, it's usually that. There's still questions to be asked about these cases, but those are the only situations where it's arguably morally defensible imo.
The tendency to not be attracted to people you grew up with is an innate thing, but it's not absolute, relationships do sometimes develop between childhood friends, for example. And I don't feel confident saying that for example tribal societies, or even the large multi-generational households that were more the norm before the Industrial Revolution, always necessarily had the same power dynamics of modern day families, since the nuclear family is a relatively recent thing. But I do agree with you in the context of the modern day.
Hard agree. The genetic problems are really not that bad.
Incest is bad because of the massive power imbalances within families and this is not a cultural thing at all. A parent/child relationship can never be really consensual because of the immense emotional dependency at all ages, and with young adults often financial dependency as well. Older siblings have immense influence on younger siblings as well.
Additionally, we are genetically hardcoded not to want to fuck people we grew up with. It's pretty impossible to feel actual romantic attraction to family members, including step-siblings because of this. If a dad abuses his daughter, it's not because of actual attraction, it's because he's getting off on the power.
The only exceptions to this are estranged family members who specifically didn't grow up together, those can and do occasionally develop feelings for each other. When you see an article about some 30-year-old dude being in love with his 50-something mom, it's usually that. There's still questions to be asked about these cases, but those are the only situations where it's arguably morally defensible imo.
The tendency to not be attracted to people you grew up with is an innate thing, but it's not absolute, relationships do sometimes develop between childhood friends, for example. And I don't feel confident saying that for example tribal societies, or even the large multi-generational households that were more the norm before the Industrial Revolution, always necessarily had the same power dynamics of modern day families, since the nuclear family is a relatively recent thing. But I do agree with you in the context of the modern day.