Taboos : A Rational Outlook

Have you ever found yourself in a situation over dinner or otherwise,when you are watching your favorite hollywood flick with family and viola,the channel changes?, reason?,an inappropriate or vulgar scene hidden under some feeble excuse by your father like "I have to watch news" or "Let me just check the score".I am sure the answer is yes for most of us. We might be over 18 now, but apparently,it has got little to do with age.
According to the 2002 edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica", taboos are "the prohibition of an action or the use of an object based on ritualistic distinctions of them either as being sacred and consecrated or as being dangerous, unclean, and accursed".Generally they are taken for granted,seldom does one try to quibble over them. Some of these taboos are barred by law,to quote some general examples,homicide,homosexuality(in many countries),incest;while almost all are forbidden by our culture, morals and tradition. Amongst all this,some natural questions that spring up in our minds are : "Why do they exist at the first place?","Who made these taboos?","how did they originate?".We are curious,aint we?,this is because no one really gives us a reason for their existence,we learn about them as we grow,some make sense,some not,they are just there and we have to live with them.So,lets try to look at them from a more rational perspective.
As it turns out,most of the taboos we are dealing with are supported by sound scientific arguments.
Incest
It is the ethical and legal prohibition to have sexual relations with a related person or to marry him or her - even if the individuals involved are consenting and fully informed adults.Now,how did this originate?, i mean it wasn't obvious to us as kids, or was it?.One theory, proposed by Havelock Ellis suggests that this taboo expresses a psychological revulsion that people naturally experience at the thought of incest. Most anthropologists reject this explanation, since incest does in fact occur. Another theory is that the awareness about this taboo will lower the incidence of congenital birth defects caused by inbreeding(mating of genetically close individuals).So perhaps our ancestors realized this fact and forcefully prevented such acts during their times,and this very practice over the generations became what is today known as the incest taboo.
Food Taboos
There are many sections of society where individuals refrain from having non vegetarian diet.According to them it is against their religion to do so, but why ? a possible reason might be the merciless killing of animals from whom meat is produced, or maybe at the time such thoughts were originating among a specific clan, there was scarcity of animals or they were needed for some other purpose like milk etc.
Moral Relativism : The Bitter Truth
It refers to the fact that ethical or moral propositions do not reflect the universal truth, but instead makes claims relative to social,cultural or personal circumstances.Hence although some taboos can be traced back to their universal scientific roots,others are born purely under certain set of social and cultural state of affairs.They exist because they work,because they provide effective solutions to intricate social dilemmas.Moreover,they tend to disappear when no longer useful.For example incest might be tolerated in a world with limited possibilities for procreation, or in a hypothetical situation,suicide maybe encouraged in a society suffering from over-population and scarcity of resources.
None of such taboos refect the objective truth,none can be claimed to be universal.They are merely convinient conventions,workable principles,and regulatory mechanisms - nothing more.

Majority of the social taboos existing in our society today are useless and outdated,instead they create problems.So i urge you to think,weigh and analyze your options carefully rather than blindly accepting anything.