Prolong and relationships

I checked back about 18 months and didn't find anything on this so decided to raise it.
What would be a prolong society's relationship rules and taboos?
Many taboos and rules have real reasons underpinning them. Incest leads to genetic defects in progeny, plus it causes psychological problems in close relationships. However when people look youthful for centuries, what should happen if you hook up with your great, great granddaughter unknowingly? The actual genetic relationship is not as close as first cousins (unwise but legal nowadays).

Could you get Burton and Taylor cycles with couples having pairings many decades apart?

With tubing separating sex from reproduction and genetic science eliminating dangerous recessive genes, is incest between well adjusted adults a problem any more in the Honorverse?

It's probably too early to tell.
But it does bring Elizabeth Moon's Serrano legacy to mind. Specifically how people wore earrings to give a rough estimate of their age as they found the older they got the bigger the generation gaps got even if they looked the same age.
Sure your Hugh Heffner type players will no doubt be more effective, but as a gross generalization, people will look for partners with similar life experiences and age outlooks on life.

Just my opinion.

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Well the first thing that would change is the idea that may-december relationships are creepy. Especially when the younger is still over 30. When both parties are physically the same age who cares about thier official age. Related ideas such as Cougers would also probably disappear.

As for the dating your great great grandchildren I suspect that the law would have to be reviewed as this is not somthing that any code has considered. I expect that they will ultimately fall back on a genetic similarity test and don't forget that many countries/cultures do allow first cousin marrage so the degree of similarity can be quite high relatively speaking even right now.

Another plank they may use is the "Do they know they are related" test, a field day for lawyers but is you really don't know the other person (quite likely once you are into multiple great greats) compared to deciding the the great great great grandmom you have known for ages is kinda hot. For most people basic socialisation and biology will make the inelligable, similar to how genetically unrelated adopted children are not attracted to each other when raised together as siblings.

Far more likely are going to be great aunt once removed - great nephew relationships as the great aunt could actually be much younger and from a second wave family the parents had in thier 120's which allows for 2-3 generations of grandkids from the older kids.

Either society will stop caring (most likely in a western model) or society reverts to very strong clan/tribe structures (more likely in a patriachial model) given that most of the core worlds are very western in outlook I would suspect the former.

First of all, genetics wouldn't be much of a factor for the simple reason of common place genetic surgery and genetic screenings. Societal norms would probably keep g,g,g grandmother from marrying her g,g,g grandson for the most part. Plus if you think of it and go back a person would have 64 g,g,g grandparents and go back a single generation and you get 128 g,g,g,g grandparents. For example I have two relatives who fought on opposite sides of the ACW. They are related to me but were not related to each other.

Daryl wrote:I checked back about 18 months and didn't find anything on this so decided to raise it.
What would be a prolong society's relationship rules and taboos?
Many taboos and rules have real reasons underpinning them. Incest leads to genetic defects in progeny, plus it causes psychological problems in close relationships. However when people look youthful for centuries, what should happen if you hook up with your great, great granddaughter unknowingly? The actual genetic relationship is not as close as first cousins (unwise but legal nowadays).

Could you get Burton and Taylor cycles with couples having pairings many decades apart?

With tubing separating sex from reproduction and genetic science eliminating dangerous recessive genes, is incest between well adjusted adults a problem any more in the Honorverse?

I disagree about the elimination of bad genes--look at how many people do not regenerate. By the standards of that society that's a dangerous gene yet it is not removed.

Also, sex is not separated from reproduction. Tubing separates pregnancy and reproduction. Remember, Honor tubed that pregnancy because of a contraceptive oops--in other words, it came from sex.

As for the great, great granddaughter--that's 5 degrees of separation. Even in our society people aren't likely to care about that, although we only see 5 degrees when it's lateral rather than vertical.

For prolong and relationships way too complicated. A society's base culture matters more than the rest. After 2,000 years and thousands of planets many cutoff and regressed just about any relationship under the sun is going to be a societal norm somewhere.

How are each of them going to react when after rediscovery and prolong?

+1 for the gene surgery and close genetic relationship.

Will people's view's and wisdom improve. Probably not based on current longer lived society's and how they react. Helicopter parents for the first 100 years. <shudders>

Which leads to the second problem sort of addressed in the Beowulf Code.

What counts as a genetic defect sufficient to require correction? See above helicopter parents, think about that.

The possibilities are pretty much endless.

I think I hurt my brain,
T2M

Silverwall wrote:Well the first thing that would change is the idea that may-december relationships are creepy. Especially when the younger is still over 30. When both parties are physically the same age who cares about thier official age. Related ideas such as Cougers would also probably disappear.

May-December would still be creepy--it's just that December carries a far different meaning with Prolong.

As for whether official ages matter--it's really more a measure of one's life outlook. 20 vs 100 will look about the same but their experiences and desires will generally be very different. Rarely would this be a good match.

(To put some perspective on this: I'm in a May-September situation myself. It works for us because neither of our mental ages match our physical ages. I found my contemporaries very immature, she's very young at heart. I was routinely guessed to be far older than reality, to this day she is routinely guessed to be far younger than reality--to the point that once I was accused of robbing the cradle.)

Another plank they may use is the "Do they know they are related" test, a field day for lawyers but is you really don't know the other person (quite likely once you are into multiple great greats) compared to deciding the the great great great grandmom you have known for ages is kinda hot. For most people basic socialisation and biology will make the inelligable, similar to how genetically unrelated adopted children are not attracted to each other when raised together as siblings.

It's not socialization, the effect is biological. Unrelated children raised together normally do not see each other in a sexual way even if there is no social instruction in this regard. (Observation: communes. Observation: Arranged marriages where the woman moved into the man's family in infancy or early childhood.) I doubt that when they are 5 generations apart that they will spend enough time together to trigger this effect, though--and so if anything you'll see the opposite effect. Genetic sexual attraction--if the anti-incest programming doesn't take effect we are prone to be highly attracted to relatives.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Daryl wrote:I checked back about 18 months and didn't find anything on this so decided to raise it.
What would be a prolong society's relationship rules and taboos?
Many taboos and rules have real reasons underpinning them. Incest leads to genetic defects in progeny, plus it causes psychological problems in close relationships. However when people look youthful for centuries, what should happen if you hook up with your great, great granddaughter unknowingly? The actual genetic relationship is not as close as first cousins (unwise but legal nowadays).

Could you get Burton and Taylor cycles with couples having pairings many decades apart?

With tubing separating sex from reproduction and genetic science eliminating dangerous recessive genes, is incest between well adjusted adults a problem any more in the Honorverse?

I disagree about the elimination of bad genes--look at how many people do not regenerate. By the standards of that society that's a dangerous gene yet it is not removed.

Also, sex is not separated from reproduction. Tubing separates pregnancy and reproduction. Remember, Honor tubed that pregnancy because of a contraceptive oops--in other words, it came from sex.

As for the great, great granddaughter--that's 5 degrees of separation. Even in our society people aren't likely to care about that, although we only see 5 degrees when it's lateral rather than vertical.

I log a second disagreement on that account.

And of course, patching errant DNA from the gene pool is not the same as introducing fresh DNA. Human life must maintain fresh DNA sources to thrive -- not just survive.

At which point is absolutely beyond the point of no return? We're talking Alice in the looking glass stuff here. This beckons a moral dilemma that one must consider.

It comes awfully close to a discussion somewhere regarding the Honorverse's ability to augment the tendency to commit evil -- which is brainwashing in my book.

Let's look at this problem as mature adults. It's frowned on to engage in incest because of the possibility of failed births and the dangerous nature it imposes to the bearer as well as the possibility of deformities. If that can be eliminated then one may imagine that incest is ok. And that the ugly word no longer should carry a negative connotation.

However, as a species, we know full well that it goes beyond that. There are morals, scruples and values beyond any biological considerations. I'd like to think that we as a species would not degenerate so lowly.

Not to mention what such embarrassing stints to the natural advancement of selective genetic evolution may occur.

At some point, the superior advances in medical and biological technology become themselves as 'appliances.' These intellectual appliances are to the Honorverse as they were to modern man. Appliances are meant to allow us to live a fuller life. Not a grossly different one. We must not allow technology to bleed us of our identity.

Oops, the teleprompter's telling me to wrap it up. My wife's the teleprompter. Christmas play in the appointment book.

cthia wrote:Let's look at this problem as mature adults. It's frowned on to engage in incest because of the possibility of failed births and the dangerous nature it imposes to the bearer as well as the possibility of deformities. If that can be eliminated then one may imagine that incest is ok. And that the ugly word no longer should carry a negative connotation.

And calling someone "motherf***er" would no longer be an insult?

The reason why incest is frowned upon is because it's seen as icky by pretty much everyone. There are reasons why it's a bad idea, but those are more justifications than reasons. I see no reason why that would change, but who knows given the media climate what is next after the current craze dujour.