Let’s say you give some wise advice to an attractive and somewhat naive young woman. Her parents have passed, and she is so very happy to get that sort of advice. She feels the need for a steady hand to help her through life, so she wants you to be … like an uncle. A fatherly sort of figure who can dispassionately guide her through difficult choices. <\/p>\n
The trouble is, you’re not her uncle. If you were, there would be some amount of safety. Not complete safety, but some amount, because we have an instinct not to get involved with close relations. That’s why, as a general rule, brothers and sisters are usually not going at it, and why the most dangerous character in a young girl’s life can be her stepfather. <\/p>\n
There’s something in our brains that dials back sexual attraction towards someone who is a close blood relative. <\/p>\n
The problem with this is that the modern mind has been trained to push back. If there’s an exception, the foolish person thinks, the rule can be discarded. <\/p>\n
But the Pharaohs married their sisters! And I know a brother and sister who …. <\/p>\n
Right. Nothing is 100 percent. Men tend<\/i> to be attracted to certain things and repulsed by other things, but there’s always a minority who go the other way. <\/p>\n
Wise living is a matter of playing the odds. The Proverbs are not laws of the universe. They’re guidelines. <\/p>\n
You might spend your life socking away money in your 401(k) only to die before you retire, but contributing to your 401(k) is the right thing to do. And realizing that you have no business being “like an uncle” to an attractive young woman is also the right thing to do. And explaining that to her might be one of the best lessons she ever gets in life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s say you give some wise advice to an attractive and somewhat naive young woman. Her parents have passed, and she is so very happy to get that sort of advice. She feels the need for a steady hand to help her through life, so she wants you to be … like an uncle. A … Continue reading “Betting on human nature”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}