Why are there modern day, blanket objections to cannibalism?
It surely can’t be because it’s “uncivilized”. We have a much clearer vision of how particular cultural norms do not, necessarily, define “civilization”. We’re hardly going to impose one set of cultural values arbitrarily upon several other cultures or their heritage, are we?
And it surely can’t be geographic. You can find cannibalism on just about every continent. You can find it everywhere from the Aztecs to the family of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
There are concerns about certain kinds of transmissible illness, but proper cooking, and a certain selectivity about precisely which parts one eats, can reduce that concern significantly, just as we no longer need to consider trichinosis a major barrier to the consumption of pork.
Nutritional? Hardly. A properly-nourished human, by definition, contains many (if not most) vitamins and minerals essential to healthy human life. Can you say the same about a hunk of soybean-based protein?
Situational? Sure. One can’t simply go around taking people home and consuming them, unless, obviously, it’s a weekend. But that’s fine. We simply need a reasonable framework for deciding when to do such a thing—for example, as with certain other kinds of ethically-harvested meat, we might engage in this sort of feast only after someone has passed away from natural causes. I mean, if we can agree—even be urged—to donate our organs after death, whyever can’t we agree to donate our entire bodies?
No, I think the answer is something quite ugly, and, in my eyes, unfortunate.
I think the objection to cannibalism is that you are ALL TOO DELICIOUS.
I think somebody in power figured it out.
Because most people don’t have the opportunity to learn. And most people assume that if they DID have to learn, it would be in a situation of extreme difficulty.
Which it was.
And somebody would probably have to die.
Or several somebodies.
And we all figure that if we had to do it, we’d do it and apologize to the family and try to forget it.
We definitely don’t go around thinking we’ll believe it was actually kinda good.
We most assuredly didn’t think it would be excellent: tender, sure, but much less like pork, more like a beef with perhaps a Korean flair, a certain sweetness, a smoky aftertaste, an…
At any rate, I don’t think humans should start eating humans. Because it would be morally wrong. Although it would reduce supermarket checkouts significantly. And shopping mall crowds. And amusement park lines. And…
…and it would be terrible, as we’re all quite aware.
People taste awful.
Honest.
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“It’s a little-known fact, but Unicorns are something like 20% paint, and their horns are stolen exclusively from endangered species.”
― There and Never, Ever Back Again
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