Just when you think you’ve seen everything.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character in a series of suspense novels by Thomas Harris. He is a respected Baltimore forensic psychiatrist, as well as a cannibalistic serial killer.
By Ted Torrance
Newsweek on Cannibalism: Taboo Against Eating Human Flesh is ‘Unreasonable’
Many animals including mammals eat members of their own species, so perhaps in the future humans will “succumb to reason” and rethink our “taboo” against eating human flesh, Newsweek proposes in an article Wednesday.
CANNIBALISM IS COMMON IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM – HERE’S WHY FOR HUMANS IT’S THE ULTIMATE TABOO
There is “nothing necessarily unethical or unreasonable” about eating human flesh, declare psychologists Jared Piazza and Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University, and even when eating another human is “reasonable”, cannibalism is often “overridden by our feelings of repulsion and disgust.”
While not going so far as to recommend cannibalism, saying “there is no need to overcome our repulsion for the foreseeable future,” the two Newsweek authors suggest that humans could get over their disgust for human flesh “quickly” if they needed to.
“Many people develop disgust for all kinds of meat, while morticians and surgeons quickly adapt to the initially difficult experience of handling dead bodies,” they note. “Our ongoing research with butchers in England suggests that they easily adapt to working with animal parts that the average consumer finds quite disgusting.”
Breitbart report: Moreover, the psychological revulsion experienced over the prospect of consuming human flesh is not the product of reason and may even contradict reason, they argue in Wednesday’s article, which originally appeared last week in The Conversation.
“Survivors of the famous 1972 Andes plane crash waited until near starvation before succumbing to reason and eating those who had already died,” they propose.
All sorts of animals eat members of their own species, from spadefoot tadpoles and Australian redback spiders to gulls and pelicans, they state.
And cannibalism can even be found among mammals, they add, such as with many rodents as well as bears, lions, and chimpanzees.
Yet humans seem entrenched in their conviction that anthropophagy is simply wrong, no matter how many conditions are placed on hypothetical scenarios.
Human revulsion toward cannibalism stems from our tendency to associate “personhood and flesh,” the authors propose, even when the flesh in question is no longer living.
Even if we can bring ourselves to deem cannibalism morally acceptable, they contend, “we can’t silence our thoughts about the person it came from” and so our “bias” against eating human flesh persists.
“The way we interact with animals shapes the way we categorize them. Research shows that the more we think of animals as having human properties—that is, as being ‘like us”’—the more we tend to think they’re gross to eat,” they note.
While noting in passing that “philosophers have argued that burying the dead could be wasteful in the context of the fight against world hunger,” the authors ultimately do not propose breaking this taboo “for now,” saying that “we’re as happy as you are to continue accepting the ‘wisdom of repugnance.’”
Politically,
‘QAnon’ book claiming Democrats eat children is climbing the Amazon charts
Yet “QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening,” a book pushing wacky conspiracy theories, has become an Amazon AMZN, -0.98% best seller, cracking the top 75 among books sold on the site in recent days, according to NBC News.
The book, which says it was written by a dozen “anonymous Q followers, decoders and citizen journalists known collectively as Where We Go One We Go All (WWG1WGA),” claims that Democrats murder and eat children and that the government created AIDS, polio and Lyme disease. Then there’s the belief that the world is run by a Satanic cabal led by Hillary Clinton.
There’s more. So much more. But we’ll leave it there.
Scientifically speaking
Cannibalism Science
OUR ANCIENT CANNIBAL ANCESTORS SAW HUMANS AS AN EASY MEAL
Is Eating Humans Actually Unhealthy?
Cannibalism is a clear taboo in our society. But, putting ethics aside, what are the other reasons why you should not eat other humans?
Side Effects Of Eating Human Flesh: Cannibalism Increases Risk Of Prion Disease, And Eventually Death
What If You Only Ate Human Flesh?
Could we survive if we only ate humans!?
Meanwhile, a man in South Africa who walked into a police station carrying body parts claiming he was “tired of eating human flesh” has been jailed for life.
CANNIBAL ‘TIRED OF EATING HUMAN FLESH’ IS JAILED FOR LIFE
Traditional healer Nino Mbatha, 33, was convicted last month for murder along with Lungisani Magubane, 32, in a case that has shocked the country. The KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg heard how the victim was a 24-year-old woman, named as Zanele Hlatshwayo.
Police said that in August 2017, Mbatha came to the police station and said he needed assistance. He then took out a human hand and leg from his bag, The Witness reported. He told officers he was “tired of eating human flesh” and took them to a house where more body parts were found.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Natasha Ramkisson-Kara said that Magubane had earlier approached Mbatha for some traditional medicine, known as “muti,” that would bring him luck. Mbatha advised him that the ancestors required blood to be spilled and told him to bring a woman or child.
In July 2017, Magubane took the woman, who was in Estcourt, to a place where Mbatha slit her throat and beheaded her, Estcourt News reported.
Constable Ryan Ntshalintshali testified last month that officers found a jar containing what appeared to be human ears, jaws and teeth. He said the smell was so terrible he and the others were forced to exit the home.
“I opened the door. There was one room which was divided by a curtain … we went inside…there was lots of stuff and muti,” the officer said.
The men had removed the victim’s organs, hands, feet and other soft tissue. Seven people were initially arrested. A third man was acquitted.
Agence France Press reported that at earlier hearings in Estcourt, angry residents had gathered outside the court to protest against the grisly murder which Judge Peter Olsen described as “the most heinous crime.”
South Africa has no specific law against cannibalism, but mutilating a corpse and being in possession of human tissue are criminal offenses.
Whaddaya Say?