stealing food from others, thus causing their deaths;
killing others to eat them.
This has two social consequences:
descendants of food thieves feel superior to descendants of cannibals;
some of the cannibals made a virtue of a necessity, therefore bequeathing a religion of ritualized cannibalism and terror to their descendants, rationalizing this practice with the belief that Satan had defeated God during the Fall. (At least that is what the belief looks like to an outsider. I suspect that the details, which I have not yet reached, are worse.)
5 comments:
Hi, Paul!
An ethical point should be made: theft, per se, is a LESS evil injustice to perpetrate than it would be to kill and eat a fellow human. So if, in order for some men to keep their families alive during the chaos and famines after the Fall, they had to forcibly seize food from others, that's still a lesser crime than murder and cannibalism. Even if the seizure means the victims of the theft were were going to starve as a result.
Sean
In the regions that stayed below 0 C for long periods eating the frozen flesh of people who had died without your direct intervention was an option. Whether there would be enough of that food to make murder unnecessary is another matter.
Some cases where an aircraft crashes in a high altitude or high latitude area have resulted in cannibalism to survive.
Kaor, Jim!
But cannibalism, in such cases, was always a desperate last choice or option. And regarded with shame, disgust, self loathing, etc. And all this reminded me as well of Anderson's story "The Sharing of Flesh," focusing on cannibalism and how and why it might happen,
And I would include as well Anderson's older, "slighter" story "Welcome."
Ad astra! Sean
I have heard of ritual cannibalism of relatives who died naturally, but this had a tendency to give any disease the person died from to whoever ate the flesh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
So between avoiding the disease problem & having one less motive for murder, a taboo against cannibalism is beneficial & most societies have it. Thus when cannibalism is an unfortunate necessity for survival, those who do commit it will be ashamed & disgusted.
Kaor, Jim!
Taboos based on prudential reasons, to avoid disease, has occurred.
Ad astra! Sean
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