Because when all else fails, eating people can help reduce one's carbon footprint.
IT IS the ultimate taboo: in most societies, the idea of one human eating another is morally repugnant. Even in circumstances where it could arguably be justified, such as when a plane crashed in the Andes in 1972 and starving passengers ate the dead to survive, we still have a deep aversion to cannibalism. One of the survivors, Roberto Canessa, has since described the passengers' actions as a "descent towards our ultimate indignity".
Ethically, cannibalism poses fewer issues than you might imagine. If a body can be bequeathed with consent to medical science, why can't it be left to feed the hungry? Our aversion has been explained in various ways. Perhaps it is down to the fact that, in Western religious traditions, bodies are seen as the seat of the soul and have a whiff of the sacred. Or maybe it is culturally ingrained, with roots in early modern colonialism, when racist stereotypes of the cannibal were concocted to justify subjugation. These came to represent the "other" to Western societies – and revulsion towards cannibalism became a tenet of their moral conscience.
A slew of recent archaeological discoveries is now further complicating how we think about human cannibalism. Researchers have unearthed evidence suggesting that our hominin ancestors ate each other surprisingly often. What's more, it seems that they weren't always doing so for the reasons you might expect – for sustenance or to compete against and intimidate rivals – but often as funerary rituals to honour their dead.
During a sustainable food conference five years ago, a Swedish scientist suggested that climate change was the reason our prehistoric ancestors resorted to cannibalism and might be a contemporary option. A little over a year ago, The New York Times published an op-ed floating this very idea and the New Scientist piece even goes so far as to cite the Aghori, a Hindu sect that includes cannibalism as part of their religious practices.
Late last year, a Pew Research study revealed that trust is science is severely on the decline and the COVID-19 pandemic obviously had largely contributed to. What's worse is that government agencies, like the CDC and FDA, are going to contribute to undermining scientific inquiry by including so-called social justice practices including indigenous knowledge in their guidelines.
So much for follow the science since the Biden variety incorporates myths and superstitions that real science is supposed to oppose. None the less, with the left promoting such practices, like switching to a vegan diet or consuming insects, as alternatives to eating meat this might be an indication as to how far they are willing to push the envelope of acceptable behavior.
However, as opposed to the animal kingdom, there is a reason why the vast majority of human beings won't eat each other since society would degenerate into barbarism. In many ways, the latest effort highlight cannibalism as an option is not surprising in many ways and you can't blame the left if they truly want to practice what they preach when it comes to eating their own.
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