Would you partake in cannibalism?
@wanblygaleshka (72)
United States
March 29, 2008 12:26pm CST
I heard a report on the radio news the other day about the Donner Party, who spent the winter at the top of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in what is known today as "Donner Pass". It was an extremely brutal winter and they couldn't go anywhere. There was no hope of finding food, or of rescue at all. In order to survive they ate their dead.
We all know that in most societies there is a really strong taboo on cannibalism. But the question that came to my mind as I was listening to this story about the Donner Party, was this; "If you were to somehow find yourself in a similar situation, where your very life depended on it; would you partake in cannibalism in order to survive?"
2 people like this
4 responses
@Perry123 (363)
•
30 Mar 08
Intresting topic.
in some situations of "survival" , often when a party is discovred, the reaction of rescurs has been that no effort was made to use natural resources on which to eat first. No effort to hunt animal , and in one case of a plane crash there were many root vegetables and plants narby.
So I think it may be actually sometimes the first resource of urban man rather than the last.
In the rockies for example, there have been many incidents of cannibalism in the last century....yet native american tribes indigenous in these areas survived simply on the animals and plants sometimes for hundreds of years.
Also another thing worth discussing here.
Often many in the west fear islam and see it as backward.
Worth in this context to go back to a time where the shoe was on the other foot.
we in the west are very rarely taught in schools the true nature of Christian crusades .
how many of you for example know that the word for crusader among many tribal desert moslems is still "cannibal"?
Worth noting that at first the vatican had difficulty in motivating crusaders...who were very devout, peaceful orders for example working with lepers, to fight. Various papal bulls had to absolve the knights in a holy war of all sin. Then the flood gates opened.
crusaders turned to cannibalism; much to the shock of the much more enlightened moslems. not all of course...people like Richard I in times of peace studied Islamic sciences like maths and astronomy which were far ahead of the west.
But for others, a moslem was just meat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma'arrat_al-Numan
Worth thinking about in any discussion of cannibalism and its motivaton.
1 person likes this
@wanblygaleshka (72)
• United States
30 Mar 08
Yes, the problem is Urban man now a days. But back then we were hunters and able to find food when it was available. At least compared to our modern standards. Modern urban mankind wouldn't last a week out in any wilderness. We've lost all the survival skills that our forefathers had. Unless you were taught them, like I was starting in Boy Scouts, and then in the Military also. I was in Special Operations/Forces, so I had to learn how to find, trap, kill, and butcher my own food with nothing more than a knife, string, etc. But there aren't many ppl that have undergone that type of training. Making a fire without matches or lighter can be done, but it takes learning how.
But again, my point wasn't hunting, etc. it was faced with a situation where there was no other source of food, would you partake of cannibalism?
History ir replete with accounts of gross mistreatment of mankind at the hands of mankind. Politics and Religion are often at the heart of man's most cruel acts against his fellow man. The example you provide here is but one of many that don't really make it into the history books. We don't want to remember these kind of things. Let alone let other ppl know about it.
@wanblygaleshka (72)
• United States
30 Mar 08
Ah but the operative phrase there being if they used their heads. Most ppl have no idea how to do that. Western society has bred an entire culture of ppl that are more sheeple than people, they're trained not to think for themselves.
@emeraldisle (13139)
• United States
30 Mar 08
I don't think I can say for sure without being in that situation. I'd love to say no I wouldn't but when one is dying self preservation kicks in. Most will do whatever it takes to live. I hope I am never in such a situation as to have to find out for sure what I would do. Without being n that situation though I would have to say at least at this point I would do what ever it takes even if that means becoming a cannibal.
1 person likes this
@spanktastic2120 (172)
• United States
31 Mar 08
id eat it even if i wasnt starving, i dont have any sort of moral or cultural problem with eating humans flesh. the only reason i might not would be if it tasted terrible.
