I Could Eat You Up...

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

In return for coming to treat them like brothers, and tell them the commands of our lord God and the king, they were preparing to kill us and eat our flesh, and had already prepared the pots with salt and peppers and tomatoes.
-Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain


Greetings and welcome to the Un-Zone, a site that can radically change your life in thirty minutes or less, unlike most self-help books. Whether or not the change is a good thing, well, I never made any promises. After a week of law school and a bout of insomnia during the weekend, I'm in the mood for posting. And not just on any subject, but on a topic that most will find...well...questionable. Maybe even bizarre.
On the other hand, since this is my blog and I have a certain reputation to be off-the-wall sometimes, this shouldn't be too surprising a topic coming from me. What could this topic be? Cannibalism. Yes, Hannibal Lecter's predilection.

You're probably thinking, "What the...cannibalism? Why this topic? Are you crazy or something?" To make a long story short, I'm reading a book by Reay Rannahill called Flesh and Blood and it describes the history of this most unusual and interesting act.

To state the obvious, which makes for a very good beginning, most modern societies abhor the idea of cannibalism. It is a taboo subject not meant to be mentioned. People have written about varous subjects like murder, incest, and other wrongs and have dissected the topics in a million ways. But cannibalism, now that's a subject few thread.
We've been told and taught that "Eating people is wrong." One can also include "Killing people is wrong" and "Lying is wrong." In general, these rules are valid and like many other rules, exceptions apply like killing someone in self-defense, but only as a last resort. One can generalize that commiting one of these acts without real justification is wrong. However, the rule against cannibalism is unlike these rules in two important aspects: thinking about commiting this act is seen as wrong also and being justified in commiting cannibalism is socially unacceptable.
Let's tackle the thinking aspect. It's well accepted that thinking about commiting a wrong act is not a crime and it is not socially unacceptable in any way. We all have had these thoughts at one time or another, some more frequently than others. We can freely admit that we've thought about hitting someone (battery) or wanting something that we don't have but someone else does (envy or possibly theft), or killing someone you just didn't like (murder or manslaughter). But you rarely hear anyone say in all honesty, "I want to eat that person." The previously made statement was worded incorrectly. Eating someone in a literal sense, as in partaking of their flesh in a Lecterish way. Just thinking of that makes you wrong.
OK...I'm now establishing that I'm not a normal person, at least with the thinking process and what exactly is in my head. Now let's go to the justified cannibalism. We should know about the Donner Party. They ate dead people to survive. A celebrated story involved a plane crash in the Andes. And a most famous legal case involved killing a person and eating them to survive. Even then, people still regarded this behavior as creepy, even though it was the only possible way to survive long enough to get help.

And yet, society in an unconscious way, despite the ingrained teaching of "eating people is wrong," gives support to this behavior. Have you seen The Silence of the Lambs? That movie won several Oscars and gave us the classic line of "I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti", despite Lecter's cannibalism. It's creepy and shocking. Of course, one might consider other factors as to why people saw this movie, but you're paying money to see a cannibalistic character. If people didn't like the movie, there wouldn't be the (in my opinion)inferior sequel.
The phrases we use. "We're going to eat the competition for lunch" or "You're so good looking, I could eat you up" or "Take a bite our of crime." Some phrases are of a more sexual nature when referring to certain sexual acts which shall not be described in this blog. I'm very sure that readers of this blog know what I am referring to. Why do we have these phrases that make references to cannibalism, despite our dislike of it? Yes, it is figurative language and it should not be taken literally, but doesn't it seem creepy none the less? Cannibalism is OK just as long as it's figurative and not physical? Doesn't that explanation make perfect sense but no sense at all given the supposedly taboo nature of the subject? Or I might be thinking way too much.
Finally, the reference to cannibalism that will open up a big can of worms. Religion. In particular, the rite of Communion. The eating of the body of Christ and drinking the blood of Christ. Cannibalism AND vampirism in one holy rite. Now, most people will consider this to be symbolic in nature. Then again, the Catholic Church with the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 made the act of eating bread and wine to be the literal thing. The doctrine of substantiation. In 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith banned the ordination of those suffering from coeliac disease as sufferers of this disease are allergic to wheat products. You can't have gluten-free Hosts, as they really aren't Hosts; since it is Chrsit's body, one can't accept substitutes. Of course, the Church might have reverted back to the ancient doctrine stated in the Didache. Certain Orthodox branches still are symbolic. Cannibalism is bad, but if it's part of a religious ritutal, then it's OK, whether the cannibalism is symbolic or literal. Anyways, I digress.

Am a saying cannibalism is a good thing? No. I'm just pointing out the odd inconsistencies in our own thinking, myself included. We see cannibalism as an inherently bad thing. Those who practice it or condone it are evil and Godless and barbaric. If you resort to cannibalism to survive, you're forgiven but socially stigmatized. And yet, people consider symbolic cannibalism in the religion of "modern" and "civilized" people. Watching cannibalism being portrayed in movies is fine, as it is not real cannibalism. We refer to cannibalism in figurative language and see nothing wrong with it, despite cannibalism being ingrained in our minds as bad.

I hope you have enjoyed your ride through my mind. I probably have most of you wondering if I am sane. I assure you, I am, but the voices in my head are not. That's all for now.