From: Loki100l00@aol.com
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 00:20:52 MST
Well, I sit and watch these barbs go back and forth, and while I could wail
"Can't we all just get along!?" I have come to realize that you two, Hermit
and Mermaid, rather enjoy this yourselves.
But it does leave me not really wishing to enter the back and forth, but
rather to comment more detached like this.
I don't really put much stock in these arguments about what other animals do
or don't do, vis a vis cannibalism, and its implications for human morality
or immorality. I think this comes down to some sort of "naturalness" thing,
. . . do this or don't do this natural/unnatural thing. As far as the rest
of the animal kingdom goes, and even for humans throughout much of their
prehistory, cannibalism, while not a frequent (say . . . every day or so)
occurrence, certainly doesn't rate as a rare occurrence either.
But I don't think this makes for a good yardstick to talk about human
behavior. For other animals, it doesn't matter the longer range health risks
of cannibalism as long as the animal gets to live to reproduce successfully,
and if that means eating the young, the old, or simply another sexual
competitor to make it through a particularly lean season, then evolution will
favor the cannibalistic experimenter over the more strictly squeamish. And
for animals in extreme environments, say polar bears, it can even become a
matter of course, though their preferred food still remains those cute little
furry seals.
The truth however remains that cannibalism always carries higher disease
risks than other kinds of consumption, and I think that probably many if not
all animals have a certain amount of innate avoidance of the behavior, not
that they won't override this under the right circumstances.
And indeed, eating anyone close to you evolutionarily carries a certain
though lesser amount of the same risks, as parasitic entities cross over more
easily to similar kinds of hosts. Although that kind of understanding
remains for humans, who have both cultural drives to live long beyond
reproduction, and the ability to actually understand these things.
Obviously, of course, we have to eat. But on the whole and all other things
being equal, better to do so when possible, lower down on the food chain, and
further away from human relatives. This still leaves a lot of meat for us.
-Jake
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