This site did (most emphatically) not make me queasy, not in the slightest. I found it incredibly entertaining and I am glad you shared it.
Thanks. Frankly, I posted it almost entirely because I was sure it would be excellent conversation/comment fodder...and I was right. :-)
My original reference to queasiness was not meant to suggest that I found the Hufu site physically nauseating; it actually takes quite a strong visual or physical stimulus to nauseate me. However, I felt a kind of ethical queasiness about the possibility that someone had done the taste-testing required to be able to determine if flavored tofu really had the taste of human flesh. I wouldn't want to eat my cat, even though she's not human and arguably is not even sentient. I would be even more reluctant to eat the flesh of a human, particularly one I had known well.
I note your comment about the apparent waste of good meat via embalming and burial, etc. But is it really a waste? Consider the circumstances under which many people die, nowadays; wasted by cancer, or the radiation and chemicals we use to treat it, for example. Would you really want to eat such meat? Your comment suggests that you would not. Also, if a corpse isn't immediately refrigerated after death, it becomes a haven for microorganisms that would make it unsafe to eat, all moral issues aside, and many times people are not discovered until hours after death even if their death is natural. So in order to avoid wasting corspes, so to speak, we would have to take advance measures, and those would be pretty repugnant in and of themselves, in my opinion. Do you want your friendly neighborhood grocer or mortician or whatever standing by your deathbed with a refrigeration unit so that your family's funeral feast will remain wholesome? I don't. Respectful cremation or even burial of our dead strikes me as more wholesome than the prospect of treating the moribund but still living members of our society as a yet another potential food source.
As for the moral issues, I have no theoretical problem with cannibalism--but only if the deceased agreed to that use of his/her remains in advance (as did Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land). Unfortunately, by allowing cannibalism with consent in theory I fear we would create in practice a society where everyone has at least one potential motive for murder. (The motive grows stronger if Hannibal Lector turns out to have been right and human flesh is unusually tasty to humans.) A society that permits cannibalism by consent would in effect have also made it acceptable to hamper investigation of any suspicious deaths by eating the evidence, and claiming that you had the deceased's leave to do so.
No, I think it is best that cannibalism remain taboo. There may be circumstances where it is appropriate to forgive someone who has engaged in it out of desperation, but it is foolhardy to make it permissible on a broad scale--even if the conditions under which it is permissible are limited by customs, rules, regulations, whatever.
My point was more that it seems a lot more useful to use human cadavers as a food source, rather than further polluting our planet, as well as taking up useable land, by pumping them full of chemicals and then sticking them in the ground, inside of a coffin which would make it hard for the soil to benefit, in any way, from such an internment. I most definately wouldn't want to eat humans, mostly for the same reason I tend to avoid shellfish and other marine-based meals. I mean, if I ate humans who ate fish, then that's just that much more mercury and lead in my body. No thanks! ;)
I think it's probably a good idea it remains taboo, as well. I just think that the current trend of embalming and internment to be even more grotesque than cannibalism. My family is already well-aware of my final wishes, in that regard.
I'm not much in favor of the practice of embalming either. I much prefer the idea of cremation, after culling any donatable organs. It can be done without fanfare and without embalming the body first--that was how my mother-in-law dealt with my father-in-law's remains. My father-in-law was over 6 feet tall, but his post-cremation remains fit in a cardboard box that was about 6 inches high and 8 inches wide. After cremation, the remains can be buried to help the soil as you suggest (we buried my father-in-law's remains at the foot of a tree).
But even though embalming is bad, I think cannibalism would be worse. I'm glad we agree on that.
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Re: Random Thoughts...
Thanks. Frankly, I posted it almost entirely because I was sure it would be excellent conversation/comment fodder...and I was right. :-)
My original reference to queasiness was not meant to suggest that I found the Hufu site physically nauseating; it actually takes quite a strong visual or physical stimulus to nauseate me. However, I felt a kind of ethical queasiness about the possibility that someone had done the taste-testing required to be able to determine if flavored tofu really had the taste of human flesh. I wouldn't want to eat my cat, even though she's not human and arguably is not even sentient. I would be even more reluctant to eat the flesh of a human, particularly one I had known well.
I note your comment about the apparent waste of good meat via embalming and burial, etc. But is it really a waste? Consider the circumstances under which many people die, nowadays; wasted by cancer, or the radiation and chemicals we use to treat it, for example. Would you really want to eat such meat? Your comment suggests that you would not. Also, if a corpse isn't immediately refrigerated after death, it becomes a haven for microorganisms that would make it unsafe to eat, all moral issues aside, and many times people are not discovered until hours after death even if their death is natural. So in order to avoid wasting corspes, so to speak, we would have to take advance measures, and those would be pretty repugnant in and of themselves, in my opinion. Do you want your friendly neighborhood grocer or mortician or whatever standing by your deathbed with a refrigeration unit so that your family's funeral feast will remain wholesome? I don't. Respectful cremation or even burial of our dead strikes me as more wholesome than the prospect of treating the moribund but still living members of our society as a yet another potential food source.
As for the moral issues, I have no theoretical problem with cannibalism--but only if the deceased agreed to that use of his/her remains in advance (as did Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land). Unfortunately, by allowing cannibalism with consent in theory I fear we would create in practice a society where everyone has at least one potential motive for murder. (The motive grows stronger if Hannibal Lector turns out to have been right and human flesh is unusually tasty to humans.) A society that permits cannibalism by consent would in effect have also made it acceptable to hamper investigation of any suspicious deaths by eating the evidence, and claiming that you had the deceased's leave to do so.
No, I think it is best that cannibalism remain taboo. There may be circumstances where it is appropriate to forgive someone who has engaged in it out of desperation, but it is foolhardy to make it permissible on a broad scale--even if the conditions under which it is permissible are limited by customs, rules, regulations, whatever.
By the way, Eric sends smooches.
Re: Random Thoughts...
My point was more that it seems a lot more useful to use human cadavers as a food source, rather than further polluting our planet, as well as taking up useable land, by pumping them full of chemicals and then sticking them in the ground, inside of a coffin which would make it hard for the soil to benefit, in any way, from such an internment. I most definately wouldn't want to eat humans, mostly for the same reason I tend to avoid shellfish and other marine-based meals. I mean, if I ate humans who ate fish, then that's just that much more mercury and lead in my body. No thanks! ;)
I think it's probably a good idea it remains taboo, as well. I just think that the current trend of embalming and internment to be even more grotesque than cannibalism. My family is already well-aware of my final wishes, in that regard.
Re: Random Thoughts...
I'm not much in favor of the practice of embalming either. I much prefer the idea of cremation, after culling any donatable organs. It can be done without fanfare and without embalming the body first--that was how my mother-in-law dealt with my father-in-law's remains. My father-in-law was over 6 feet tall, but his post-cremation remains fit in a cardboard box that was about 6 inches high and 8 inches wide. After cremation, the remains can be buried to help the soil as you suggest (we buried my father-in-law's remains at the foot of a tree).
But even though embalming is bad, I think cannibalism would be worse. I'm glad we agree on that.