Weekly Blog #5

It would be interesting to see how people’s opinions vary on what is acceptable or not in terms of cannibalism. Some people may say it is never alright to practice cannibalism, but what if that was the only means of survival and your choices are to eat someone else or die? This then also brings up the question if the person to be eaten is already dead or not. And also, this could add an unexpected twist to the question: would you give up your life in order to save someone else. These are all scenarios where cannibalism is chosen as a means of survival, indicating that if other reasonable means of survival were available, then they would be chosen instead. But what if someone chose to eat this way, not as a necessity, but by choice and perhaps for pleasure? A good example of this would be Hannibal Lecter. He didn’t have to kill and eat others in order to survive, but it was something he chose to do, carefully planned and executed, for his pleasure. I think most people would agree that this is unacceptable mainly because of the unjust and unnecessary ending of another innocent person’s life, just to fulfill the morally deviant pleasures of another. But then again, what if this immoral guilty pleasure was indulged by the ending of a not-so-innocent person’s life, a death-row inmate for example, would that make this practice more acceptable?