RE: Richard Dawkins claims we should eat lab-grown human meat
March 18, 2018 at 8:19 am
(This post was last modified: March 18, 2018 at 8:27 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Where I stand? Oh, buddy, I aint gonna eat nobody. If I see somebody eating somebody Imma shoot that person..because zamby! It's a compelling taboo. That guy awhile back who was eating someones face on the freeway or whatevs..I'm surprised no one ran him over then backed over him -and- the person he was chewing on for good measure.
Not on my watch, zambys!
That said.....the cannibalism taboo, as compelling as it is to most of us....isn't grounded in any biological reality. It's a bit like the notion that eli whitney was black or mandela died in prison....only older. That we think taboo is derived from some underlying biological reality is, itself, another example of something like eli and mandela and cannibalism. Widely believed to be true, to "make sense"..but wholly un-grounded in reality. In this case the mistaken assumption serves to justify taboo, and to then justify specific taboos.
The cheeseburger taboo...the blasphemy taboo, the idolatry taboo.....on and on the list goes. We adhere to some, and not to others, the taboos are all cultural and our adherence (or discarding them) is similarly cultural. Now, I won't eat people.. if you ask me why..I won't say "because kuru" or "because does weird shit to your bloodism disease". I'll provide a flatly cultural, social, and personal reason. I know it wouldn't kill me or cause civilization to collapse or turn us into zambys or any of that. The value of taboo, in essence..is normative, not descriptive. It provides the reason in ignorance, in the absence of reason, or even in the face of reason..telling us "never do this" even if it seems like a good idea in the moment..say..you're a member of the donner party (none of which got kuru
).
Not on my watch, zambys!
That said.....the cannibalism taboo, as compelling as it is to most of us....isn't grounded in any biological reality. It's a bit like the notion that eli whitney was black or mandela died in prison....only older. That we think taboo is derived from some underlying biological reality is, itself, another example of something like eli and mandela and cannibalism. Widely believed to be true, to "make sense"..but wholly un-grounded in reality. In this case the mistaken assumption serves to justify taboo, and to then justify specific taboos.
The cheeseburger taboo...the blasphemy taboo, the idolatry taboo.....on and on the list goes. We adhere to some, and not to others, the taboos are all cultural and our adherence (or discarding them) is similarly cultural. Now, I won't eat people.. if you ask me why..I won't say "because kuru" or "because does weird shit to your bloodism disease". I'll provide a flatly cultural, social, and personal reason. I know it wouldn't kill me or cause civilization to collapse or turn us into zambys or any of that. The value of taboo, in essence..is normative, not descriptive. It provides the reason in ignorance, in the absence of reason, or even in the face of reason..telling us "never do this" even if it seems like a good idea in the moment..say..you're a member of the donner party (none of which got kuru
).
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