Eating other people in survival situations

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The discussion centers on the moral implications of cannibalism in extreme survival situations, such as being stranded at sea. Participants debate whether it is acceptable to eat another person if it means survival, with some arguing that desperation can override moral considerations. The conversation references historical cases, such as the wreck of the Medusa and the Essex, where individuals faced dire choices regarding cannibalism. Many express that, in life-or-death scenarios, the instinct to survive may lead to actions typically deemed immoral. The discussion also touches on the psychological aspects of starvation and the potential for moral reasoning to be compromised under extreme conditions. Ultimately, the thread raises complex questions about the value of life, moral obligations, and the nature of survival instincts.
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Is it okay for people to eat each other in survival situations such as on rafts at sea, or should we be willing to die instead of stooping so low?
My own personal thought on this is that when the human body gets desperate for nutrition and water the brain (in most people) shuts down its morality circuits and "squeamishness" circuits and says; "Hey! I don't want to suffer no more - get munching!" Maybe the prefrontal cortex gets damaged
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=76613503-E7F2-99DF-3E772052740833A2&ref=rss

What do you think?
 
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Are they first dead ? If yes, then yes, if no, then no.
 
Rade said:
Are they first dead ? If yes, then yes, if no, then no.

Blah, if you can eat them dead, you can eat them alive as well. "Hey, gimme that arm, will you!" :-p
 
I think it's "nicer" to eat something(one) after they die rather than chew on them and listen to the screaming. (Farm stuff)...BUT if I was REALLY starving, I would break their neck first, then chow down...it comes down to a situation that most of us have never been in (nor will ever be).
How can you know what you would do? You do not.
You might consider your morality and your convictions, but if it boils down to eat or be eaten, I'd be EATING...
 
Say you're drifting alone for too many days. Which part of your own body are you going to start eating?
 
Even reading this thread is nauseating.
 
If you accept the dictum that in all situations there exists at least one option that it is morally permissible for an individual to make in order to heighten his chances for physical survival, it follows that yes, there may be extreme cases in which it is permissible to eat another person.
(Of course, that other person will have the same right to eat you).
 
baywax said:
Say you're drifting alone for too many days. Which part of your own body are you going to start eating?

If we start answering this questions, I think this thread will get out of control and end up locked. :-p
 
baywax said:
Say you're drifting alone for too many days. Which part of your own body are you going to start eating?
My left earlobe.
I have never liked it much.
 
  • #10
I asked this question because there was a well known case relating to a French ship called the Medusa in 1816 AD when 145 people were left afloat on a raft and only 15 survived.It is considered to be one of the most appalling events in European history.But did extreme hunger change the brains of these people or were they already ruthless enough to do the job?
Hence the link:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=76613503-E7F2-99DF-3E772052740833A2&ref=rss
 
  • #11
arildno said:
My left earlobe.
I have never liked it much.

How on Earth would you do that?

I'd eat a piece of my bottom, but I don't know how on Earth I'd do that.

(Assume, of course, you don't posess any cutting device.)
 
  • #12
radou said:
Blah, if you can eat them dead, you can eat them alive as well. "Hey, gimme that arm, will you!" :-p
Hey radou,do you have any recollections of certain thread yesterday mentioning some "primitive tribes" that inhabit region of Balkan ? :rolleyes:
 
  • #13
tehno said:
Hey radou,do you have any recollections of certain thread yesterday mentioning some "primitive tribes" that inhabit region of Balkan ? :rolleyes:

You can't be serious. :-p
 
  • #14
I know one thing for sure:I haven't eaten human meat (raw / roasted/cooked) for nutrition purposes yet.Fortunately.
BTW,few years back I read this book describing true true story of plane crashers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alive:_The_Story_of_the_Andes_Survivors

Frightening and fascinating.
There is a translation of it in Croatian you can get in libraries/bookstores.
 
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  • #15
tehno said:
Well,I know one thing for sure:I haven't eaten human meat (raw / roasted/cooked) for nutrition purposes yet.
Fortunately.

Really? That's interesting. :biggrin:
 
  • #16
The only reason why we regard eating others as "morally difficult", even when it is our sole chance of physical survival, is that such situations happen to be so rare that our habituation mechanism hasn't been set in motion.

If it were a common-place situation we found ourselves in, we wouldn't think it morally difficult to do so at all. And, we would still have the right to call ourselves moral individuals with a conscience.
 
  • #17
radou said:
If we start answering this questions, I think this thread will get out of control and end up locked. :-p

Actually, your body would be eating it's self. Your whole body would be your kidney pie, so to speak
 
  • #18
Perhaps it is better to have a kidney pie than a meat loaf..
 
  • #19
radou said:
How on Earth would you do that?

I'd eat a piece of my bottom, but I don't know how on Earth I'd do that.

(Assume, of course, you don't posess any cutting device.)

You could feed yourself and do crude "plastic" surgery at the same time!
 
  • #20
Gelsamel Epsilon said:
You could feed yourself and do crude "plastic" surgery at the same time!

Perhaps that's the beginning of a whole new era of plastic surgery.
 
  • #21
You can't ask a question like that. The first question you have to ask is if you would eat human as delicacy. If so, you would have no problem eating a man if you were starving. On the other hand you would be very afraid to eat another man if you never given it any thought. Both questions create very interesting investigation.
 
  • #22
raolduke said:
You can't ask a question like that. The first question you have to ask is if you would eat human as delicacy. If so, you would have no problem eating a man if you were starving. On the other hand you would be very afraid to eat another man if you never given it any thought. Both questions create very interesting investigation.

Well, I guess that the "delicacy-issue" most definitely wouldn't create an interesting investigation.
 
  • #23
I forgot to mention that I love Nietzsche. So.. Would a noble man eat another man in any circumstance? or.. Would a surviver of things resort to their last chance like they always do? Examples of 2 very different lifestyles and mindsets.
 
  • #24
verdigris said:
Is it okay for people to eat each other in survival situations such as on rafts at sea, or should we be willing to die instead of stooping so low... What do you think?

if above question can be rephrased to "would you rather eat someone or starve to death", I say I would eat someone.

our Mother Nature is the greatest judge of all things; She would punish me for not eating with death, and reward for eating with another few moments of life, so She probably thinks eating others for your own survival is good thing. you might say, such an extreme cannibalism is naturally selected.
 
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  • #25
arildno said:
Perhaps it is better to have a kidney pie than a meat loaf..

So the criteria for a large majority of the members of the team (that gets lost and starving) would only be those people with lean muscle, no trans fatty acids, eat a lot of garlic and are already partially marinated in wine or beer.
 
  • #26
baywax said:
So the criteria for a large majority of the members of the team (that gets lost and starving) would only be those people with lean muscle, no trans fatty acids, eat a lot of garlic and are already partially marinated in wine or beer.

:smile: :smile:
 
  • #27
to add to my above opinion, if our morals allow us to kill people in wars for the sake of making some other people richer, there should be no problem with killing for the sake of your own life. if you morals says otherwise, it works against you - get rid of it.
 
  • #28
Why wouldn't you embrace death then? Are you so afraid of death that you have to resort to eating your friends and family? Why are you so greedy? Why wouldn't you allow your friends and family to eat you?
 
  • #29
I can answer this with words of Sunny from "I, Robot": I think it would be better not to die.
 
  • #30
raolduke said:
Why wouldn't you embrace death then? Are you so afraid of death that you have to resort to eating your friends and family? Why are you so greedy? Why wouldn't you allow your friends and family to eat you?
Eeh, which individuals have a moral OBLIGATION to lay down their own lives in order to let others get food?
 
  • #31
This goes back to being self serving or not. The only obligation you have is to a requirement for living - eating. This is all very human.. Saying most animals eat when they starve.
The act of choosing to overcome your bodies need for food by starving your self would ultimately prove to how strong your mind is or how weak your body is. If you allowed your friends/family to eat you then one could conclude that you were a "hero". You have no obligation to let them consume you and you certainly don't have to let your life fade away. You do have the choice to stay true to principle. If you are an individual who contemplates eating people or if you had vivid dreams of where you were given the choice to eat another person, you don’t not appear to share the same character values that I have.
There is no way to say weather that act is right or wrong because the act is satisfying one of the two needs that are necessary to survive - food and shelter. Since "food" is a bland word and it seems possible to survive by eating a fellow man then you are justified. But if your just having a taste, make it the brain.
 
  • #32
as for "hero" thing... there was a real story I once read in some book. mother gives her under-5-years-old son a pack of cakes and says "share it with your brother like brothers do", he replies "how's that", and she explains "give him more, keep less to yourself". boy does not think a minute and returns the package, saying "you better give it to my brother".
 
  • #33
The hero is heroic precisely because he makes a non-obligatory self-sacrifice.
That is another dimension to human life than the dimension that has to do with what is morally obligatory or not (of course, acts of heroic self-sacrifice are morally permissible, which is not relevant in this context)

In particular, you cannot fault anyone for not being heroes.
Nor can you fault anyone for performing the sole act that seems to secure their own physical survival.
 
  • #34
Do you want an example of self-sacrifice under the most dire circumstances? Google on "Owen Coffin" and perhaps on the ship's name "Essex". The whale who precipitated the disaster was Mocha Dick, the inspiration for Melville's murderous white whale.
 
  • #35
arildno said:
The hero is heroic precisely because he makes a non-obligatory self-sacrifice.
That is another dimension to human life than the dimension that has to do with what is morally obligatory or not (of course, acts of heroic self-sacrifice are morally permissible, which is not relevant in this context)

In particular, you cannot fault anyone for not being heroes.
Nor can you fault anyone for performing the sole act that seems to secure their own physical survival.

The true hero of the team was found frozen in an ice cave just metres from the camp. We were hungry so we started to peel his parka from his rock hard long johns and blue skin. We found a pepper grinder and a nice bottle of Chianti in one of his pockets and a note that simply said "gutten apéritif" which means "good eats" in Luxembourgish.

Luxembourgish is the local language of Luxembourg. Its a form of German with a strong admixture of French. Its also known as Letzeburgesch but this designation seems heavily influenced by the Deutch.

The man in the frozen long johns is a hero because he prepared himself for a dinner where he might be the main course. He alleviated his team member's hesitations about eating him by leaving an "AOK" to their sense of moral inhibitions with one, final, truly selfless act. In fact, once the parka was off, they found that his long johns had a red checker pattern to them, like a French table clothe.
 
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  • #36
What if you are a selfish single person with no wife,children etc. and you are on a raft with a guy who has 10 children,is happily married and who runs a charity - wouldn't you have a moral obligation to let him eat you?
Personally, I would think: "I'll eat him and make up for it by becoming a better person than he was!"
 
  • #37
verdigris said:
Personally, I would think: "I'll eat him and make up for it by becoming a better person than he was!"

How? By having 2 wives and 20 children? :biggrin:
 
  • #38
Radou said:
"How? By having 2 wives and 20 children"

And by running two charities!
On second thoughts - I'd rather be dead!
 
  • #39
verdigris said:
Radou said:
"How? By having 2 wives and 20 children"

And by running two charities!
On second thoughts - I'd rather be dead!

You bet. :biggrin:
 
  • #40
If someone said I could eat them I would laugh in their face. Whom ever started this thread what was the intent of this thread? What judgement do you pass to us if we agreed to eat a man?
 
  • #41
There is no judgement - it is interesting to learn what point of view people have.And whether we are dealing with a question of morality or something more complicated.Does morality matter in a survival situation.I would think for a hindu who believes in karma it does but what about an atheist?
The root of this thread is whether or not there are circumstances that justify actions most people would normally consider to be morally unacceptable.Are people entitled to do anything they can to preserve their lives? And are some people's lives more valuable than others? What do we mean by placing value on a life?
 
  • #42
Did anybody Google "Owen Coffin" as I suggested? He was a cabin boy and he was on a lifeboat with his uncle the captain, and a number of others after Mocha Dick attacked and sunk the Essex. Traditionally these whaling expeditions were outfitted by Quakers out of the Nantucket area, and these crew members came from a very staid and moralistic society. In desperation, the starving crew members made a pact to draw lots to see who would agree to be shot to provide food for the others. Owen "won" the lottery, and refused to surrender the "honor" to anyone else. Another young boy "won" the lottery selecting the person to execute him and pleaded with Owen to swap places with him, and again Owen refused. He was shot, and the others ate him, although his uncle refused to, and only engaged in cannibalism when another crew member died of starvation. The survivors were eventually rescued, although with life-long consequences for all of them. The Google trail will lead you through a number of accounts of this tragedy. It's one thing to hypothesize about such a situation - it's another to read the accounts of upright, deeply religious men who lived through it.
 
  • #43
The opposite, cowardly type of person would have a bracelet made that claims the person wearing the bracelet has every disease known to mankind and is not fit for consumption.
 
  • #44
i want one now. do you know where can i buy it?
 
  • #45
Its an all right question.. I just don't like it because you could find a ball park number for the chances of a situation occurring where you would have such a conflict. I like statements more than questions.. Like daily human action and human response - My head sends a message for me to reach for my shoes then walk. Gotta go to work, got to get a job.
 
  • #46
whatta said:
i want one now. do you know where can i buy it?

You can always get a tattoo for the same effect. Like "Grade B" or "Tainted meat".

Another thing is no one on the lost and starving team will be using the popular exclaimations "eat me!" or "bite me!".:rolleyes:
 
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  • #47
not even one?
 

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