Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

 

Sticking to a theme as I am wont to do, here I go again about our culture’s confused idea of freedom.  Msgr. pointed me to an article written last year by one, Sam Vaknin, who for some curious reason decided to write an apologia for, of all things, cannibalism.

Now I am not aware of any large constituencies who are pushing for the legalization of cannibalism, but then again, I don’t get around much these days.  Vaknin’s motivation is not my primary concern; rather, it is his rationale.

One thing I can appreciate about Vaknin is his attempt to attend to proper distinctions.  Though as I will show, I do not think he is always successful.  He distinguishes among three types of cannibalism.  There are two non-consensual types which he passes over with just a description. Since the concern is freedom, he obviously devotes his attention to the one consensual type.  Now who in the world would consent to cannibalism?  Unfortunately, it has happened…but I will spare you the details. 

He asks some easily addressed questions such as what is the difference between organ donation and consensual cannibalism (let me answer: organ donation provides often the only chance for life saving therapy, cannibalism is a pathology).  Nevertheless, for any American who accepts his presumption as to what constitutes freedom (and the amoral, utilitarian ethic that goes with it), others of his arguments (in the form of questions for which he seems to assume there are obvious answers) will be hard to refute.

Why is stem cell harvesting (from aborted fetuses) morally superior to consensual post-mortem cannibalism?

Consensual cannibalism is not the equivalent of drug abuse because it has no social costs. Unlike junkies, the cannibal and his meal are unlikely to harm others. What gives society the right to intervene, therefore?

If we own our bodies and, thus, have the right to smoke, drink, have an abortion, commit suicide, and will our organs to science after we die – why don’t we possess the inalienable right to will our delectable tissues to a discerning cannibal post-mortem (or to victims of famine in Africa)?

When does our right to dispose of our organs in any way we see fit crystallize? Is it when we die? Or after we are dead? If so, what is the meaning and legal validity of a living will? And why can’t we make a living will and bequeath our cadaverous selves to the nearest cannibal 

Here he assumes that freedom is the libertine license to do as one chooses.  In other words, if it does not obviously hurt someone than the right to do anything must be accorded to an individual or you are denying them their freedom.  It escapes those espousing this thinking that damage can be indirect and hard to detect, but real nonetheless when freedom is not directed to serving the truth.  Freedom is not a zero sum game in which it must be surrendered only circumspectly and in cases of grave necessity.  Rather, it increases and flourishes only when actions are carefully discerned and directed toward the truth.

I should mention that Vaknin attempts to deal with the morality of cannibalism by trying to argue that proscriptions against it (when murder is not involved) are simply social conventions; let me address some of these.

Cannibalism is often castigated as “unnatural”. Animals, goes the myth, don’t prey on their own kind.  Alas, like so many other romantic lores, this is untrue. Most species – including our closest relatives, the chimpanzees – do cannibalize. Cannibalism in nature is widespread and serves diverse purposes such as population control (chickens, salamanders, toads), food and protein security in conditions of scarcity (hippopotamuses, scorpions, certain types of dinosaurs), threat avoidance (rabbits, mice, rats, and hamsters), and the propagation of genetic material through exclusive mating (Red-back spider and many mantids). Moreover, humans are a part of nature. Our deeds and misdeeds are natural by definition. Seeking to tame nature is a natural act. Seeking to establish hierarchies and subdue or relinquish our enemies are natural propensities. By avoiding cannibalism we seek to transcend nature. Refraining from cannibalism is the unnatural act.

While he is only trying to show that an argument that says it is unnatural does not work, he seems to presume that humans cannot be assumed to be anything more than an animal.  Later he is a little more explicit:

The anthropocentric chauvinistic view is that it is permissible to kill all other animals in order to consume their flesh. Man, in this respect, is sui generis.  Yet, it is impossible to rigorously derive a prohibition to eat human flesh from any known moral system. As Richard Routley-Silvan observes in his essay “In Defence of Cannibalism”, that something is innately repugnant does not make it morally prohibited. Moreover, that we find cannibalism nauseating is probably the outcome of upbringing and conditioning rather than anything innate.

Vankin demonstrates the wisdom of Gaudium et spes; without God we become very confused about ourselves.  His thinking militates against the passive capitulation to moral and religious pluralism (i.e. the tacit rejection of the Church’s mission) that too many today want to take.  However, even the Greeks could see that rational animals were morally superior to the non-rational.  Nevertheless, his argument here is exceedingly weak.  Free will is natural to humans and free will is what makes morality possible.  Thus moral decisions can be seen to be natural to men where they would not be to non-rational animals.  Furthermore, simply hypothesizing that the repulsion to cannibalism is just conditioning (which is not something one can prove) does not explain its extreme rarity.

A final curiosity which is sure to confirm for any ”Fundies” who might have been getting “soft” about Catholicism, that Catholics really are the bane of Christianity, Vaknin uses Transubstantiation to argue that cannibalism is morally licit for Christians.  Here he stops too short of properly understanding the nature of Transubstantiation.  Just a few distinctions off the top of my head which undermine his equation of the two.  In cannibalism, the separated meat is dead flesh, no longer belonging to the substantial form (soul) of the person being eaten (even if the person is still alive).  Eating the person, or part of them, depletes his material substance.  At most, it will temporarily sustain the cannibal solely in his natural life.  In the Eucharist, the Host still belongs to the Substantial Form, and so to Christ.  It does not deplete His material Substance and is not dead flesh, but His Resurrected Flesh.  Normally, the Eucharist does little to sustain natural life, but it is the Food which leads to Supernatural life–the Medicine of Immortality.  Furthermore, it was Commanded by God who (though not in a voluntarist sense) may authorize actions that could not be authorized by solely human authority.

But back to my main point, the idea that as long as an action is not obviously harming someone, it must be allowed, is the (il)logical consequence of our culture’s deformed, libertarian definition of freedom.  I cannot imagine there being a mad crush for the freedom to cannibalize anytime soon, but then again, the moral sickness from abusing our freedoms has deadened us to the horror of killing our unborn babies…I suppose eating them may not be that big a step after all.