Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris.

President Camacho · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:23 am Post subject:

The ideal society would be one in which everyone had the opportunity to spend their earnings how they saw fit. This includes the money set aside for taxes, should they choose to pay them. Obviously this is an impossibility but it is a goal that should always be sought by government. Taxes and tariffs garnish the earnings of men without their immediate consent and are used to pay for things that the earner of the income has not specifically asked for. Lowering taxes or making certain tax amounts obligatory and allowing people to choose how their tax dollars are spent saps a little redistributive power from the "big men". If everyone in the U.S. was asked to donate to the war in Iraq there probably would have been no war at all - or at least it would have already been over.

The crazy thing is that power creates more power. The monster keeps growing and growing. Now there will be universal health care. The idea of health care for all is magical. It's firecrackers, kittens, and baskets full of cookies. The fact is that now more of my tax dollars are going to be taken from me to pay for someone else's health. Some hypochondriac will get his daily checkup, some illegal immigrant will give birth, some woman lying in a coma for 20 years with no hope of recovery will get care all on my dime. I don't want to see someone die but I don't want to put a yoke around my neck every time someone gets a cough. I want my freedom. I want to spend my money how I see fit.

The nation state IS a necessary evil. If it gives you things you want without taking your freedom, then it wouldn't be. It does. The "organization" might look good from far away but as soon as you're able to get a close up view of all the sordid details, the chaos, corruption, incompetence, and injustice becomes very apparent.

I agree with you that local governments are more regressive and seem more corrupt. I've read that they usually are.

States don't have the right the secede. Texas has tried on several occasions and so have the Florida Keys from Florida. The monster wouldn't allow that to happen.

I have to admit that it is better. We have enjoyed relative tranquility when compared to all the international disputes the Europeans have because of different ideals and close borders. There are costs to everything, I imagine.

Ophelia · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:09 am Post subject:

Chapter 8: I agree that this chapter is uninspiring.

President Camacho · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 2:42 pm Post subject:

Chapters 9 and 10 are my favorite so far. They tie in the pleistocene extinctions as an explanation for the practice of cannibalism. That over population and lack of suitable sources of protein are reason enough for hungry people to seek it within the flesh of other human beings. The abundance of protein supplied by prisoners of war, slaves, and other human sacrifices was a notable protein supplement within many native American cultures. For the Aztecs, people were regularly killed, butchered as any European ruminant, distributed, and then eaten.

Morals are also discussed. I, like Harris, would believe that the common westerner assumes that these people lacked some moral character that allowed them to be cannibals. That they sought human flesh over ruminant flesh. Harris explains how eating people was a political choice made in the face of depleted and non-existing resources. That Europeans were able to refrain from cannibalism because of access to large domesticated animals.

Harris also brings up the cost/benefit analysis. This type of analysis always plays well with me. I enjoy logical arguments. Harris thinks like an anthro- economist when trying to figure out motives for the actions of ancient peoples. The cost/benefit for cannibalism for some of the Mesoamericans was such that the practice of it seems inevitable. Of course, I'm going on the information that Harris has given but it seems very likely that in order to keep a civilization intact the people would need their leaders well taken care of. The flesh of the sacrificed was distributed by priests to the owners of the sacrificed. So whoever brought the sacrifice was given the lion's share of meat. I imagine a peasant or a slave might have well been on the menu every day. This wasn't needed in other parts of the world that had access to protein in the form of buffalo, camel, sheep, and cow.

The moral opinion a person might have is something of geographical luck. The person lucky to be born into an area abounding with large ruminants could look down on someone practicing cannibalism in dismay. Take all the sources of protein away from someone long enough, surround him with human slaves, give him a spear... and see how long it takes for him to put a nice chunk of meat on his plate.

There are many civilizations that have practiced sacrificing humans. It's a short step from watching a hungry peasant take the body away to make a meal of it to having others in the village think about doing the same thing. The leaders would soon want a good meal too and would assert their power in order to keep the bodies for themselves. Soon the civilization would take a new course. Humans would be regularly eaten. It would be common place. New rituals and religions would be created, new recipes would be produced, and new sacrifices would be feverishly sought.

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:34 am Post subject:

Chapter 9: cannibalism.

There is a lot to say here. I'm going to deal with chapter 10 later, because for now I am trying to: discuss ch 9, answer your post, quote from different sources and... answer a question of mine!

Harris starts chapter 9 in a way that is logical to me: by focusing on Cortes and the Spaniards in 1519:

"As well-trained, methodical butchers of the battlefield and citizens of the land of the Inquisition, Cortez and his men , who arrived in Mexico in 1519, were inured to displays of cruelty and bloodshed."

I am not opposed to a matter-of-fact view of cannibalism in the development of human societies (as you noted, Harris's explanation that there was no other source of protein is plausible) but I imagine that in the case of the Aztec this is not the only explanation.

It seems that Cortes and his men were greatly shocked by what was happening, although they themselves were used to killing and torturing, or at least seeing the Inquisition torture others. Were they just hypocrites, thinking such acts were evil in another people but justified when the Spaniards were brutal?
In this part of my analysis I want, for once, to think in moral terms. I'll think of a triangle with: the Spanish soldiers and their moral views, the Aztec and their own, and ... me and my views.
From my point in the triangle, the Spanish and the Aztec were equally bad, and the reason is this: Starting with the worst horror as "1", I would say:

1- torture is the worst
2- Killing comes next.
3- cannibalism third.

Both groups practised the first two. However, I believe that the Spanish soldiers, monsters though they were, sincerely believed theat the acts of the Aztec were worse. We in the twenty first century and in a part of the world that is much influenced by Christian values are the descendents of the Spanish so to speak, but historically we are also the descendents of civilizations that practised cannibalism at one time.
The feeling of horror for me and the spaniards is the shock of something you've never seen (or much read about) before. Whatever dreadful things we hear on the news everyday, they never include cannibalism.
I'd say the disgust also comes from having to project yourself so far backwards in time: if we were to resort to this again, it seems that all the things we've been trying to build for so many years (democracy, human rights) would be lost.
Yet I would also say that if we were to compare a hypothetical cannibal society of the twenty first century and what is happening everywhere in the world, the cannibals might not be worse than the rest of the world.

Now, the Spaniards were disgusted with several things: sacrificing a human being (as opposed to just killing any Indians who were unfortunate enough to be on the path of the invaders) would have been felt to be an abomination forbidden by the Christian God.
I found several referrences to human sacrifices in the Old Testament, but the Spanish would not necessarily have been aware of this, or if they had, they would have thought that what counted was the New testament, and what the priests told them in church.
Also, it was not just that the Aztec killed humans, it was the ritual, the religious aspect. I have seen some drawing of those scenes which are reminiscent of drawings of hell in representations from the Middle Ages: this would have had a very strong power to frighten and horrify in the sixteenth century. It would have been as if they had stepped in the very world described as hell in the Bible, which was the only thing that could terrify the brutes those soldiers must have been.
If have found a few examples of religious vocabulary used to describe the meeting of the two civilizations. One is from the site of a Catholic:

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:49 am Post subject:

I'll quote the following site not for the writing, but for the illustrations of cannibalism and the Aztec
Actually, the writing makes me appreciate Harris's dispassionate point of view all the more.

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/lifestyles.htm

Wikipedia also gives illustrations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:45 pm Post subject:

Camacho wrote:

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject:

The change from cannibalism to non-canibalism.

The articles I have read on the net say that cannibalism may have been widespread.
I wondered if one reason for the change could have been that people realized cannibalism could lead to disease in humans, just as happened with bovines and mad cow disease in the 1980's.

It seems that there are no certainties about this. Here is what I found:

President Camacho · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:55 pm Post subject:

i wrote a response to your first post but it has disappeared??? I'm super pissed!!!!! I'll type it up later. From now on I'm going to use microsoft word so that this doesn't happen again. Wow, I am really mad.

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:08 pm Post subject:

Camacho I'm sorry your post was lost.

It's happened to me too, and I keep telling myself to write my posts on WORD first, and then copy them. But I feel more motivated doing it the old way and writing on the Booktalk page directly.

I hope you won't cannibalize your computer out of anger... Wink

President Camacho · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:55 pm Post subject:

What I was trying to say in my original post is that cannibalism isn't necessarily a moral issue. The taboo of cannibalism is more an issue of ethics. It's wrong to eat people because society has made it so. Sacrificing someone is a moral and ethical issue. Somehow I think you're mixing up cannibalism with the practice of sacrificing people.

Take for instance your list. You list cannibalism with murder and torture. How is the consumption of inanimate flesh worthy of comparison with murder?

In my lost post I described the practice of cannibalism aboard ships lost at sea. Cannibalism was something that was taboo but everyone generally knew it occurred. It was so frequent that those aboard the Mignonette described their horrific ordeal to anyone that cared to hear the story until they were charged with murder. This was the first time anyone had been officially charged for the act of cannibalism by necessity. This was in 1884!!! Many crews lost at sea have resorted to drawing straws. The Essex tragedy is a good example of this and it was used in the trial of the Mignonette's crew as a precedent.

I also elaborated on Cortes in my lost post. He sunk in loads of his own money, left to conquer Mexico without approval from Velasquez, and sunk his own ships to ensure none of his soldiers would escape. He then claimed to be the "Satanic" god Quetzalcoatl and held Montezuma hostage. Some Aztecs were angry with Cortes and killed some of his soldiers. That group was rounded up and burned alive. The list goes on as I'm sure you know.

I think it's common knowledge that things we don't know are frightening and that these things commonly get blown out of proportion. Cortes was just accustomed to a different kind of evil. I'm sure the Aztecs thought Cortes was more brutish and barbaric than they were; a plague.

Ok, that quote you posted is garbage. I'm sure you know it is bologna.

President Camacho · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:09 pm Post subject:

I'm glad I got that out. Recapping everything I said in the original post makes my blood run hot.

To elaborate a little more on the issue of cannibalism being an ethical rather than a moral issue, I'll bring up the transubstantiation issue. Jesus asked the Apostles to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Whether this was metaphorical or not - they ate and drank. The act can be seen as a way of bringing Jesus inside of them. The same can be said of cannibalism. If I ate a dead relative, I could say that I wanted their "spirit" or "courage" or what have you, inside of me. The act, for me, would be morally correct and at the same time unethical within my American culture. Why? Because of group belief, not individual belief.

In my original post I proposed a way around the whole psychological brainwashing necessary to make cannibalism ethical. Take meat production today. Cows are raised, fed, killed, butchered, inspected, and packaged at centralized locations far removed from most of the population. The only thing people see is the end product and once in a while there is a special on tv that shows how barbaric the slaughtering actually is. Everyone is so removed that no one thinks twice about buying meat. I bet people would think different about eating a cheeseburger after actually watching the slaughtering, butchering... etc. in person.

So people could be processed the same way. The meat could even be called something different rather than "human" meat so that there would be a delineation between human and food. All anyone would see would be cheap, packaged meat at the supermarket. I'm sure after a while people would buy it as they do cow meat. If it were more expensive than ruminant meat, it could easily become a delicacy and maybe even popular.

It's not immoral to eat a dead human being. It's immoral to kill a person in order to eat them. There is a HUGE difference. Why bury people if we can consume them. Put them (respectfully) to some good use. Burying them in air-tight, expensive caskets is a stupid waste of resources.

President Camacho · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:34 pm Post subject:

After reading your posts, I'm inclined to think that the probable cause for Aztecs to cannibalize humans was a combination of show of force and hunger.

I seem to think that if there was enough animal protein available, the cost/benefit of eating people wouldn't be enough to sustain cannibalism. Vegetable proteins are different. They are incomplete, unlike animal proteins. Aztecs would have needed to find the right vegetables to get all their amino acids. Besides, who wants to eat grass every day. I know I don't.

Eating smaller animals like dogs could have easily been something that was socially unacceptable or (more likely) wasn't a profitable way of producing meat. Like Harris says, dogs eat meat - unlike many ungulates.

The combination of terror and food is most likely. Why wouldn't they just rip the body apart and hang different pieces of it everywhere? Why did they need or want to eat some of it? There would be no need if it weren't for hunger. Of course politics was central to sacrificing people. Religion was very powerful and sacrificing people was an integral part of their religion. Like in other parts of the world, their religion was probably used for political gains. It all ties in together. The end result is probably less important than why it actually began. What prompted or motivated these people to eat other people?


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