What is interesting to me about the Katrina issue is that of timing — and the fact that it involved active killing. Eating of the already-dead, while definitely distasteful, seems like less of a moral "jump" for me. (If I were dead, and someone needed to resort to eating me to survive, I would certainly not hold it against them. As long …
What is interesting to me about the Katrina issue is that of timing — and the fact that it involved active killing. Eating of the already-dead, while definitely distasteful, seems like less of a moral "jump" for me. (If I were dead, and someone needed to resort to eating me to survive, I would certainly not hold it against them. As long as they didn't kill me, first!)
As an aside, the students and I did have a long discussion of the ethics of cannibalism in one of the classes. What was amusing to me is that they were very unwilling to oppose it on purely moral grounds. So when I pressed them as to reasons that one might NOT want to commit cannibalism (again, framed as just "eating the dead for purely survival purposes," not murder), the best they could come up with was that human flesh is high in sodium and fat. I thought that was pretty funny...!
I'd forgotten about the euthanasia incident. That's certainly on point.
But i'd recalled Katrina while reading this post for another reason: the friendly neighbours who were shooting at people walking down the expressway in an attempt to leave the city. This was a shocking act but I wasn't much surprised. There is a cohort of rural gun-owners in the US who are only too ready to murder (ahem, defend their property) all of those nasty city-dwellers, come the Big One.
I can't think of any literature suggestions that haven't already been mentioned. But have you seen Michael Haneke's film, Le Temps du loup? It's brilliantly understated, and shocking at all the right moments. Like all of his work.
What is interesting to me about the Katrina issue is that of timing — and the fact that it involved active killing. Eating of the already-dead, while definitely distasteful, seems like less of a moral "jump" for me. (If I were dead, and someone needed to resort to eating me to survive, I would certainly not hold it against them. As long as they didn't kill me, first!)
As an aside, the students and I did have a long discussion of the ethics of cannibalism in one of the classes. What was amusing to me is that they were very unwilling to oppose it on purely moral grounds. So when I pressed them as to reasons that one might NOT want to commit cannibalism (again, framed as just "eating the dead for purely survival purposes," not murder), the best they could come up with was that human flesh is high in sodium and fat. I thought that was pretty funny...!
I'd forgotten about the euthanasia incident. That's certainly on point.
But i'd recalled Katrina while reading this post for another reason: the friendly neighbours who were shooting at people walking down the expressway in an attempt to leave the city. This was a shocking act but I wasn't much surprised. There is a cohort of rural gun-owners in the US who are only too ready to murder (ahem, defend their property) all of those nasty city-dwellers, come the Big One.
I can't think of any literature suggestions that haven't already been mentioned. But have you seen Michael Haneke's film, Le Temps du loup? It's brilliantly understated, and shocking at all the right moments. Like all of his work.