The Case of a Stranded Boat
Historically, there have been famous cases where the social norms and laws against cannibalism were tested, and perhaps one of the most well known is the case of Her Majesty the Queen v. Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens. In short, a crew of four were sailing a yacht when they encountered unfavorable weather which rendered their boat inoperable, and the Captain ordered the lifeboat be lowered and the crew abandoned ship. The crew then had to survive on the lifeboat in dangerous conditions with very limited supplies until they were rescued after 24 days. During this time, one of the member fell seriously ill and was comatose (presumed to be fated to death soon thereafter by the remaining crew), and with their rations depleted, Dudley and Stephens decided to kill the man and consume him. The remaining member of the crew, Edmund Brooks, abstained in the killing and eating. After their rescue, the two men who engaged in cannibalism were put on trial, though their sentences were reduced from the death penalty to 60 days in prison.
The case against the men were that they had committed homicide, and the defense being that the men had acted in their own defense of their live, which incidentally was through murder. And so, this became a classic case of taking another's life for the preservation of self, putting into question just how far the concept of "self-defense" extended in a legal sense. Beyond the legality of it however, there is also the ethical question behind the act of desperate cannibalism. In retrospect, we know that the men may have survived even if they did not engage in cannibalism, given that 4~5 days after killing and eating their former member, the remaining crew were rescued. What is important though is the motives behind the act, and in this case, Dudley and Stephens acted with the belief that if they did not kill and eat Parker, they themselves would eventually meet the same fate.
If we were to suppose that without killing Parker, the rest of the crew would have eventually succumbed to starvation and death, and by killing Parker, they were able to live sufficiently long enough for rescue to arrive, does this change the answer to the morality behind taking another's life for one's own?
The Cannibal
In the case above, there was a irreconcilable difference between what is dictated as just deserts by law, and what was believed to be justice accordance to social principles (the reality of the ruling is more nuanced than that, I admit, but for simplicity of the argument, I will focus on the nature of law and justice and its relation to social norms). That is to say, while murder is a social taboo, the peculiar circumstances in which, the murder of Parker was believed to be necessary to the crew's survival, made the issue far more complicated. And furthermore, the contention did not end at the murder, but also in the act of cannibalism, which has a quality to it unlike others to trigger such a revulsion, violating the very sense of what defines us as humans.
What is it about cannibalism rouses such a response? From an objective point of view, the consumption of meat is a necessity to one's survival, and we as humans partake in the consumption of meat of other dead beings without raising an eye brow (with the exception of vegans, and particular religious prohibition of certain kind of meats, which is a interesting point to consider as well). If we are capable of consuming the meat of cows and chickens, how is this materially different from that of consuming humans? And even before that, why are certain acts considered "desecration" of the dead? Are they not already far removed from the world of the living, no longer drawing breath to know or care what we do with their corpse?
One explanation behind this human "peculiarity" may lie with our higher cognitive capabilities that allow us to experience a range of emotions, from empathy to various levels of kinship (ranging from the smallest unit of the familial all the way to a sense of single unity as humans). And with our higher cognitive capabilities, we have imbued the dead with the characteristics of the living, elevating a heap of corpse to that of what we call to be "human". In India, we see this mechanism employed to elevate the status of cows to that of a respected being, and therefore, making it a being not appropriate for consumption. And of course, there is religion to consider, among innumerable others, which I will not explore for the sake of brevity; the important point is that cannibalism does not seem to be an adverse behavior as far as reproduction is considered. If the revulsion of cannibalism is an element of social norms without a biological component, is the transgression of these norms worthy of punishment even in circumstances of life and death?
Apart from basic biological necessities (food, water and shelter), human society is tightly bound by rules and norms to uphold the principles that make up our "humanity", away from the animalistic behavior based on primal instinct. In that sense, our proclivity to safeguard these principles is a defense of what defines us as humans, lest we become slave to the "rules of nature" where survival and procreation dictate all. And to those who violate these norms, society is eager to shun, as if to protect and preserve their notion of superiority as "humans" beyond simple biological machines that act in accordance to their natural making.
Conclusion
In the case of the lifeboat, the argument of the murder as a necessary defense of one's own life is a very contentious matter. It is true that in our society, certain acts of violence are permissible (at least legally speaking) if the perpetrator was acting in credible defense of their own life. And yet, the act of cannibalism, or in this case, a murder for the purpose of cannibalism seems to evoke a revulsion as if the act is a kind of attack on our identity as humans. Post-apocalypse fiction is a genre that often tackles this very question of what it means to be human, and when thrust upon the most trying conditions, when we forgo the conventions of our societal norms for the sake of survival become a thing that is less than human?
No comments:
Post a Comment