Is cannibalism morally wrong?

@UndeadPrivateer

I'm not sure i agree that illegal necessarily means morally wrong. After all, it was legal to own slaves, it was illegal for gays to be married.
I include consenting because we're talking about people. Murder IS morally wrong.

But i am inclined to agree that there is nothing innately wrong with eating human flesh

@UndeadPrivateer I wish animals were killed more humanely.

@MetalGreymon It wasn't considered morally wrong to own slaves when it was legal, it was made illegal because views developed that it was immoral. Same can be said of gay marriage in the inverse. Morals are a human abstract concept that don't exist in nature, there is no such thing as a "universal morality." There just is what is, and that's it. So, yes, it being murder does make it morally wrong in the eyes of modern society. That's just how morality works, it's based on a human viewpoint. And human minds change over time.

As mentioned before in another post, there were times and places where eating humans was a common thing and not considered immoral at all. But you were also generally looking at societies that performed human sacrifices or cannibalized foes, which would be considered morally wrong by modern standards as well.

@SugarPlumxo Yeah, I feel you there. Most are, but there's a lot of cases where they're not.

@SugarPlumxo

I wish that too. I think it is morally wrong the way we house and slaughter food animals. I just don't think it's morally wrong to kill and eat animals. Life takes life to sustain life. It's the only way we know how to do it.
And if you're not taking the life of an animal, you're taking the life of a plant.

We've assigned higher value to the life of an animal than a plant in the same way we assign higher value to a bunny than a spider, but life is life.

@UndeadPrivateer

Well exactly. Morality is largely subjective.

Slavery is wrong because you're harming another person. Homophobia is wrong because you deny rights to another human being that you claim for yourself. I guess that goes for slavery too lol

So when we say cannibalism is morally wrong, i want people to explain WHY.

@MetalGreymon Completely subjective, not just largely. Whether it's a valid view to hold or not is separate and up for debate, but definitely entirely subjective.

For example, not all slaves were mistreated. In fact, histories are [i]filled[/i] with accounts of slaves being treated very well and living objectively very pleasant lives, often a lot better than common peasantry since they were living among the upper class of society who were slave owners. But there is a spectrum to human behavior in all cases, and the problem that arose with slavery was that because slaves were not considered citizens they had no rights until declared freemen. Which meant that, [i]if[/i] their master's chose to abuse them and never free them there was really not much if anything they could do about it. At least, aside from kill their master. (Which happened [i]a lot[/i] to cruel slave owners in history too, and in some cases was one of the dominoes that lead to the toppling of entire empires.)

So free people realized that some of these enslaved people were being treated in terrible ways and living incredibly terrible lives and the entire concept of slavery becomes immoral, regardless of there being good slaves or not. It's much simpler to ban something than to regulate it, so of course governments will tend to support those kinds of ideas and leverage them... It's a complicated thing. I wouldn't necessarily support slavery in the modern day, but I can't realistically say that it was universally bad and it's obvious that not everyone in all of history has felt that way either.

Also, on the subject of plants, I echo that sentiment. I think people just disregard the lives of plants because they are so different from us, not that their lives and experiences are any less valid.

@UndeadPrivateer

I guess i meant largely in that there are some morals that appear to be universal.

Yes some slaves were treated well because not all people are shitty lol.
But of course they still weren't allowed to leave...

That's a good point, it's a lot easier to ban something than to regulate it. Although of course that's probably a good policy in some cases.

I have to disagree that slavery isn't universally bad. I would say that there are some people who would definitely benefit from being a slave to a fairly kind master. BUUUUUT, the thing that makes slavery wrong is not who well or poorly one is treated. It's that one human owns another human. One human as RIGHTS that another human doesn't. There is no justifiable, morally correct reason for that.

As for plants,I agree. I can't pretend that i hold a tulips life on the same level as a puppy's. But that's not necessarily right.

@MetalGreymon Freeing slaves was very common practice, the reason the last name "Freeman" and variants of it is so common is because of that. Not everyone who was freed necessarily left their masters either, a lot would stay on as workers.

Indentured servitude and transportation are attempts at regulated slavery, but it didn't work so well either. That isn't to say there is no system where slavery could work, humans haven't tried everything. And it might be the human factor that is the problem, maybe machines will enslave humanity in a universally beneficial way. 🤷

Rights are just abstract concepts, there's nothing fundamental to them. Just because you have rights doesn't stop me from doing anything to you, it just changes whether or not I get in trouble for it if it's found out.

@UndeadPrivateer

Well that's correct. I have human rights and rights as a citizen. That does't stop someone from doing whatever they want to me but it seems fair to say that by any consistent measure, it is wrong to do to someone what you would not want to be done to yourself or someone you care about.

@MetalGreymon But the thing that makes you 'not want' those things and feel they're 'right' or 'wrong' is just your brain attributing values to things. So there is nothing innately right or wrong about rights or anything that places some kind of objective value on rights themselves aside from human perspective.

Rights as we perceive them today are an extension of human morality and legal society. It wasn't always that way. Humans are just another animal on the planet, there's nothing that differentiates us from the rest aside from a high encephalization ratio, and there's nothing special about treating a human the same way we treat pets. Which is very much equivalent to slavery.

Not really meaning to get all existential about it when I started this discussion, but yeah.

@UndeadPrivateer

lol well i'm not going to argue that there is an ultimate objective source of morality. But at some point we have to make choices about what is right and wrong and it seems to me that what hurts someone else is a good place to start when you're trying to identify wrong.

@MetalGreymon Yeah, that'd be legalism. Which is a pretty recent concept, morality wasn't always seen that way. Which is what I was getting at.

@UndeadPrivateer Your discussion (which we've had before) prompted a question I've been wanting to ask.

@bijouxbroussard Oh? What's that?

@UndeadPrivateer I posted it.