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Such schemes are called 'modest proposals' after Swift's original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposa

Such schemes are called 'modest proposals' after Swift's original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal Well yes, I've wondered why people who think factory farming at its worst is acceptable, with their "The animal wouldn't exist without the farm" and "painless slaughter is OK" arguments etc, never consider farmed human meat. One could use a lot of the factory farming arguments in its favour. (Both are abhorrent to me.)

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
I would hazard a guess that while Swift was a brilliant satirist, he likely drew from what was probably not taboo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar : Psalmanazar was supposedly one of the real life people he borrowed from..he was an imposter who claimed to be from Formosa(Taiwan) and spun tales about human sacrifice and priests eating the hearts of young boys. Now this might not have been entirely untrue because China(definitely not the same as Formosa as those times..but in the broader geographical region) definitely had a recipe book for cooking convicts and each crime had a custom recipe and even which parts of the body was used etc. In India, thugees regularly sacrificed children because they were pure and blemishless. Mythology is full of children being killed by the Asuras or the ‘evil kings’ of prophesied enemies by snatching them up as infants right after they were born and killed. Child sacrifice in Pre Colombian cultures were not uncommon either. Incas certainly offered children as sacrifice but likely didn’t rely on children for sustenance. Do you see the theme of religion seeking children as sacrifice? Which meant the priests likely ate them first...prior to becoming pastoral settlers and farmers, children were a burden to hunter gatherer communities. They held them back and the women were occupied with the raising of children. They had as few children as they could...as they settled down and started farming and owning properties and the concept of inheritance occurred wrt new ‘wealth’, then having a lot of children not just for labour but also for insurance became a desirable necessity. Let’s not forget the filial sacrifice in the Old Testament..the very first Abrahamic lore starts with a father sacrificing his son on the mount. It occurs again and again in many of the stories of offering burnt sacrifices of children to God in the many stories. Later, there are many prohibitions against child and human sacrifice which means that it was a common practice earlier...likely with the cannonites and who worshipped Baal and Moloch as idols. I wouldn’t forget the Assyrians either... Having said that, the Spartans were known to have exposed their infants..especially the sickly ones. Don’t know if they consumed them tho’..but these were a warrior people and not by those conducting religious priestly activity. But once again it’s a form of euthanasia/eugenics because they only wanted strong future warriors. And of course, Cato’s plea for Carthago Delenda Est because they were child sacrificers. Time and again, we see sacrifice of humans ..and especially children..in our history. The more I think about it, every single culture in myth and lore has child sacrifice. It’s actually remarkable...agriculture probably changed that because more hands means more land could be cultivated which meant there would be enough food from the land. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice : there seems to be more! Even Grimm’s Tales was pretty with Hansel and Gretel being caught by the witch and readied for the stew pot. The original fairy tales definitely wasn’t meant to be a metaphor or satire. Altho..this..in our modern times with its illustrations and witticisms offers a gentle reminder to children and adults alike as to who we really are: https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Children-Grisly-Recipe/dp/1862057710 https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Children-Grisly-Recipe/dp/18... Phew!
- gyaniv 8y ago
  I think you're mixing sacrifice with eating/consuming. In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it was then in small quantities, like eating the hearts as you mentioned). even back then, the consumption of human body parts wasn't considered healthy or nourishing, it was done only to appease the gods/give us their favor/make us stronger/etc. I think that thoughts and stories of eating people, and especially kids that is pretty common in many societies and myths, comes as a warning or as something to fear, both because human sacrifice was common enough at a certain point, but also because it helped to easily scar people (whether the parents or the children themselves). I think that one of the problems with eating dead humans, even recently dead people, is that those are even worst "parts" then the livings parts. What I mean is the even in the conventional meat eating industry they usually don't eat meat from animals that died naturally (and i'm assuming you're not talking about mass murder), and the reason for that is that the animal (or in our case, the human), died for a certain reason, more likely then not, from health reasons, so the chance of the meat containing disease, sickness, or even just being super weak is a lot higher then when they take a supposedly healthy animal, kill it, and harvest it.
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    You are right. It’s about two different subjects. Here it is an extension of a side discussion. My original question was a thought experiment that..if I had a choice, I would have likely reworded (Altho I don’t know how..) Let me try again. If we look at what is ‘food’..1. for plants, they are able to synthesize their own food from sunlight. 2. Insects like bees and ants etc use this plant synthesized food like honey or the fruit etc. 3. some plants are also carnivorous. 4. Some insects cannibalise like praying mantis. 5. Re birds, they rely on plants 6. Some birds like vultures scavenge. 7. Some birds like raptors are predators. 8. Mammals are carnivores. Some look for fresh kill. 9. I think some do eat dead animals after their natural death or even rotting flesh. 10. Fish eat krill and all that goodness. 11. Big fish eat small fish. 13. Dead fish get eaten too. I think all of them do and can cannibalise when they need food. But as the highest order organism, we rely on raising and slaughtering animals and birds for food. Nothing else in nature does that..it’s just bizarre. But again, I digress. The point is we now know exactly what nutrients we need to live. Not what foods we need to live because they are multi variate. We add back vitamins and proteins and trace minerals etc to highly processed foods. 1. Why not make a broth or a gel to which we add all that we require anyways? It’s the closest we can come to synthesizing our own food. 2. Why not reuse flesh of our own? Not killing..no black market meat etc. Just freeze freshly deceased people..test them and recycle the meat just as we use the organs. We certainly do reuse organs. 3. Speaking of organs, some of them are regenerative. Blood regenerates. Plasma regenerates. Healthy organs regenerate. We can grow organs in a Petri dish to transplants with cells..we can grow ‘muscles’ in vats. We can clone mammals. These are all possible technologies now. Ok. Expensive likely, but forget about costs for a moment. I want to think of possibilities. So why isn’t it possible to synthesize food from our own bodies? I feel like I should stay away from the word ‘cannibalism’ because it does have a history and the thought experiment strays into the morality of what is verboten and immoral. Synethesizing our own food...even possibly from our own or genetic kin’s deceased bodies. Yay or Nay?

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

I would hazard a guess that while Swift was a brilliant satirist, he likely drew from what was probably not taboo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar : Psalmanazar was supposedly one of the real life people he borrowed from..he was an imposter who claimed to be from Formosa(Taiwan) and spun tales about human sacrifice and priests eating the hearts of young boys. Now this might not have been entirely untrue because China(definitely not the same as Formosa as those times..but in the broader geographical region) definitely had a recipe book for cooking convicts and each crime had a custom recipe and even which parts of the body was used etc. In India, thugees regularly sacrificed children because they were pure and blemishless. Mythology is full of children being killed by the Asuras or the ‘evil kings’ of prophesied enemies by snatching them up as infants right after they were born and killed. Child sacrifice in Pre Colombian cultures were not uncommon either. Incas certainly offered children as sacrifice but likely didn’t rely on children for sustenance. Do you see the theme of religion seeking children as sacrifice? Which meant the priests likely ate them first...prior to becoming pastoral settlers and farmers, children were a burden to hunter gatherer communities. They held them back and the women were occupied with the raising of children. They had as few children as they could...as they settled down and started farming and owning properties and the concept of inheritance occurred wrt new ‘wealth’, then having a lot of children not just for labour but also for insurance became a desirable necessity. Let’s not forget the filial sacrifice in the Old Testament..the very first Abrahamic lore starts with a father sacrificing his son on the mount. It occurs again and again in many of the stories of offering burnt sacrifices of children to God in the many stories. Later, there are many prohibitions against child and human sacrifice which means that it was a common practice earlier...likely with the cannonites and who worshipped Baal and Moloch as idols. I wouldn’t forget the Assyrians either... Having said that, the Spartans were known to have exposed their infants..especially the sickly ones. Don’t know if they consumed them tho’..but these were a warrior people and not by those conducting religious priestly activity. But once again it’s a form of euthanasia/eugenics because they only wanted strong future warriors. And of course, Cato’s plea for Carthago Delenda Est because they were child sacrificers. Time and again, we see sacrifice of humans ..and especially children..in our history. The more I think about it, every single culture in myth and lore has child sacrifice. It’s actually remarkable...agriculture probably changed that because more hands means more land could be cultivated which meant there would be enough food from the land. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice : there seems to be more! Even Grimm’s Tales was pretty with Hansel and Gretel being caught by the witch and readied for the stew pot. The original fairy tales definitely wasn’t meant to be a metaphor or satire. Altho..this..in our modern times with its illustrations and witticisms offers a gentle reminder to children and adults alike as to who we really are: https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Children-Grisly-Recipe/dp/1862057710 https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Children-Grisly-Recipe/dp/18... Phew!

gyaniv 8y ago
I think you're mixing sacrifice with eating/consuming. In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it was then in small quantities, like eating the hearts as you mentioned). even back then, the consumption of human body parts wasn't considered healthy or nourishing, it was done only to appease the gods/give us their favor/make us stronger/etc. I think that thoughts and stories of eating people, and especially kids that is pretty common in many societies and myths, comes as a warning or as something to fear, both because human sacrifice was common enough at a certain point, but also because it helped to easily scar people (whether the parents or the children themselves). I think that one of the problems with eating dead humans, even recently dead people, is that those are even worst "parts" then the livings parts. What I mean is the even in the conventional meat eating industry they usually don't eat meat from animals that died naturally (and i'm assuming you're not talking about mass murder), and the reason for that is that the animal (or in our case, the human), died for a certain reason, more likely then not, from health reasons, so the chance of the meat containing disease, sickness, or even just being super weak is a lot higher then when they take a supposedly healthy animal, kill it, and harvest it.
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago
  You are right. It’s about two different subjects. Here it is an extension of a side discussion. My original question was a thought experiment that..if I had a choice, I would have likely reworded (Altho I don’t know how..) Let me try again. If we look at what is ‘food’..1. for plants, they are able to synthesize their own food from sunlight. 2. Insects like bees and ants etc use this plant synthesized food like honey or the fruit etc. 3. some plants are also carnivorous. 4. Some insects cannibalise like praying mantis. 5. Re birds, they rely on plants 6. Some birds like vultures scavenge. 7. Some birds like raptors are predators. 8. Mammals are carnivores. Some look for fresh kill. 9. I think some do eat dead animals after their natural death or even rotting flesh. 10. Fish eat krill and all that goodness. 11. Big fish eat small fish. 13. Dead fish get eaten too. I think all of them do and can cannibalise when they need food. But as the highest order organism, we rely on raising and slaughtering animals and birds for food. Nothing else in nature does that..it’s just bizarre. But again, I digress. The point is we now know exactly what nutrients we need to live. Not what foods we need to live because they are multi variate. We add back vitamins and proteins and trace minerals etc to highly processed foods. 1. Why not make a broth or a gel to which we add all that we require anyways? It’s the closest we can come to synthesizing our own food. 2. Why not reuse flesh of our own? Not killing..no black market meat etc. Just freeze freshly deceased people..test them and recycle the meat just as we use the organs. We certainly do reuse organs. 3. Speaking of organs, some of them are regenerative. Blood regenerates. Plasma regenerates. Healthy organs regenerate. We can grow organs in a Petri dish to transplants with cells..we can grow ‘muscles’ in vats. We can clone mammals. These are all possible technologies now. Ok. Expensive likely, but forget about costs for a moment. I want to think of possibilities. So why isn’t it possible to synthesize food from our own bodies? I feel like I should stay away from the word ‘cannibalism’ because it does have a history and the thought experiment strays into the morality of what is verboten and immoral. Synethesizing our own food...even possibly from our own or genetic kin’s deceased bodies. Yay or Nay?