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Recently I watched the harrowing 2023 survival thriller Society of the Snow, based on the book of the same name about the real-life 1972 plane crash in the Andes that left a rugby team and families and friends to fend for themselves in the unforgiving elements. Over the following two-and-a-half months after the crash, as search efforts were unsuccessful and then abandoned, the dwindling number of survivors (only 16 out of 45 passengers and crew were ultimately rescued) were forced to resort to cannibalizing the bodies of the dead in order to survive.
The movie (pictured above) captures, with an unflinching eye, the extreme reluctance of the starving survivors, who held out as long as they could out of a mix of revulsion, respect for the dead, and religious conviction.
It is not possible to watch Society of the Snow without asking yourself, How long could I hold out before I lowered myself to eat human flesh? Most of us Americans can’t go even several hours without craving a snack; very, very few of us know what real hunger feels like: the gnawing demand over the course of days and then weeks and then months – “the sensation that our own bodies were consuming themselves just to remain alive,” as one survivor put it:
The bodies of our friends and team-mates preserved outside in the snow and ice contained the vital, life-preserving proteins that would keep us alive. But could we do it? For a long time we agonized. I went out in the snow and prayed to God for guidance. Without His consent, I felt I would be violating the memory of my friends, that I would be stealing their souls.
We wondered whether we were going mad to even contemplate such a deed. Had we turned into brute savages?
Eventually they had to eat. “And so we took yet another step in the descent towards our ultimate indignity: to eat the body of the person lying next to us. Each of us would have to be stained with this blood if we were to keep the seed of life from withering.”
They found some solace in the rationalization that they were echoing the ceremony of the Eucharist, in which Christ’s body and blood are consumed (most of the passengers were Catholic), and each one even gave the others permission to use his body as food if he passed away.
There are many fictional examples 0f Hollywood’s fascination with anthropophagy, or cannibalism. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs and the roving bands in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road come to mind, as well as the 2022 film Bones and All, a romantic thriller about star-crossed cannibals. But certainly one of the most memorable – and possibly prophetic – is the 1973 science fiction classic Soylent Green, in which Charlton Heston’s character discovers the horrifying secret ingredient of the food product keeping the populace alive in a dystopian future. He shouts a warning to his fellow citizens: “Soylent Green is people!”
Apparently Heston’s character and the Andes plane crash survivors needn’t have agonized so much over this taboo, because the once-respected British magazine New Scientist has embarked on a campaign to take all the stigma out of it. In a February 14th article titled, “Is it time for a more subtle view on the ultimate taboo: cannibalism?”, New Scientist blithely notes, “Ethically, cannibalism poses fewer issues than you might imagine.” You don’t say? Tell us more!
“New archaeological evidence shows that ancient humans ate each other surprisingly often,” and lest you find this both unsurprising and gross, the article hastens to add that cannibalism was practiced “sometimes for compassionate reasons. The finds give us an opportunity to reassess our views on the practice.”
Yes, we should definitely “reassess” our archaic morality and look to our Neanderthalic forbears for role models.
“Our aversion has been explained in various ways,” New Scientist explains:
Perhaps it is down to the fact that, in Western religious traditions, bodies are seen as the seat of the soul and have a whiff of the sacred. Or maybe it is culturally ingrained, with roots in early modern colonialism, when racist stereotypes of the cannibal were concocted to justify subjugation. These came to represent the “other” to Western societies – and revulsion towards cannibalism became a tenet of their moral conscience.
Note 1) the shoe-horning in of the leftist trope of racist colonialism; 2) the utterly unfounded charge that Westerners “concocted” a cannibal stereotype “to justify subjugation”; and 3) the argument that our civilized revulsion toward cannibalism has its roots in racism. These are red flags signaling that the article was written by someone from the woke left.
New Scientist has embraced wokeness before, having incorporated genderless terminology like “pregnant people” and “people who menstruate,” phrases pushed by the bullying transgender lobby to erase women and deny biological reality. If a science magazine adopts the worldview of a science-denying, radical ideology, is it really a science magazine anymore?
The article goes on to say, “Like it or not, cannibalism is an important part of our story.” Like it or not? Who likes it? “These discoveries invite us to reconsider our revulsion to cannibalism in the context of our evolutionary past.”
This is a curious conclusion, to say the least. Why should the fact that cannibalism was common among our ancestors “invite us to reconsider our revulsion” about it today? Infanticide was also widespread in human history – should that be an “invitation to reconsider our revulsion” about it today? What is New Scientist getting at here?
In a closely related article at New Scientist called “Our human ancestors often ate each other, and for surprising reasons,” “science” writer Michael Marshall assures us that eating humans is “no more dangerous than eating other animals.” Our ancestors have been eating each other for a million years or more, he explains. “Among the Neanderthals, it was pretty common” and “plenty of our primate relatives do it.”
“Some anthropologists now say it is time to ditch our negative views about cannibalism,” Marshall writes. “It’s something that needs to be understood a bit better and not just associated to the horrible behaviour of a psychopath,” says one expert. Another adds, “Cannibalism is not bad or unnatural. It’s part of the natural world. We are an extension of that.” Nohemi Sala at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, warns, “We must be careful when we judge.”
This rehabilitation of cannibalism is being promoted not just by New Scientist and “some anthropologists.” Wokeness-programmed Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools seem to be in on the agenda, too. In a recent Washington Examiner op-ed, Timothy Carney noted that Google’s AI tool Gemini refused his request to provide him with an argument that cannibalism is always immoral. “I’m sorry,” it responded, “cannibalism is a very complex issue with many different perspectives. It’s important to be respectful of all points of view, even if you don’t agree with them.” Carney also noted that the AI tool wouldn’t provide images of a pro-life march, but did not hesitate to generate an image of a pro-choice march, so Gemini clearly doesn’t abide by its own declared ethics.
Suspecting that the left is laying the groundwork to normalize cannibalism sounds like a conspiracy theory, but why would it be so difficult to believe? The left has already normalized (or is in the process thereof) eating insects instead of meat, the sexual grooming of children, men conquering women’s sports, the medical mutilation of adults and children in service to the lie of gender ideology, polyamory, pedophilia – why would cannibalism be off-limits?
The normalization of all these transgressive practices and more is part of the left’s war on all taboos. Their aim is the overthrow of the totality of the existing order, a revolution which requires the deconstruction of every social norm, tradition, value, and limit. It requires the abolition of the nuclear family, the eradication of religion (especially Christianity with its inconvenient Judeo-Christian moral code), the rewriting or erasure of the past, and the embrace of a new world order which is already being built by globalist elites.
Those elites envision a transhumanist, amoral future in which they will meld the biological and the technological to become as gods, while the drastically reduced population of the “useless classes” feeds on bugs and is kept distracted by drugs and computer games.
Instead of “reassessing” our views on cannibalism and other taboo practices, it’s time to assess the subversion of our civilization by progressive revolutionaries, and to take appropriate political, cultural, and legal actions to reverse it and rescue our declining humanity.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
Jeff Bargholz says
Wow, conservatives and most normal people know the left wants the “overthrow of the totality of the existing order,” but to advocate cannibalism is extreme even for those uber extremists. And anybody who’s revolted by the idea is a declared a racist, naturally. Anybody who disagrees with anything a leftist believes is automatically branded as a racist but I have to give “the “New Scientist” luddites credit. It not only used the tired ass trope that anybody who disagrees with the left is a racist oppressor, but people who don’t want to chew on their neighbors oppress cannibals and we’re colonialists, too. There are still black cannibals in the Congo but “New Scientist” doubtlessly gives a free pass from those slurs to the black people there who object to being eaten. They’re just selfish, not hopeless racists like whitey.
And cannibalism was NOT common among our ancestors, not even our prehistoric ones in the Stone Age. If it were, there would be plenty of human remains found with gnaw marks on the bones, and there aren’t.
There are enough examples of neanderthal bones that had been gnawed on that it’s likely cannibalism wasn’t rare for the ones in Ice Age Europe and even much warmer Eurasia but neanderthals weren’t human. Humans obviously killed them to extinction so I assume they probably ate us homo sapiens sapiens, too, and probably had less qualms about it than eating each other.
Maybe neanderthals were the basis for the trolls under bridges and ogres who ate people in the folk tales that were oral long before they were written? I doubt we’ll ever know.
“Society of the Snow” is the third movie made about the crash in the Andes with the rugby team. “Survive!” came out in 1976, and “Alive” with Ethan Hawke in the lead role came out in 1993. I didn’t see “Survive!” but I saw “Alive,” and it was good. “Society of the Snow” is on Netflix but I think I’ve had enough Rugby cannibalism.
Too bad those “New Science” moonbats probably won’t go on a hike or photo safari deep in the Congo. If anybody deserves to end up as cannibal turds, it’s them.
Mickorn says
“Suspecting that the left is laying the groundwork to normalize cannibalism sounds like a conspiracy theory.”
Duh!
Domenic Pepe says
I must quote and repeat …
“Instead of “reassessing” our views on cannibalism and other taboo practices,
it’s time to assess the subversion of our civilization by progressive revolutionaries,
and to take appropriate political, cultural, and legal actions to reverse it and rescue our declining humanity.”
More than ” … appropriate political, cultural, and legal actions …” may be needed … to reverse it and rescue our declining humanity.”
Mo de Profit says
Keep eating Bill Gates bugs.
Jeff Bargholz says
Hmm. Wouldn’t that make him a cannibal? A cockroach eating cockroaches?
Mo de Profit says
There’s already a process whereby the food production complex takes human blood or something, and makes meat. This will save the planet and make Bill Gates millions.
Also “New archaeological evidence shows that ancient humans ate each other surprisingly often,”
I would like to see the assumptions behind this so called research that was probably funded by the Bill Gates foundation too.
Banastre Tarleton says
. Every living person has a cannibal as an ancestor as it’s merely a stage in development people go through in their evolution from ape-like creature to caveman, then to civilised man in an attempt to straighten out the crooked timbers of human nature
Civilisation is a slow taming process, not unlike the domestication of farm animals or even house pets and cannibalism is a natural part of development that we humans grew out of , but the West developed at a quicker pace than other places , so when the West went on voyages of discovery to the South Seas etc they were essentially travelling back to the stone age and their own primitive past
When western mariners landed in Australia or , say, New Zealand, their ships had became de facto time machines and had time travelled back to the stone age and naturally ran into stone age cannibals ; something similar happened to Victorian explorers in the Congo in the 1880s, or even as late as the 1960s when a heir to the Rockefeller dynasty was head hunted and cannibalised in Papua New Guinea. All those isolated pacific islands were ”Islands in time;” that had remained stunted and stationary for thousands of years and sunrise/ sunset for eternity
When Julius Caesar landed in Britania in 55BC I don’t suppose the ancient Britons were far removed from cannibalism, especially the barbaric Picts up in Scotland
Both Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Golding’s Lord of the Flies delve into this anachronism of travelling up a river of time, or being marooned on a island of time, then meeting our cannibal ancestors who are a distant mirror of ourselves ”The horror, THE HORROR”!
Sandy says
“Every living person has a cannibal as an ancestor as it’s merely a stage in development people go through in their evolution from ape-like creature to caveman, then to civilised man in an attempt to straighten out the crooked timbers of human nature.”
Maybe you had not heard. Macro-evolution has already been debunked by the leading atheist evolutionary biologist, Gerd Muller, at the 2016 Royal Academy of Sciences conference. Darwinism has no proof of the generative. Life from nothing is a farce given what we know of the complexity of even one cell.
GOD provided ALL humans with a sense of conscience – Romans 1:18-21 and 2:14-15 refers. This is why all other religions and even atheists have a sense of right and wrong – they simply suppress it. Christianity holds all the truths.
Jeff Bargholz says
“Heart of Darkness” is the best novel I ever read although Conrad’s short story, “The Secret Sharer,” is my favorite of his.
However, Michael Rockefeller disappeared in New Guinea and nobody ever found out what happened to him. The jungles there are very dangerous. Venomous snakes, crocodiles, pestilential mosquitos and undrinkable water. The New Guineans didn’t kill people and eat them. The women would dig up the fresh corpses of their fellow tribe members and eat them if they could get away with it and reportedly still do in remote villages, although I have doubts about that last bit. The men would prevent it when they found out.
The New Guineans have actually tended to be friendly to strangers. You’ve probably seen that famous photo of a New Guinean villager leading a blinded Australian pilot by the hand after he’d been shot down by the Japanese.
Nicolas Carras says
Interesting, just last night I was discussing this film, Society of the Snow, with a friend. It turns out that his grandfather, Moroccan, fought in the first and second world wars… Yeap! (Oh, man!…) During the second, he and others ate dead people to survive.
Thanks to this, he was able to tell what he experienced during his two wars. Absolute horror.
God will judge.
internalexile says
Old joke.
Son–“Mom, I hate my sister’s guts!”
Mother–“Shut up and eat your dinner.”
Onzeur Trante says
This article reminded me of the documentary on the Donner Party, another sad and tragic story.
Seizing on these types events as a foray into the “lifting of taboos”/normalization doesn’t do justice to the individuals who had to made heartwrenching choices in extreme situations.
Jeff Bargholz says
It turns out the Donner party was innocent. It was another starving group who ate members of the Donner party. That was discovered fairly recently.
Owie says
As a resident of New York City, where Morlocks run wild, I am looking forward to the cannibalism of the left as an improvement in the general run of things.
Jeff Bargholz says
They have fentanyl zombies there too, don’t they? Give ’em some ketchup bottles and let ’em loose in Manhattan, Bedford Stuyvesant and the UN building.
SPURWING PLOVER says
I saw this bumper sticker reading HUNGRY OUT OF WORK? EAT A ENVIRMENTALISTS
Ralph Robert Jaeger says
Or at least,eat a vegan. Why not? We are alpha carnivores and we have all the guns and crossbows. We could have vegan wildlife preserves for hunting and vegans would always be in season. Just a thought.
Steve Burstein says
The story was also filmed in Mexico in the 70s as SURVIVE, and I think there was an earlier US remake.
Jeff Bargholz says
“Alive” came afterward, in 1993.
Richard Craycroft says
As I understand it, Idaho is one of the few states in the union that actually has a law against cannibalism. Recently, one of our representatives wanted to add to that law to make it illegal to serve human flesh to others. She has been vilified in the press for her efforts.
Jeff Bargholz says
It sounds like the Idaho press is completely out of touch with the people of your state.
Tedf says
Infanticide is ready legal, it goes by many names. Abortion, partial birth abortion. And last I forget, some states legalized born children to be awarded, after birth abortion?
Then there’s euthanasia. In Canada patience go to clinics for depression and are advised about the option of euthanasia.
Chaya says
I was taken by the “surprising reason” for cannibalism not specified. Is it “ it’s delish” ??!! Oyoyoy
My conspiracy theory is that once the chaos of no taboos occurs -and we’re close- a particular religion will offer the orderliness and structure that humans crave. But, I think it may mean burkas for women and minarets everywhere.
Hannah says
“Like it or not, cannibalism is an important part of our story…. These discoveries invite us to reconsider our revulsion to cannibalism in the context of our evolutionary past.”
So they are essentially saying, “let’s turn back the clock and undo centuries of human evolution.”
Where is the outcry from the evolutionary humanists??
Oh wait == these guys ARE the evolutionary humanists….