[Buddha-l] Re: "Nature" and eating meat

[Joy Vriens]

Stefan Detrez wrote:

> And then there's the artist who asked permission to eat a volunteer
> after his death (which he did).
> Curiously enough, the artist was convicted of something, I don't know
> what.

Procedures of dealing with corpses are pretty strict and complex. The
person would
need to be declared deceased by a doctor etc. If the cannibal ate him
before the
doctor's visit, the cause of death would be more difficult to establish
and it could be deduced also that he may have been in it for something
himself etc. Plenty of possibilities for prosecuting him.

> But here the issue should have been that one should have the
> right to be eaten, not so much that eating someone is illegal. I think
> for that matter legal matters and moral matters are not always that
> closely connected as one tends to think. Laws are for keeping social
> order, morals are for personal order.

Eating others is a good way to perturb the public order it would seem to
me. And it seems a good indication to me that apart from a legal matter
and a moral matter, it may also be a matter of mental sanity and the
lack thereof.

> It would be a question of taste whether eating human flesh is moral or
> immoral. And, as you probably know, taste are not good moral pointers.
> To make the discussion peppered, I think that counts also for
> bestiality (provided the animal does not suffer. Whether you suffer
> from being penetrated by an animal more 'royally' endowed than you can
> take is your own business).

Tastes are not good moral pointers? And you use these exemples to make
your point? Why not add necrophilia to your exemples? All these things
will get your morally free man arrested by the vice squad. Try it. ;-)

Joy