Our BetterMost Community > The Polling Place
The Morality Quiz
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: David on November 29, 2007, 05:46:33 am ---I beg to differ, Katherine. I remember Oprah talking about this while she was promoting the movie Beloved. She said it really happened.
--- End quote ---
Well, that's what I meant when I said it might have been based on a true historical story, but that the book "Beloved," Toni Morrison's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, is fictional. I looked it up on the internet and found this, from a books and writers site:
--- Quote ---Beloved was inspired by the true story of a black American slave woman, Margaret Garner. She escaped with her husband Robert from a Kentucky plantation, and sought refuge in Ohio. When the slave masters overcame them, she killed her baby, in order to save the child from the slavery she had managed to escape. Morrison later told that "I thought at first it couldn't be written, but I was annoyed and worried that such a story was inaccessible to art." The protagonist, Sethe, tries to kill her children but is successful only in murdering the unnamed infant, "Beloved." The name is written on the child's tombstone, Sethe did not have enough money to pay for the text ''Dearly Beloved.'' Sethe's house, where she lives with her teenage daughter, Denver, is haunted by the dead baby daughter. "Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage?" Sethe thinks.
--- End quote ---
In other words, as you said, there really was a woman who did that. But many or most of the details of Morrison's novel came out of her own imagination.
More fun facts:
--- Quote ---Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in an opera, "Margaret Garner," with music by Richard Danielpour. In May 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty five years.
--- End quote ---
moremojo:
On the subject of cannibalism: I think that cannibalism, in and of itself, is thoroughly a moral non-issue. It is in and of itself neither good nor bad. I don't see any intrinsic horror in either the idea or the act of a human being consuming the flesh of another.
Remember the 1973 science-fiction film Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston? The great horrific revelation at the end was that the staple food of the desperately overpopulated, polluted future, Soylent Green, was produced from the bodies of deceased humanity. I never saw any reason to be disturbed by this, as long as those who had died had not met their ends unwillingly. Also, the consumers of Soylent Green should have been informed of the product's origins--transparency in commerce, politics, and interpersonal relations is a great ideal of mine.
Many of the horror stories involving cannibalism, whether real or imagined, revolve around people being murdered and then having their flesh consumed, with the killing sometimes being motivated by the desire for the flesh itself, or the flesh being consumed as a corollary/side effect of the killing. Murder is very unethical, and merits the utmost serious attention from any society claiming to be civilized. I find murder horrific, and have been horrified by the cannibalistic elements that are involved in some murder cases, but this has been because of the murderous impulses behind the act, not because of any intrinsic horror in the cannibalistic act itself.
There are nuances and degrees to this issue, as with most everything. I am certainly against corpses being desecrated for acquisition of their flesh, without the approval of the deceased and/or their remaining loved ones. I would be against anyone being forced to consume human flesh, or being deceived into eating human flesh, without realizing what they were doing. Finally, it is worth remembering that Christian communion is at the very least a kind of symbolic ritual cannibalism--if one follows orthodox doctrine, with belief in the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ, it becomes a literal act of cannibalism. And I see absolutely nothing repugnant in this.
serious crayons:
I was going to say I totally agreed with you, Scott, until I got to your last sentence. I don't think eating flesh (in the absence of murder) is inherently immoral. But I do find it repugnant. I would guess that, to some extent, an abhorrence for eating human flesh is hardwired into us.
Or were you saying only that you don't find the Christian communion ritual repugnant? I guess I could agree with that, partly because I don't take it literally. But -- and I hope those of you who are Christians will forgive me for saying this -- I do find it a little weird.
moremojo:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on November 29, 2007, 11:46:46 am ---I was going to say I totally agreed with you, Scott, until I got to your last sentence. I don't think eating flesh (in the absence of murder) is inherently immoral. But I do find it repugnant. I would guess that, to some extent, an abhorrence for eating human flesh is hardwired into us.
Or were you saying only that you don't find the Christian communion ritual repugnant? I guess I could agree with that, partly because I don't take it literally. But -- and I hope those of you who are Christians will forgive me for saying this -- I do find it a little weird.
--- End quote ---
I meant to imply that I don't find the ritual of communion repugnant, either approached symbolically or taken literally from the standpoint of transubstantiation. I have taken communion myself at various times (in situations where I thought it would be awkward to refuse it), though I do not profess to be a Christian.
I have no desire to consume human flesh myself, but upon reflection I really don't see anything repugnant in another doing so (again, in and of itself). So I suppose I find it neither immoral nor repugnant, at least as long as it is another who is doing so.
serious crayons:
OK, thanks for clarifying, Scott.
--- Quote from: moremojo on November 29, 2007, 12:25:38 pm ---I meant to imply that I don't find the ritual of communion repugnant, either approached symbolically or taken literally from the standpoint of transubstantiation. I have taken communion myself at various times (in situations where I thought it would be awkward to refuse it), though I do not profess to be a Christian.
--- End quote ---
Is it possible to literally believe in transubstantiation when one is not a Christian? I would have no problem taking communion, either, in the situations you refer to (that is, if it would be more awkward to refuse it than to, as a non-Christian, take it). But I can't see myself believing I'm literally consuming the literal flesh and blood of someone I don't consider a divinity.
If I did take it literally, I would find it repugnant, as I find all human-flesh-eating repugnant, at least according to one interpretation of the definition. For example, here is repugnant defined by The Free Dictionary:
--- Quote ---Arousing disgust or aversion; offensive or repulsive: morally repugnant behavior.
--- End quote ---
Eating human flesh arouses digust, aversion and repulsion in me. Like you, though, I don't find it immoral, so I don't find it inherently offensive (at least, not under the right circumstances -- i.e., not preceded by murder, not served unknowingly, not in a fancy restaurant), when others do it.
How did we get on this? ::) Shouldn't we go back to killing babies?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version