You Know that we eat “other” organisms, right? Not humans! Chickens, chick-peas, cabbages, peaches… Peaches in season are the best! But we’re omnivores, and almost anything edible can be delicious to a human being, other than a human being, if it’s prepared in the way he or she grew up with.
Then again, you know too, that cannibals don’t fit neatly into this picture. Must they de-humanise their food first? Is it a warfare intimidation thing? A ritualised ‘exception’? Or does desperation and isle-ation overpower even this most fundamental of taboos?
But why is it almost universally taboo to eat humans? Well… of course there’s the thing about setting a precedent for getting eaten yourself. But, there’s also the thing about humans being, collectively at least, a “Conditionally Immortal Creative Intelligence”. (That’s my wording, and I’ll explain why I used it in a minute.) “Organisms” are gonna die anyway, that’s what allows for the creativity of conditionally-immortal evolving ecosystems, right? (Ok, that was less than a minute… unless you stopped reading for the better part of a minute to think about how death and creativity are connected. Which I allowed for.)
But we don’t usually put “other” organisms in this Conditionally Immortal Creative Intelligence category; especially cabbages — or cows, unless you’re vegan. (Don’t get me started on the habitat displaced by cattle ranchers!) This is partly because it would be inconvenient for the grill-master, but also because “we all know” non-Conditionally-Immortal-Creative-Intelligent organisms die, and are eaten in Nature for the very sake of that corporate co-adapting Conditionally Immortal Creative Intelligence who created it. By which I mean that wild ecosystem that some still call “Mother Earth”; that non-humanised Creative “Spirit”; this which is Beyond Organism. We know this too. Right?
So let’s think about this next time we discuss the fastest way to “extract” a “natural resource” from the planet’s shrinking wilderness areas. Let’s think, in our most acquisitive moments, about what it would be like to eat another human being. Because humans and wild ecosystems are the only two beings we know about who are in this Conditionally Immortal Creative Intelligence class. Our ancestors knew this. And they/we expressed this knowledge in unhurried ritualistic apologies to a Natural World that would eat their/our bodies too… if they/we were not the only ‘species’ confused enough about organism vs conditionally immortal creative intelligence to bury its “immortal” kin.
And now you know it too.
But will you remember in time for us to save that “other Intelligence”? https://www.extremophilechoice.com/2022/10/01/panphilia-can-love-of-natural-systems-be-personal/
