hello, can you tell us more about cannibalism please? (This is in reference to the shark fin post and your additions about what happens eating human flesh)
Okay sure!
So cannibalism psychologically occurs in one of three scenarios
Survivalist cannibalism
Narcissistic cannibalism
Psychosis triggered cannibalism
The first two are the most common, Survivalist cannibalism is merely a result of situational desperation although interestingly it’s been found that people who engaged in it showed far less apprehension to do it again and less disgust then the average person, which in my opinion implies the aversion humans have towards Cannibalism is social rather then innate, the most famous example of this was the Donner party, a group of American settlers who became stranded in the snow on their way west and were forced to eat their dead until rescue
Narcissistic cannibal’s are something we’re all familiar with but probably don’t realize it, the vast majority of cannibalistic murderers are this type, the most famous example of this is of course Jeffery Dahmer, what most people don’t understand about this case and the cases of most other cannibal serial killers is that the main focus of their crimes usually isn’t the cannibalism itself but rather other acts towards their victims and the killing itself, that’s why these crimes are often done in tandem to sexual ones as the killer in question’s reasoning is centered around power dynamics; their motivation rests within the idea that eating something is the ultimate way to be above it, a sort of food-chain complex
Last but not least there’s Cannibalistic ideation as a symptom of psychosis or other schizoaffective disorders, psychosis is what most people refer to when they talk about “going insane”, it’s a state any particular disturbed person can fall into which causes hallucinations and delusions, the desire to eat human flesh as a symptom while uncommon is not unheard of- in fact there’s several sub-disorders that have been named to define more specific and repeated circumstances
“Windigo psychosis” is one of these specific disorders which has only been observed within Native American communities, it’s thought that cultural context can affect how a persons psychosis manifests, and for Natives of North America within Algonquin speaking regions this particular form of it can occur which includes some amount of cannibalistic ideation as its symptom
(although I’d like to note that in cases of psychosis regardless of circumstances its rather uncommon for the person in question to act upon the thought, it’s a pervasive idea that schizophrenic or psychotic individuals are dangerous due to the frequent violent thoughts which can occur for these individuals, but it must be said that violent crimes are not committed by these people as often as some think, and self harm is far more common in these situations then the harm of others)
With that disclaimer out of the way! Let’s talk about pseudo-cannibalism! That’s not a real term that’s just what I call it, but it’s when a person only consumes a small, specific part of another human or prepares them in a very specific way, these category also includes ritualistic cannibalism and cannibalism as a death rite
Some interesting examples of this include Egyptian mummy candy! The creation of this substance entails the regular mummification process in which a dead body has its organs removed before being sewn back up, but rather then being wrapped in cloth the sarcophagus is filled with honey and left for a long time, in addition the person in question also consumed honey before death to really just be full of honey, this process is referred to as mellification and it’s thought that the substance produced was used as medicine once hardened, although I must stress that mellification is a theory and has not been confirmed to have actually happened in ancient Egypt by archaeologists, still it’s extremely interesting and I wanted to talk about it even if it hasn’t been confirmed as real
Although you know what kind of mummy eating actually did happen? Mummy parties! In Victorian England and America mummies we’re all the rage, people would buy them to keep in their house or host mummy parties which on occasion entailed crushing up bits of the mummy into powder and eating or SNORTING it! Sometimes the powder was even used as paint by combining it with sunflower oil- these practices are unfortunately why we don’t have many mummies anymore
As for cannibalism as a death rite, the practice has been observed in places like Brazil and Peru, and while the practice is essentially retired in the modern day there’s plenty of places that did so in the past
Okay that’s about all I’ve got off the top of my head, I encourage looking into into it yourself though! There’s many interesting things to be learned, additionally I’m not sure how accurate all of my information is, cannibalism is an obscure topic so sometimes stuff gets spread that isn’t true, like mellification and how we aren’t sure if it ever actually happened or not! Hope you enjoyed my ramble though!