Eating Your Friends? (Blog Entry #2)

What would you do if you were stranded in the middle of the Andes Mountains after a terrible plane crash and you overheard that the search party for you had been called off? Would you lose hope and not even try to survive the cold temperatures, or would you do whatever it took to stay alive?  Now ask yourself this question...would you resort to cannibalism in order to have a chance at survival?

After watching the video, you might have cringed at the end when you saw the man cutting into the dead man's body for a source of food.  What would make someone get to this point where cannibalism was acceptable?  In Sociology class, we learned about a sociologist named Max Weber who discovered that "people attach meaning to their own actions of others" and that our choices are products of our environment.  At first, cannibalism seemed disgusting to the survivors of the plane crash, but as time progressed, they realized that it was their source of survival and they had attached a new meaning to the word.  This idea follows the concept of Symbolic Interaction, which explains that nothing comes with a 'built-in' meaning but rather that humans attach meanings to things.  The article states that, "the dead became part of their lives." 


Once cannibalism had been implemented into the survivors society, they had to establish some rules to create order.  They began to delve out jobs and tasks for the survivors to complete, which included cutting up the bodies, keeping the bodies cold, taking care of the plane (their shelter), and some used aluminum to melt snow for water so that the survivors would not be dehydrated.  It was clear that some of the survivors were stronger than others, and these members had more power in a sense than the others did because they were allowed a bigger portion of "food" so that they could build up the strength to go seek help.  This idea has to do with the conflict perspective which states that "social living is a contest of who attains the most power".  To diverge from the cannibalism idea and provide a more relative example to everyday life, in the pilot episode of the show, Freaks and Geeks, Jeff, the principal, uses his authority and power to make Lindsey, a very intelligent student, a mathlete by threatening to hold her accountable for ditching school.  It is much easier to identify with the characters in the Freaks and Geeks show because they are of an age close to ours in which life is a constant power struggle.  Everyone is vying for spots on athletic teams and plays or positions on clubs and they are building up their social status in order to achieve this positions.  But I digress.  In society, we search for a form of government to maintain stability and order in the world.  In class, we discussed that out of the French Revolution came "self-government and democracy".  From this we can gather that people feel the need to have rules to create an equilibrium within society.

--If you observe this picture, it is clear that in society we have many labels for each other based on outward appearances, and because of the amount of power we have in our given society.  The geeks do not have much power within the school so they are often picked on, but can do nothing about it because their words mean nothing to the people with the most power like the jocks or the preps who believe that their social status is held in a much higher regard than others.--


Although in the survivor's society cannibalism became a social norm, when they were finally rescued and returned to Uruguay, physicians and government officials did not release that the survivors had survived by means of cannibalism because it would not have been accepted in the Uruguayan society.  It is interesting that in different societies, different things are acceptable and banned.  This is because of the different associations people have with words; with cannibalism, in normal society it is viewed as illegal and immoral, but in the survivor's society, it was viewed as the source of life.  However, it is interesting to note that in societies people believe that they must justify their actions for other individuals.  The article reasons that the priests explained that the bodies which were eaten had no soul left because after the people had died, their souls had gone to heaven, so eating the bodies in order to survive was acceptable.

From my perspective, I don't know if I would be able to resort to cannibalism if I was stranded anywhere.  I became a vegetarian about 4 months ago, so I don't eat meat period.  To have to eat my own kind would just be disgusting!  I don't think that I would be able to hold a piece of someone else's flesh to my mouth...Although I might die, I think that if I was meant to live, I would live, and that if it was my time to die, I would die and go peacefully.  To be clear, I was in a plane crash!  Obviously it was supposed to be the end of something!  Maybe it would just be a sign that I shouldn't be a vegetarian anymore...