I think you're mixing sacrifice with eating/consuming.
In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it was then in small quantities, like eating the hearts as you mentioned). even back then, the consumption of human body parts wasn't considered healthy or nourishing, it was done only to appease the gods/give us their favor/make us stronger/etc.
I think that thoughts and stories of eating people, and especially kids that is pretty common in many societies and myths, comes as a warning or as something to fear, both because human sacrifice was common enough at a certain point, but also because it helped to easily scar people (whether the parents or the children themselves).
I think that one of the problems with eating dead humans, even recently dead people, is that those are even worst "parts" then the livings parts. What I mean is the even in the conventional meat eating industry they usually don't eat meat from animals that died naturally (and i'm assuming you're not talking about mass murder), and the reason for that is that the animal (or in our case, the human), died for a certain reason, more likely then not, from health reasons, so the chance of the meat containing disease, sickness, or even just being super weak is a lot higher then when they take a supposedly healthy animal, kill it, and harvest it.
Re religious sacrifices, they were certainly eaten. Again and again, there is prohibition of sacrifices and the very Isaac story was a religious edict that permitted substitution of goat/sheep(?) to human child.
Indian lores of dacoits and thugeee seeking infants was likely because they were to be consumed before they got sick or had infections. Babies get a slew of infections as to develop immunity. A ‘blemishless’ baby was important.
In India, we pierce babies ears when they are mewling infants. It makes them imperfect sacrifices. In some rural parts, they dab the baby’s face with charcoal paste and it’s supposed to ward off the ‘evil eye’. But now that I think about it, it likely served to make a child look pockmarked or just ‘not perfect’ and hence less risk of being kidnapped for cooking.
In more organized religions with a priest(pre Colombian), the priest always ‘tasted’ the prized organs(heart for instance ..of a warrior because he was brave) and distributed the rest of the body.
If you see how African tribes hunt and eat..they have one hunting trip and they eat well and the rest of the time, they just subsist on fish or foraged greens and root vegetables.
Meat was never eaten in quantities like we do now. It was unheard of...so for any tribe or community, it’s a lot of food. Likely an addition with ceremonial significance to their kill.
This isn’t about the original query re humans eating other dead humans (and if I can reword it: “self synthesizing human food from humans”)...but wrt the side discussion re children and human sacrifice and cannibalism.
My original question was a thought experiment that..if I had a choice, I would have likely reworded (Altho I don’t know how..)
Let me try again. If we look at what is ‘food’..1. for plants, they are able to synthesize their own food from sunlight. 2. Insects like bees and ants etc use this plant synthesized food like honey or the fruit etc. 3. some plants are also carnivorous. 4. Some insects cannibalise like praying mantis. 5. Re birds, they rely on plants 6. Some birds like vultures scavenge. 7. Some birds like raptors are predators. 8. Mammals are carnivores. Some look for fresh kill. 9. I think some do eat dead animals after their natural death or even rotting flesh. 10. Fish eat krill and all that goodness. 11. Big fish eat small fish. 13. Dead fish get eaten too.
I think all of them do and can cannibalise when they need food.
But as the highest order organism, we rely on raising and slaughtering animals and birds for food. Nothing else in nature does that..it’s just bizarre. But again, I digress.
The point is we now know exactly what nutrients we need to live. Not what foods we need to live because they are multi variate. We add back vitamins and proteins and trace minerals etc to highly processed foods.
1. Why not make a broth or a gel to which we add all that we require anyways? It’s the closest we can come to synthesizing our own food.
2. Why not reuse flesh of our own? Not killing..no black market meat etc. Just freeze freshly deceased people..test them and recycle the meat just as we use the organs. We certainly do reuse organs.
3. Speaking of organs, some of them are regenerative. Blood regenerates. Plasma regenerates. Healthy organs regenerate. We can grow organs in a Petri dish to transplants with cells..we can grow ‘muscles’ in vats. We can clone mammals.
These are all possible technologies now. Ok. Expensive likely, but forget about costs for a moment. I want to think of possibilities.
So why isn’t it possible to synthesize food from our own bodies? I feel like I should stay away from the word ‘cannibalism’ because it does have a history and the thought experiment strays into the morality of what is verboten and immoral.
Synethesizing our own food...even possibly from our own or genetic kin’s deceased bodies. Yay or Nay?
But then the rich would just choose to use their money in a way that only benefits them, while in reality, it might be better for the entire economy if for example more of the money goes to the unemployed.
Another issue that I see is that many people are very uninformed (or wrong) and if we let them choose directly where the money goes, it might be wasted.
In the current system the way it should work (in my opinion) is that people vote based on the issues and values important to them and their elected then move the money based on researching and better understanding how to do it best (since that's the elected officials job, and they have time for that, unlike some of the population).
I agree that many are uninformed, and money will get wasted. It seems like it will always be “wasted” depending on which side you are looking at it from. E.g. One might consider war a complete waste, and another considers it the best use of money.
I don’t agree that elected officials do a great job moving money to where voters want it. I think a viable solution is to have referendums(voting directly on an issue, rather than for a person to represent you) about public issues.
I think the reason these types of proposals come up is that the rich and powerful already control where the money goes in order to best benefit themselves.
And most of it is buried in laws, subsidies and tax breaks that are not as obvious as running a social services program.
To find new clients I think that by introducing yourselves and your product to those "brick and mortar non profits" you said turned people away, you should be able to convince them to send your way some of the people that they can't handle.
But I have to say that the idea you had about the money source sounds a bit strange to me. Your whole idea is helping people that don't have any money, so it just seems weird that you would then ask for or even want their money, because that somewhat defies the point of helping them save money (I'm sure that you probably take only small amounts, but still...). I think that working from outside donations and federal grants just makes more sense. Or maybe even excepting some money from some of the people you help after a while if they manage to get back on their feet.
When we started, we never thought we'd ask our users for donations after they filed. We got the idea when our users started asking us whether they could donate to us even when we didn't ask for anything. The vast, vast majority of our operating budget is covered at the moment by foundation philanthropy and federal grants, but the hard thing about outside fundraising to stay alive is that it requires a lot of time we'd rather use to focus on making our product better and reaching more people. That's why we'd love to be sustainable if we can make it work. We found inspiration in business models of EarnIn and GoFundMe.
We also let our users know that they can donate well after their discharge when they're back on their feet.
most people filing for BK aren't really "people that don't have any money." It's a middle class problem: the truly poor have virtually no access to credit and are unlikely to have debt problems, while the well-off can save their way out of it. It's nearly always people with some income and employment who find themselves suddenly without enough to pay their debts.
Wiping out tens of thousands of dollars in debt (usually credit cards, but sometimes medical and lawsuit debt too) is a huge help.
Something as simple as a standard line at the bottom of every notice email sent to the debtor, to the effect of "We're a non-profit supported in large part by donations from satisfied users just like you. Please consider a small donation to pay it forward so we can continue to help people get a fresh start." With a link to your donation page.
One of the interesting ironies of philanthropy (of which there are many) is that people who have less money tend to be more generous philanthropically (as a % of adjusted gross income) than people who have more money. And because of the way the numbers work out, they give out a lot. If Upsolve can help a very very very large number of people get through bankruptcy, they might be able to amass a very strong "Pay it forward" revenue stream. Not sure if enough to fund the entire org, but enough to help out.
What about Signal? has e2e encryption, group messaging and is practically completely open source.
I personally really want to quit all the Facebook apps (because of the reasons mentioned), but I just feel that there is too much communication I need in it's messaging apps to leave (family, friends, work chats) that leaving them would be problematic.
What I really want is a messaging app that can still receive and communicate messages from the "bad" apps, but by default uses its better way, so that as people migrate to it, you can communicate with them using the app, but still be able to receive (and send) messages using for example WhatsApp for people that haven't changed apps yet.
Pretty interesting.
I haven't worked in Google, but from my experience in a startup, I totally agree at least with some of your points (my experience wasn't that great, so perhaps the other points were what was missing)
In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it was then in small quantities, like eating the hearts as you mentioned). even back then, the consumption of human body parts wasn't considered healthy or nourishing, it was done only to appease the gods/give us their favor/make us stronger/etc.
I think that thoughts and stories of eating people, and especially kids that is pretty common in many societies and myths, comes as a warning or as something to fear, both because human sacrifice was common enough at a certain point, but also because it helped to easily scar people (whether the parents or the children themselves).
I think that one of the problems with eating dead humans, even recently dead people, is that those are even worst "parts" then the livings parts. What I mean is the even in the conventional meat eating industry they usually don't eat meat from animals that died naturally (and i'm assuming you're not talking about mass murder), and the reason for that is that the animal (or in our case, the human), died for a certain reason, more likely then not, from health reasons, so the chance of the meat containing disease, sickness, or even just being super weak is a lot higher then when they take a supposedly healthy animal, kill it, and harvest it.