Eat The Rich

Lemmy had it right all along

There’s an article in the New York Post that says we can fight global warming by eating human flesh. Not, as you might at first assume, as the few wandering mutant survivors of the coming apocalypse, wandering the barren desert that’s what is left of our world, and fighting global warming in more of a hands on wrestling match. No, this is simply consuming the bodies of our dead, rather than bury them.

Burying the dead isn’t always the best way to dispose of our bodies, after all. There’s a premium on space, and the dead have been using it up for thousands of years, at the same time as the living have been using up the rest of the space around us.

Christianity, the reasoning behind so many exciting things that have happened to western society over the last 2000 years, is responsible for a lot of the problems with this. People had been told that their bodies would be literally resurrected on Judgement Day, and so they needed to be buried intact and whole. What people imagined happened to their bodies underground is anyone’s guess. I mean, surely even in earliest times, the fact that the dead were going to rot away crossed people’s minds…

But this led to situations like that in Paris in the 18th century, where the Cemetery of The Innocents at Les Halles actually began spilling its contents into the basements of nearby houses, and the noxious smell rising from the rotting flesh was affecting the markets held nearby. Luckily, a chance collapse revealed a solution and Paris was able to use the ancient catacombs beneath the city to relieve the pressure of the bones of its people on the bones of the city.

London had similarly suddenly expanded in the 18th century, and had even more churches with limited space to fit the bodies of those who had flocked to find their fortunes in the capital. A different solution was found to the decomposing bodies piled one on top of another, fighting for space in the tiny parish churchyards and crypts – the necropolis railway. It was opened in 1854 to transport the dead to a much larger cemetery outside the city in the green spaces of Surrey.

The risk to public health was so great that cremation was at last seriously considered by the Victorians, and it was the surgeon to Queen Victoria that founded the first Cremation Society of England in 1874. Then, the fascinatingly eccentric Welsh Doctor, William Price, attempted to cremate his baby son Iesu Grist in a pagan ceremony at Llantrisant in 1884, but was prevented by local villagers. He was tried at the court of assizes, but he was acquitted when it was found not in fact to be contrary to law, and he was eventually able to go ahead with the ceremony. The publicity around this led to a change in public thinking and the eventual setting up of cremation companies, one of the first being in Manchester in 1892.

So, we don’t have to bury our dead. But should we be eating them? Well, no. One of the last tribes to practise cannibalism stopped the practise because of a mysterious ‘laughing disease’ called kuru. We know it better by its relationship to Creutzfeltd-Jakob disease, which is itself closely related to Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis or Mad Cow disease. That whole terrible scare in the 1980s and 1990s came about from putting animals back into their own food chain. It’s not something that happens frequently in nature for a good reason. Animals don’t eat their own dead unless they are desperate, and it almost invariably leads to death and disease. The only time I feel it could be justified, and seems to have been done successfully in human history, is consuming the hearts of our enemies.

But that’s not a scenario we’re likely to encounter, of course. It’s not as if we’re going to be going into hand to hand combat any time soon, is it?

And then, there was suddenly the spectre of No Deal Brexit on the horizon…

If Prime Minister Johnson would really rather be dead in a ditch than ask for an extension to Brexit, but is as bad at negotiating as he seems to be, then he will not get us a deal by the deadline. Whether No Deal has been made illegal by an act of parliament or not, it could still happen, and if it’s the disaster that the government’s own leaked documents promise, we need to be prepared.

Those with their own homes, good health and independent incomes have little to fear from No Deal. It’s not them that the bodybags are being stockpiled for. The rest of us have heard nothing but rumours about 50% price rises, food shortages, medicine shortages, the armed forces on the streets… We need to stand up for each other, and do whatever we have to, to make sure people get everything they need. And if eating human flesh can help save the planet as well as feed the poor, who are we to argue? Lemmy had it right.

Bring me the hearts of my enemies. It’s time to eat the rich.