8.9 KiB
[Q](Dark/Squick/Real Life Consideration warning): Damn. "Parasyte" and abortion.
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Author: u/TerrorTipper *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2xu87r/qdarksquickreal_life_consideration_warning_damn/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-03-03T22:35:41
Post:
Rational question/thinking out the anime:“Parasyte” situation. Background: alien parasites eat a humans head and have"The Thing" like morphing powers, they can only feed on real humans to sustain themselves. They cannot survive without eating humans. A lot of "humans are the real monsters", human life vs animal life, hunter and prey themes.
Terror Source: In the third episode "Feast" a female alien argues that she is "human" as herself and another alien had sex and she became pregnant with a (normal)human baby.
Horrible horrible logical question: If she could subsist solely by having sex then consuming her baby would you consider her evil? I'm really mixed up about this as my knee jerk reaction is yes, shes literally a baby eating monster, but I see this as a contradiction with my views on abortion(pro choice). Thoughts?
Edit: This situation is assuming that the aliens have an in built unfixable desire/need to consume living human beings, and that they would be willing/able to consume normal food to create those humans.
Comments:
u/puesyomero [+12] The Culture (20 minutes later)
wow so much is wrong with that question! first thought was "but that's Matrix-movie termodimamicaly imposible!!" then "that's a mighty small predator niche!" and third "is it wrong I thought all of that before considering the ethics of baby eating?" :P anyway after that train of thought i remembered the protagonist and his infected sidekick's parasites don't need to eat humans as they (as parasites are wont to do) receive nutrients from the snatched body with one exception in the manga. even if it was the case of some nutrient or whatevs unique from the human body, morgues, cemeteries, and hospital waste bins are more ethical and easier sources. problem is they are alien intelligences with a different morality and are heavily implied to be earth's biocontrol response to human polluting.
u/TerrorTipper [+5] (56 minutes later)
Haha in hindsight I should have realized that I was assuming she would be eating normal food to create the baby, catch-22 there. Hypothetically though, if eating the babies satisfied her in built desire to eat living humans and she ate regular food to create them would you be ok with this? Edit: Could it be that they need some sort of human brain biomolecule? This makes their drive to eat heads counterintuitive but could be a reasonable explanation?
u/Rhamni [+3] Aspiring author (4 hours later)
I suppose a disclaimer is in order: I thought the Bad End of Three Worlds Collide was acceptable. As long as the babies could be eaten early enough (Preferably before natural birth), I would be willing to consider a peace. Icky, but then Thai people are like the nicest people I've met, and most of them think it's perfectly fine to poison wild dogs or swerve to hit them with your car for fun.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (7 hours later)
It's a question based on a false assumption, and thus invalid. If biology produces it, then it's a molecule or group of molecules, and you can synthesize it or program bacteria to produce it.
If, as humans, we are judging this by human value then eating human is only acceptable when you have no choice, and only until you have an alternative. Morgues would be a good start, and keep you near the lab for synthesizing an alternate solution.
u/fljared [+1] United Federation of Planets (10 days later)
Let's play Least Convenient Possible World then.
Humans who are alive (as in biologically functioning) have some particular value that dead humans do not.
This could be in just being a delicacy, or in some "life energy"/otherwise epiphenomenal biological need, which cannot be synthesized or extracted from a human; To get it, a human must be eaten alive.
What would your answer be now?
u/Someone-Else-Else [+6] Anti-Spiral (2 hours later)
Well, pro choice people generally support abortion before the baby has a brain.
If she eats the baby after it's born, then she's evil.
If she eats the baby before it's born, I'd be very confused about her anatomy.
u/darkflagrance [+3] (6 hours later)
Some mammals can reabsorb fetuses during stressful times (like harsh winters). It's not impossible to eat your unborn baby...
u/Someone-Else-Else [+2] Anti-Spiral (7 hours later)
Can humans do that?
u/darkflagrance [+4] (7 hours later)
See Vanishing Twin syndrome:
Vanishing twin syndrome is when one of a set of twin/multiple fetuses disappears in the uterus during pregnancy. This is the result of a miscarriage of one twin/multiple. The fetal tissue is absorbed by the other twin/multiple, placenta or the mother. This gives the appearance of a “vanishing twin”.
Plus, you can just eat the stuff that you abort out of your womb. I think your own placenta would count as "human" for these extremely dubious purposes. You could also eat your own period even without pregnancy.
u/Someone-Else-Else [+3] Anti-Spiral (7 hours later)
Eh, if your own placenta was edible, then there's no reason that the aliens shouldn't be trying to eat individual body parts instead of people as a whole.
...What the heck did I just type?
u/darkflagrance [+2] (8 hours later)
Taaaastes liiiike baaaaaaacon
u/PeridexisErrant [+4] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (9 hours later)
Not exactly eating, but before birth I absorbed my twin (sister, we think) through the side of my left foot - and had to have the residue surgically removed when I was twelve.
Freaky but true.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Well, pro choice people generally support abortion before the
babyfetus has a brain.And while it has a brain. It's just that later term abortions are appreciably rarer than early abortions.
My personhood predicate requires sufficient wherewithal to pass the mirror test. (I eat bacon, and pigs pass the mirror test, so that's a generous lower bound.) I would support abortions up to twelve months after birth, since humans tend not to pass the mirror test before 18 months. However, there is enough demand for infants that adoption is often more efficient.
u/Someone-Else-Else [+2] Anti-Spiral (a day later)
See, you might support abortions up to 12 months after birth, but most people don't.
And you, yourself, don't dictate morality.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Are you suggesting that we turn morality into a democracy?
u/Someone-Else-Else [+3] Anti-Spiral (a day later)
No, I'm suggesting that you're immoral.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (a day later)
Does your system 1 support abortions up to twelve months after birth, or just your system 2? Even if it does make sense, I still am really uncomfortable with the idea of eating human babies even when they're not sentient.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
My system 1 doesn't support the killing of any animals in my general vicinity. It balks at roasted chicken because it sufficiently resembles a living chicken. It balks at whole prawns. It's totally fine with bacon.
When it comes to infants, I want them away from me, and I want to handle them as little as possible. System-1-wise, I'm about as comfortable with someone talking about slaughtering a pig as I would be with someone humanely killing a newborn human.
Now, eating infants intersects this killing of non-sentient humans with cannibalism. I have a strong (System 1) taboo against eating humans which leads me to be squicky about eating one's infants. However, since in this case we're not taking the flesh from people, I don't have much problem with it (in System 2, and to a lesser degree in System 1).
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (3 days later)
Oh good. Was worried I might be talking to a psychopath for a moment, lol. Casually talking about eating infants appears rather psychopathic, even though the reasoning behind it makes perfect sense.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (a day later)
there is a lot of ethics being explored LATER in that anime and I was actually rather pleased by the way it's been going.
I'd posit that parasyte borders on being rational fiction, and ultimately as far as I've seen it is quite tragic really.
I haven't read the manga so I don't know if it diverges heavily or not.