The strangely unsettling horror photography of liminal space

==~•The Big Question•~==

Why does liminal photography work? 

==~~~•Intro•~~~==

            If you haven't seen the huge amount of liminal space in photography inspired by the concept of the Backrooms then I'd be fairly surprised. It's a weirdly eery and creepy style of what is usually a wide shot of a landscape or a mildly dark room, sometimes with some sort of unrealistic or atypical feature of real life like this photo:

Liminal literally means at the transitional or initial stage of a process, or being positioned at a boundary or threshold. This means this style is all about being at the cliff edge, having a huge route (that you may or may not know) to travel or follow. 

==~~~~~~•Analysis•~~~~~~==

            I have a few main ideas that really struck me when I saw how consistent they were with good photography of this type. 

1. The Ghost Town Effect

        I didn't know what to call this but liminal space usually has this really creepy effect that can be supernatural and weird at times. 

            Photos like this show off the same effect abandoned cities do, an explicitly scary contrast between the contextual image about cities in the viewer's head of which is usually a busy, bustling place like London with thousands of people, buses and moving parts, with the emptiness of the scene, the complete opposite of what a city means to people. This triggers a survival instinct as you ask why the hell a commonly overcrowded, loud and prosperous city has just quickly disappeared. Is there a threat? Photos of liminal space are known to be taken in usually crowded or busy places, at least meant for people to be actively passing through, like in the ones above being shot in some kind of playground and an underground tunnel. Often they are taken in places that are swarming and annoyingly so like swimming pools and city streets. In narrative this could imply a city destroying predator or maybe a global / national disaster like a zombie apocalypse. The fact that something that is the literal peak of human civilisation in terms of architecture and infrastructure containing tens upon tens of thousands of individual thinkers hasn't managed to survive a threat means there is danger - and you are a tiny person wandering a giants skeleton. Not even a trace of a single soul survived, no loose pets, no people, nothing living. 

            Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, cities don't usually die in a day because they have been built up to be stable on economic, security and health fronts, so the more realistic reason for the empty city is that they mass migrated or are hiding. The idea of either of these being enough of a widely accepted solution that hundreds of thousands of diverse people agreed to and (possibly united with each other to do so) committed to leaving so much behind, really begs the question of what was so threatening it made people run from it in the first place. The lack of any wanderers also suggests people didn't want to come back in fear of the threat remaining, giving you an implicit or subconscious heart attack realising you could be easily destroyed in that place. The idea of people "hiding" alone sets an anxious tone that there is a predator, either of human or monstruous nature, the immediate inference made from the idea of hiding as well as the danger associated with the connotations of hiding meaning they are hiding from something sets off an alert in your head, building tension. People really don't like leaving stuff behind they've built up over years (there is a psychological heuristic of "I've gotten this far I can't give up now"), you know this because we do it all the time even if it's something small we built up or the alternative is better; it is used in gambling to keep you playing as you've already spent so much, surely you'll win your money back with just one more try! After all, 90% of gamblers quit before they play their next winning game. Therefore seeing this completely empty place shows the people must've had a damn good reason to leave as they'd have had to overcome emotional attachments, leave everything behind, join the others and run without carrying any of their stuff if it's still seen in the city. Despite this, some ghost towns are presented as being run down over a long time, which could imply the city was so unbearable to live in, so inefficient and dying that people left for better lives. 

            A lack of dead bodies further adds to the mystery and maybe supernatural element with the living status of the city members being unknown: they could be alive and hiding, alive and outside the city, dead underground, or maybe a monster ate their corpses. 

            The deadness felt about this empty town can begin to invoke messages relating to the paranormal, I mean the name "ghost town" simply describes an abandoned town with remains of it still standing. Ghosts are simply dead people in some stories so maybe the town is dead. It may suggest elements of this town are still alive, something magical must have emptied the city of it's people if it wasn't something normal, it is hard to imagine a reasonable and concrete force destroying an entire town although modern technology and explanations could give answers. Maybe it was a natural disaster, a nuclear bomb, possibly mass resource decay or loss, maybe caused by nuclear reactors exploding. There could well be moral connotations brought from ghosts because narratively they often exist from having unfinished business when they were alive, or something hugely malevolent and unfair caused their death (like in the recent film black phone), sometimes they exist to guide someone they're connected to in the living world. There could also be a vengeful spirit on the loose, ready for you to confront, maybe a version of the trope of mother nature taking her land back. Some form of evil spirit or demon could've taken the consciousness out of people making them slaves to nature, maybe humans were morphed into another form so another species could use us as hosts. 

            The idea of any large threat also gives way to possible survivors, meaning it isn't impossible that an oasis is formed, or more importantly, traps and weapons are within the city. 

2. The element of weird

  

                This has to be one of my favourite elements of photography and general art and fiction because it's really hard to explain sometimes but there's just this either foreboding, unsettling, or plain mysterious weirdness about a photo that you can't quite point to or say why it exists. Sometimes you can and even then it is visually interesting to find the factors going into this creepy factor. In liminal photography the first technique I believe is sometimes used, is the purposefully (I hope) bad image quality. As well as being used or found in some video games like Granny the mobile game, this blurriness and low resolution is basically a cheap and crude way of making more unclear and ambiguous unknown stuff in the image. It's like smudging a drawing to make it seem more realistic by covering up the faults, or just lowering light levels to show less imperfect features of your face in a picture although that is a different thing in and of itself. Not only is it a nice way to present bad quality as a style, it actually does work as a style / visual aesthetic. This is most effective in horror art because it's harder to make out shapes and see in blurry portions of the image, meaning you force all viewers and their natural survival tendencies to work a little harder to check if there's actually something dangerous in that dark corner or if it's the pile of clothes you dumped on a chair at 3am. It has the same effect as darkness or any other technique to create unknown in an image. It may make it seem like a pixel-ly and old fashioned which is a style in itself alongside playing with hints to the time period.

            Liminal spaces like the water levels of the backrooms like such ones as this:

it creates the feel you get when you look at a complicated 3d scratch game or blender 3d model. It doesn't seem practical or like it exists normally in the real world so you assume it is user or AI generated, because robots like making pictures of swimming pools I guess. The scene feels so random but constructed well so it could be guessed that some program made it not knowing what the setting's purpose would be or that most places have practical uses that we know about just as a swimming pool does. They have conventions, and this seems unusually unconventional and so sparks our interest, leaving it to be marked as something our brain sees as different and new; anything new can be dangerous, as well as interesting. Breaking conventions outlines contrast and sticks out, and is used in literary writing being the opposite to parallelism. 

                Working in tandem with the unknown blurriness and generated feeling created by these images is the constrasting childish and hollow themes of innocence. Bright primary colours, childish settings like playrooms, settings with an Innocent purpose yet an underlying potential for being deadly like swimming pools and streets (drowning and murder), and unnaturally proportioned objects that represent an over compensated proof of innocence and safety. These seem to combine in a subset of liminal photography photos with the ghost town effect to unsettle the viewers with an in your face presentation of supposed safety like rainbow pathways while still having the element of unknown and deadliness of a dark alleyway. Children are furthermore a symbol of pure innocence and raw perception due to their lack of experience and usually responsibility needing to be taken, they are a bundle of positivity that are used to build up this facade of safety. On the other hand, children do some of the freakiest stuff in real life like imagine waking up to your kid in front of you at night saying they had a nightmare, or the dark drawings some do, it's a contrast that is unexpected for an innocent archetype. This is why horror films and stories often take advantage of children's innocence by having them possessed by demons, do evil and malevolent things like write violent warnings, and child lullabies are sung by haunting ghosts. That is a topic I could write another whole blog about. 

This false sense of safety is put forth in the guise of exaggerated contextual innocence and safety of the casual locations, that is implicitly exposed and slowly understood to be wrong with the juxtaposition of the emptiness and expected busyness. In the photo above, the teddy bear is massive and there is an excess of toys and sofas to suggest safety and comfort - children would be expected to playfully run around and play with the big doll house and read books. There are nice colours of orange yellow and bluey purple and even a mini Christmas tree. The teddy and maybe christmas tree have unusual proportions or at least the teddy uses it's size to represent a large amount of comfort, convincing the viewer that it's safe and there's no need to worry. Meanwhile the emptiness speaks to the possible danger. The swimming pool photo above the one I just mentioned is also a big room which may confuse the reader as to what would need such a big space, or suggests that there would be an echo therefore reminding you of the emptiness and your loneliness. This along with the ghost town effect and such makes you feel like there's an omnipresent being or fear, watching you. This is emphasised by the constant sounds that are made in the lore of certain Backrooms levels and with the mix of manmade and nature ambience, like with the buzzing of fluorescent lights or a swimming pool. 

            A couple other graphical and semantic features involve the dreamy-ness that the Backrooms especially plays into in order to destroy the barrier between fantasy and reality, if anything is possible then a nightmare could be any imaginable or unimaginable threat. This dreaminess is injected with the sky shots, childish imagery, and unnatural proportions and blurriness. 

3. Liminal Lighting

            Aside from the simple use of darkness and blurry images, there are some more characteristics of liminal photography that relate to lighting. A couple photos manipulate a form of ordered chaos with a mostly predictable pathway or continuum made up of a bunch of lamps or footprints leading to somewhere that is presently in darkness, unviewable, or less so. 

            There's almost always some sort of predictable or even mostly predictable set pathway with a guaranteed territorial threat like darkness at the end of a hallway, there's only one way to go and you cannot see what's at the end. Sometimes there are glowing lights that follow your path into the dark like this last photo in the ones above, and sometimes it is just a hallway that is obviously going one way. The thing that travels alongside you that gives that predictability can be a pavement, lights, footprints, a rainbow, water and so on. The water in the pool photos are good because it proves something else has to be there or the water would be flowing into the empty space. This may help with the sense of something always following you, but also your automatic survival response stemming from the idea that something is inevitably coming and it's probably dangerous. 

            All good liminal photography plays with lighting and many have bright and colourful natural light coming from it being casual daytime or just the reflection of the colourful floor. The rainbow colouring and calming daytime light again links back to the facade of safety but the fact these photos can still be scary even in daytime is rare and powerful, and I believe the effect of the normally tranquility-inducing daylight causing fear is due to the hint of that omnipresent danger or fear of such. It's like a bold challenge presented to you by that thing watching you in the corner of the blurry part of the image saying "do you really think you're safe?" and "I am capable of causing anxiety and murder even in the supposed safety of day.". This gives way to the common theme which is that the bright lights and rainbow colours represent what is usually busy and safe while the darkness represents that creepy unknown and unexpected emptiness. 

            Occasionally, there is a weird zoom effect on these photos and it gives this strange effect that the image isn't capturing the entire scene or scenario, even more suggesting there is something being concealed and hidden. Along with that, the photo above and below both hide most of what is in the image under the cover of darkness, bluriness or otherwise. The focus is a small portion of the scene and the contrast between that and the rest of the image is huge in terms of visibility.

 

==~~~~•Summary•~~~~==

            Liminal photography is best distinguished with three key features: ghost town effect; a juxtaposed sense of unexpected emptiness causing a survival reflex, the weirdness element; using generated 3d models and modifying conventional colour schemes and structures like the swimming pool levels of the Backrooms to unsettle the viewer, and either a mostly invisible scene or a predictable and set path into the unknown. 

            The ghost town effect deploys contextually busy settings paired with empty scenes, forcing the reader to anxiously question the reason for the death of a city for example, activating a survival instinct. Made possible by large rooms and echoing ambience like water. There is also a pure weirdness effect made using the built up facade of false safety from the childish imagery, bright primary colours, strange object proportions, themes of endlessness with hallways, and hints to a supernatural catastrophe. This is usually perceived from the blurry images, huge emptiness, omnipresent fear created, and large portions of unknown in an image which make the viewer feel lonely. Finally, the third feature being the rare lighting, that being the daytime lighting or the path of destiny represented by a line of lights or a dark hallway. The predictable pathway and mostly dark images give a sense of a threatening challenge being made and determined fate. These features all combine to make a really effective piece of horror art and therefore photography. 

==~~•Conclusion•~~==

            Overall, liminal photography is a really good mixture of weird, supernatural, and just generally creepy photography that uses some simple patterns and techniques to make something scary. 

            I hope you enjoyed and like the photography I've shown, make sure to give your takes on my ideas and any of your own ideas and feedback about the photography or blog. Anything from questions to criticism can be sent to me via my discord: pebis#2175. Thanks for reading. , 

 

What is Gender and Dysphoria? My proposal for a definition

==~•The Big Question•~==

What is gender and (gender) dysphoria? Gender Identity Theory's biggest propositions. 

==~~•Intro•~~==

Before I say anything about this hugely prominent and controversial movement in recent times, I would like to clearly state my intentions considering the sensitive topics related to it. I am going to try organise this so the first section is purely analysis of the Gender Identity Theory while attempting to be unbiased, the second section will be my political view. Despite that, I mainly disagree with the mainstream view about gender. 

==~~~•Definitions•~~~==

Gender Identity / New Gender theory is the term I use to encompass the recent cultural, ideological movement that you probably heard of from pride marches and people talking about identity, gender, and pronouns. The theory's main points are that: gender and sex are different, gender is a spectrum, trans people struggle with their gender, there are more than 2 genders, and that many people suffer gender dysphoria in some way. I will explain and talk about all these in this blog and in further blogs. 

It is also called gender ideology, radical gender theory, transgenderism by opposition (generally) and doesn't really have a name by those who support it that I know of; other than maybe trans rights activism. It also relates to terms you may have heard like gender fluidity, gender non conformity, and cross gender expression (expressing opposite to your sex's expectation so feminine men and masculine women).            

Gender fluidity is the idea that gender changes, transgenderism is the idea that you can change your gender, I will call transitionism the idea that people who suffer from gender dysphoria should ideally transition through changing clothes, hormones, or surgery. 

==~~~~~~•Analysis•~~~~~~==

Okay so I'm first addressing the main concept in New Gender Theory which is that sex and gender are different and/or separate. 

1. Gender is a social construct

One perspective, which I believe is the most mainstream and is definitely the major view in my experience of talking to people in real life, and in dms, is that sex is the biological markers for men and women: chromosomes, genitals, and hormones. Meanwhile gender is the societal construct of stereotypical features associated with men and women, typical gender ideas include: girls liking pink, men wearing suits, women being more nurturing. 

It has also been described by people on both sides as your gender expression and public image. 

Taking on this view, gender dysporia is often argued as a mismatch of gender and sex that causes depression and discomfort in terms of their gender. This may seem complicated as there are varying ways of saying what I just described, but the mismatch of sex (penis, vagina) and gender (dominant men, nurturing women) clearly doesn't necessarily cause dysphoria as it just means they could be a feminine man or a masculine woman. It means that if you have any cross gender expression, you are transgender; a man who likes pink is a girl or should ideally transition to become one in order to deal with the dysphoria. 

This can be considered a hypocritical contradiction as many advocates of this view also believe in cross gender expression by supporting femboys and dominant women. 

It also doesn't support the usually argued gender spectrum, the idea that people can express and also said to be, on a spectrum of masculinity and femininity. This is due to the fact that from this theory, only 100% masculine men are men and vise versa. 

Ideas of what is masculine and feminine differ by person and over time, meaning trans people are portrayed as 100% subjectively trans which doesn't make sense. You could be seen as trans by a different culture or time period yet not suffer from dysphoria at all. 

Many of these cross gender features like women being assertive not only arent reported to cause dysphoria or any negative feeling, but are claimed as positive or part of people's personality. For example: Finnster, Jordan Peterson, James Charles, Judge Judy. 

Some gender attributes are strongly evidenced to be affected by sex such as the psychological difference in big five personality trait agreeableness in men and women. 

2.) Gender is a feeling

Another idea, often said alongside the point that gender is a social construct or to describe the concept of "gender identity", is that gender is a feeling or sense of self. The most descriptive version that I'm aware of hearing is that gender is your own sort of sense of being connected to your birth gender (your sex's associated gender e.g. if you are the male sex then it is how much you identify with masculinity) and how much you identify with any gender in particular. 

This is described in so many different ways and many say things like gender dysphoria also being this feeling of disconnect or misalignment between your gender and sex, but not necessarily because they don't match.

This fixes the problem of anti cross gender expression by describing a completely subjective and independent sense we all have that is often framed as a journey of discovery with you and your gender. This means gender is something innate or already existing, or that we all have an objectively subjective feeling that cannot be invalidated by others. This ignores the idea that gender is a social construct instead of a fully personal construct, unless you make the distinction between gender identity and gender expression where gender identity is this feeling I just described and gender expression is how you express your gender identity with masculinity and femininity with no requirement of corresponding to the gender identity. This is logically impossible as you can identify as the male gender identity (e.g. wearing boys clothes) and desire to present using female gender expression (e.g. wearing girls clothes) without having dysphoria according to this belief. This really just seems like gender identity has nothing to do with anything, seeming like this innate subjective entity that doesn't mean anything or refer to anything about you. 

This is portrayed using phrases that promote individual freedom and purely individual judgement over your identity such as: "only you can say what's right with you and your gender", "no one can tell you how to be a boy", "any gender you decide to express as is valid in your own way". 

This idea of a subjective individual sense that is objectively correct is impossible in any other context, you cannot feel like an Emo and present with optimistic attitude and angels clothing while saying you identify as an Emo because Emos have set cultural stereotypes and simply saying you identify as that doesn't correlate with how identity works. Identity is determined in this case by how much you resemble culturally established features of the stereotype Emo, even if you don't want to be. If you have black hair and saying depressing things you will likely be called an emo even just for a joke. It's possible to strongly like, agree, want to associate with, and become the features of particular gender stereotypes, but it is culturally and socially objective at least in part, whether you fit in to them. Identity is created, built up, worked towards, I cannot say my subjective sense of selfness identifies as an optimist but want to express that by saying negative things all the time while being logically correct. What you can argue is that optimists should say negative things as it is honest and meaning you can be prepare for the future; you can change the cultural bounds and ideas about certain categories and so on but you cannot change the fact that happier people are more likely to be optimistic, non cultural features (happiness in this analogy) affects the stereotype or cultural idea (optimism). 

This version of gender also doesn't invalidate ideas like cat gender, helicopter gender, star gender and any other form of gender that many who advocate new gender theory dispute. 

3.) Gender is related to complex brain structure and neurochemistry

This idea is a lot rarer but parts are mentioned by other new gender theorists even when they believe gender is something else. It is uncommon (though I have heard it from at least 2 people on discord and YouTuber Professor Dave Explains) to say gender is found your brain; structure and chemistry, as it suggests that gender dysphoria is a malformation whereby the brain develops as the opposite gender's structure. It also means gender is largely biological if not fully, and may suggest a lack of free will with one's gender. 

The main problem is the often vague definition of what brain structure means and the lack of explanation of what "opposite gender's brain" means. It could mean varying brain function ability level, women have better developed brain areas related to facial recognition for example, it could mean varying behaviours and mindsets. 

If any of these versions are true, it means you cannot change your gender and could suggest you have zero free will with gender as it is all determined to brain structure. It also means transitioning via changing clothes and pronouns etc should have no theoretical euphoric effect on your gender or dysphoria, or at least nobody I'm aware of has presented evidence or ideas for such effects. One idea could be that the natural behaviour associated with your gender's brain is being denied and so the dysphoria comes from those natural behaviours being stopped and bullied out of you as boys shouldn't be nurturing for example. This assumes behaviour is 100% biological and means the cause of dysphoria is the anti cross gender expression harassment or culture as is commonly said when talking about the high trans suicide rate. It also means medical transition may have a solid benefit relating to sexual behaviour being better suited if you have your brain's gender's genitalia. It denies the idea of gender identity vs gender expression in a sense that gender identity can't be anything like xenogenders. I am very uneducated on this view so I would take explanations. 

==~~~~~•My View•~~~~~==

Gender dysphoria is not the mismatch of gender and sex, it is not a mystical sense of self that has the godly ability to decide your gender that innately removes the need for criticism. Those ideas are appealing as they have an explanation of an objectively true subjective feeling that illustrates a journey of self discovery and victimhood. The person has total control over their expression with it being hyper validated by people who "aren't bigoted". 

Since there are no consistently established rules that I'm fully aware of, with the cause of dysphoria and gender identity's relation to gender expression, it means more research or theorising should be done before trying to justify neo pronouns as a valid utterance and getting angry if people think otherwise. 

Here is my proposal for a definition of gender and sex: sex is the biological classification (male or female), gender is a description of your masculinity / femininity. You would say my sex is male and I have quite a masculine gender if you were a boy that liked lifting weights a lot for example. Gender is a spectrum with masculine on the left, androgynous in the middle, feminine on the right. You are not a gender, you are a certain amount of feminine vs masculine. Some things are blurry or are considered to be on both sides. Carl Jung believed us to all have an anime and animus, a feminine and masculine part in our psyche which are both necessary and powerful. And denying either would be cutting off a part of ourself. Gender dysphoria is a rare mental disorder by which you should have absolute empathy for, people should be able to have cross gender expression and medical transition should only be allowed if you are 18 or over unless you have parental consent to do it at 16 (willing to debate this). Dysphoria is also a feeling that many experience when they feel they aren't as masculine/feminine as they'd like or feel pressured to be, a man who isn't buff may feel dysphoric at times but they are not a woman. It is insulting to claim dysphoria is an issue of identity misalignment or anything different to a medical issue, despite it sounding nicer. 

No matter your view or my view on this, I encourage you to have both a bit of empathy and productive debate with those you disagree with as I have tried doing through dming people and speaking of my opinions in conversation. Speaking with your enemies may teach you why they believe what they do so you can learn a lesson or better arrange your opinion, even if you stay on the same side of the arguement. And disagreeing is no reason to generalise their opinion as homogenous and harass people based on your stereotype of the opposition. 

It can be extremely difficult to talk about these opinions, but I encourage you to tell your truth and make it so your orient yourself towards the truth. Assert yourself and open your ears, if not but for a minute. It's easy to say to do this when there are legitimate consequences if you oppose new gender theory, you don't need to go out your way to cause conflict, but at the least; politely assert your opinions instead of just nodding your head when asked. 

==~~~•Summary•~~~==

New Gender Theory is the recent movement that has followers enforcing many ideas with 3 main versions for the definition of gender and dysphoria: dysphoria is not the mismatch of biological sex and socially constructed gender features as it is offensive to people with cross gender expression, gender is not a feeling that allows you to decide an internal sense of identity that cannot be questioned or judged in any way as that is either impossible or not recommended as skepticism is necessary, and gender is not fully complex neurochemistry that makes expression uncontrollable. 

What I've taken from what I've seen of these ideas is that they are inconsistent, hypocritical, logically impossible, offensive and underdeveloped for the practises they are meant to justify so I encourage anyone to contact me to give me a better version or general debate. 

Thank you for reading, I wish you all well no matter your experience with gender, I'm very willing to debate my points and explain or take feedback on them via my discord: pebis#2175. 7

 

Is cannibalism really illegal?

Is cannibalism illegal? If so, why and should it be? 

As a warning, I will be talking about some heavy topics like dead bodies in a really not serious and likely uncaring seeming way. I wouldn't recommend if you are sensitive to these topics. Also, as a general assumption, you probably shouldn't eat a dead body if you found one on the streets. 

Personally I wouldn't have a problem with my family or anyone else really, having a scran at my kidneys or whatever is edible (or non edible I guess though I'd prefer people to not be poisoned). 

However, even me consenting is against US laws if it is considered murder which is fair enough, and desperation or survival isn't legally excusable for snacking on a quick leg or two. 

I get preventing murder  but if you somehow legally have a corpse, let's say grandma passed her expiration date, could you eat her for a cultural ritual or just because you're strange. This is also illegal due to it being mostly illegal to obtain body parts as well as desecrate a corpse as forensics might be interested in the investigation of why the body has bite marks and if it was a murder. 

I also understand not being able to buy body parts, I'd be pretty pissed if I wanted my ashes to be buried on a hill at sunset with the valley surrounding me, and then some kid grabs half my torso to chew with his coke and dominos. 

And even if you wrote your consent in your will I guess that would still be illegal cannibalism. 

I am going to briefly mention the idea of someone creepily buying dead private parts here and move on. Would it be necrophilia to use a "hyper realistic" dildo? 

Investigating potential crimes also makes sense as eating the body may ruin loads of evidence like injuries and blood tests. 

But let's say there is no suspicion of crime, the person consented in their will, and you somehow managed to legally buy their parts, that shouldn't be illegal right? Although there could be contradicting will statements like wanting to have their organs be donated, another reason cannibalism could be bad. 

As well as this, there is obviously the moral and emotional aspect which is probably the biggest objection to cannibalism which people actually have, it just sounds wrong or weird to eat people, even typing it is off putting. 

That could be the disgusting images of desperation or horror given from films, the idea of destroying someone close to you's body as it hurts the emotional bond, and just the general disgust of eating our own species like it is betrayal. 

Many probably just think it will taste bad but I mean, shouldn't it be the most nutritious thing you can eat since it should have everything you need to grow - that is if the body is healthy. 

I guess disease is possible but even then, I believe I have the legal right to do something stupid no matter if it is bad for my health. Maybe eating human is really healthy previously mentioned, maybe it should be encouraged for a treat meat. 

Another big way of thinking about it as wrong is the religious perspective, eating your body probably won't let the soul reach heaven, for both eater and eatee. Unless the soul comes out in the toilet a bit after, the logistics of soul transportation is a bit blurry for me. 

I think burial is the ideal method of respecting the dead in the Christian viewpoint because it gives the body back to earth, back to nature where it came from; allowing reincarnation to continue perhaps. Or just giving the body a rest while the soul yeets to heaven. 

Imagine living a whole 80 year life made up of pure holiness and sinlessness but some bozo dogs you out of ur grave to eat you like a KFC bucket so you can't go to heaven. Would you live in their stomach or something? Or do you just go plop to hell. Maybe you get given a chance in purgatory. 

Can I eat the body after it's buried and the soul is gone up to heaven or is it like a constant check in thing? That could be another hyperthetical all by itself; religious nuance, for another time. 

The part related to the ethics of eating a human body which I think is the biggest reason people see it as wrong, is the emotional trouble. Death has a huge impact on people, even people you don't know can bring a wave of sad for a lot of people. 

But losing someone close, having a huge part of your life gone and maybe other hope crumbles, is really impactful and would definitely be considered inconsiderate if you ate their close person. Not only because you may deface them literally, but also just as what seems weird to call politeness, you shouldn't treat people's memories and relationships as fictional and the bereaved bodies as resources. I probably wouldn't look at, whoever ate my lost family member, the same for instance. 

Despite that, some cultures probably ritualise the process of eating the dead as a step in the natural cycle of life. Or maybe a symbolic gesture to show infinite attachment to their dead companions, literally in your cells if you look at it that way. 

It's also just not seen to be a natural human instinct to eat other humans as it seems anti-social and murderous. You may also regret eating someone, maybe carrying guilt only afterwards. 

With all this considered, you gotta wonder what is considered cannibalism, is biting my nails or arm cannibalism because I've done that. What if it's someone else's cancer or fungus that I'm eating, is that legally considered part of them? What if I just eat a tiny bit of skin, what if it's accidental? 

In reality I just won't be able to be sued for most of this but I do wonder about more extreme and confusing cases. 

Can I eat myself? Does it have to be more than 1 arm maybe? What if I did it so that poison wouldn't reach my heart through the arm I bit off? Do I have to swallow or can I just chew it? What if an animal bites a part of me off and then I eat the body part? Who gets the persecution? Is it gay if I eat a dick? 

In my view, If somehow everybody who knew me forgot about me and I consented to bring eaten, I wouldn't care, maybe I'll change my mind when I get jumped by a rabid Street cannibal cult leader who tries eating me but I usually don't get offended by things. 

No matter what weird and thought out scenario you come up with, there will always be someone who cares either personally or not, so you should probably not eat dead people if you want to be respected. But then again, your life is your choice. Do what you want as long as it's legal. 

Thanks for reading up to here, thanks for listening. 4