cannibalism, when is it okay?

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From the Arthur C. Clark movie?

Conscious beings are dynamic systems. Genetic phenotypes for instance don't trace directly back to genotypes in a 1:1 manner and you have the whole epigenetics issue.

Since it's always a give and take game it means that cognition is probably something like a fulcrum where the differences between instinct and environment get hashed out. Probably a good thing we have such imaginations as we do rather than needing to touch every new kind of hot stove and burn our hands. There are people who don't have that faculty cemented in very well and I think of George Clooney's analogy in Michael Clayton where he was telling his son about the dipisht cousin who had no common sense and where consequences just seemed to, in his mind, be raining down on him with no discernible rhyme or reason. While people like that might be able to survive these days, so long as they don't get outfitted with cement overshoes, they would have been a lion or tiger's meal some 20,000 - 30,000 years ago.

I am talking about producing something new, even intellectual property, completely apart from your environment.

Do most people, or, if you like, animals, meet that standard of intelligence.

Stanley Kubrick, based on Clarke's book.

There was a change agent, in the form of a black cube or wall.

Yes, that's right. The mysterious object. Could be symbolic? Never been sure about that one.

But, did they become intelligent, on their own.

I guess that some took the initiative, to touch, interact with it.

You have to use the skills you have and then you learn new ones.

Not sure what causes the differing intelligences that species have, and I'm not sure I understand them. My ability to answer these questions is limited by my own intelligence. But I have seen interesting evidence of crows using tools and solving puzzles. And then there is some evidence that dolphin communication is quite advanced. I wouldn't know. I don't speak dolphin.

Who says that you can't?

"Cannibalism" is such a nasty word.

I prefer to call it "people recycling".

Be sure to properly compost the inedible portions.It makes great plant food.

I'm sure it does!

Roman skeptics said of early Christians that the Communion was an act of cannibalism.

And technically, if you go by what we Lutherans, or Catholics, Anglicans/Episcopalians, or Eastern Orthodoxy says, it can be argued that the Romans were right.

Transubstantiation.

I feel that it is mainly symbolic, but would not be comfortable, taking the Communion, in bad faith.