As intellectual human beings, people have a tendency to determine whether another individual should be worthy of being considered normal. Predominant within every society, every culture, and every nation, conformity dictates the everyday lives of most people. Through conformity, members of society enable themselves to pass off as conventional to others. More often than not, the fundamental incentive behind becoming an orthodox human being stems from the unwanted sensation of being an outcast. Compliance offers safety, peace, contentment, and many other factors of a pleasant life to those who choose such a path. Thus, why obedience presents itself in almost every aspect of a typical day. There exist unspoken formalities within each uniquely…show more content… Yet, within the nation these relatively proscribed actions seem to entice the public through their exoticness and rarity. Maggie Kilgour discusses the fundamental incentive behind one’s need to act on their curiosity when she presents the following statement “The focus on cannibalism today seems to reflect our current desire to renegotiate difference and relation with others in a multicultural world in which the idea of the ‘savage’ and, indeed even ‘nature’ is questioned” (viii). Whether it be considered deviant and appalling in American society, the cannibalistic process does not impede a human being’s natural desire to comprehend the different. It is through individuals’ innate inquisitiveness and tendencies to understand taboos that have created a mass interest in the abnormal practice of anthropophagy, Lindenbaum adds to this with the statement “The current surge of interest in cannibalism has also fed salacious newspaper and television reports of cannibalism as psychopathology, aberrant behavior considered to be an indicator of severe personality disorder or psychosis” (477). These portrayals within society power those predisposed, defeatist notions in regards to cannibalism. Consequently, the kinds of cannibalism already predisposed to such negative notions of the American public, worsen in an image within American society. Cannibalism thus becomes a greater deviant, and threatening behavior to the public as it presents itself with a greater extent than before. As a result of the increased coverage and information of sacrificial, bone ash, and auto-cannibalism, mixed sentiments have flowed through the American public. Such broadcasts of anthropophagy exemplify the social deviant speculation people have of cannibalism, but these illustrations of the action also question the validity of one’s curiosity. Exposing further amounts of Americans to the horrors of cannibalism
