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By Root 894 0

THAT WE HUMANS ARE understandable, that for every conceivable action there is some reason driving it, some underlying cause or instinct that makes our behavior, if not logical, at least comprehensible. Lust, for instance. That’s a big one. Where would we be without lust? I daresay we wouldn’t be here at all. Hunger, power, a desire for security—primal, animalistic impulses—these too are all great motivators of behavior. Were one to listen to the grim reductionism offered by evolutionary biologists, one might conclude that all behavior is coldly guided, driven by a simple need to ensure that our genes continue on without us. That seems inadequate to me. Think of all the ways teenage boys, for example, conspire to take themselves out of the gene pool. They do this because, periodically, we are all stupid, and I am willing to acknowledge that simple, base stupidity can explain a lot of behavior. I speak with some experience.

Thinking on a grander scale—and why not fly those lofty airs?—one might ask why societies do what they do. What motivates them? Why, for instance, does one culture send men to the moon (to play golf, of course), whereas another culture will worship it from afar, now and then quivering in terror during a lunar eclipse? This is the territory covered by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, a very satisfying book for people like me, who like to think there is a reason behind everything. Diamond argues, very persuasively, that society is shaped by its environment—that its direction is determined by soil fertility, the surrounding animal life, its relative isolation from other societies, even its continental axis—and that nothing changes a culture faster than a change in its environment. I found this very compelling and, finishing the book, I thought, Well, there you have it. Humanity explained. Finally. But then there is Vanuatu, which has many peculiar customs, and if there was one custom that defied my book learning, that confounded my understanding of human nature, it was cannibalism. What to make of it? What would compel someone to eat another person?

Most people are aware of instances of cannibalism that result from extreme deprivation. We are familiar with the Donner party and their unfortunate travails in the High Sierras. Hollywood has given us Alive, a dramatization of the events that befell a rugby team when their plane crashed in the remote Andes. Grisly as those events were, we can empathize with those who, having no other means to remain alive, take it upon themselves to eat the bodies of their dead companions. Remaining among the living, by any means necessary, is an instinct that is easily understood. No doubt cannibalism of this nature has occurred since we first became carnivores. But as I noted the banana trees and papaya trees that sprouted like weeds in our yard, and as I snorkeled among a million fish, I thought it unlikely that the cannibalism that prevailed throughout Vanuatu had anything to do with sustenance. Nor was it the case, as it was on some islands in Micronesia, that cannibalism in Vanuatu was a form of ancestor worship. In Kiribati, for instance, when someone dies, it is customary for family members to partake of the flesh of the decomposing corpse, ladling it into a kind of soup, which is then consumed, ensuring that, for those in bereavement for Grandma, she will always remain a part of them. I’d prefer a wake of a different sort, but as someone raised as a Catholic, I could get my head around the custom. That starchy wafer produced by nuns, given to us toward the end of Mass—provided, of course, that we had confessed our sins and performed our penance (four Hail Marys and three Our Fathers, typically, for not making up my bed, being mean to my sister, and having unholy thoughts)—was, we were assured by Father David, the very flesh of Jesus.

“But it’s just a wafer,” I had exclaimed during one of the question-and-answer sessions Father David held for us sprites each month at St. Bonaventure.

“It is the body of Christ,” he assured me, and