The Evolution of Handwriting

PJ_Soul said:

njnancy said:

PJ_Soul said:

I personally don't think that eating dead people to avoid starvation is cruel in the slightest, and not even really savage. Both terms should be used only for those who indeed want to and/or do kill others for the food. But I would expect people not to chow down on one's family member in front of them. Cannibals must maintain standards too!

As for how such an experience might affect someone psychologically... that would for sure vary wildly depending on each individual's disposition and personal psychological experience under the same circumstances, and I would guess that for the most part, how one reacts to it would not really be dependent on whether or not they are "people of character".

That only applies to people on sport's teams.

Sorry Nancy, I don't understand what you mean here!

Oh, BTW, I personally don't think that there is any risk at all of actually losing the art of cursive altogether just because it's not taught to all students in elementary school. Cursive isn't going anywhere as an art form either way. There will always be people who learn it and also those who master it. And like I said, I think it would be a good art elective in high school. Then those who do learn it would likely be VERY good at it, like calligraphy level stuff.

brianlux said:

njnancy said:

brianlux said:

PJ_Soul said:

brianlux said:

Meltdown99 said:

Once the decision is made to eat another human, you have crossed a certain line and that encompasses more than the cannibalism. Trust in others is gone. Your personal safety is gone because you are not a fellow traveler anymore, you are a potential food source, esp. if you are well and not 'diseased', more to go around. Some people became gluttons while others adhered to the strict rules made when the horrible decision was made. Some people went insane and were found doing unimaginable things. Some may have survived the Winter, but no one came out of the situation okay. There were one or two people who refused to cannibalize who survived. 

In the instance of the Donner Party, the idea of having a member of my family, especially a child, be dinner would be something that I would not be able to psychologically withstand. The idea or image of people, possibly fellow family members, chowing down on my kid would quite literally break my brain. I'd rather die (and wind up eaten) but at least I wouldn't have to experience human nature at its cruelest and most savage. Sometimes there are situations that are not worth surviving. What do you have to live for when your family has been eaten. One could say living through that makes someone psychologically strong, but I think it is quite the opposite. In the way that it went down with the Donner Party, there was a greed, callousness and disregard for human life that became apparent the moment that line was crossed. There is survival and there is depravity. Depravity over ruled those who were only willing to do the minimum needed to survive. 

I believe that all members of the Donner Party, who were literate, wrote in cursive. A very flowery and Old English sort of cursive, which we know due to the diaries that some kept and are now part of history. It is a shame that people would need to have English translated to English in order to know what they said.

Now, with the plane that crashed, there was not the depravity, due to more provisions, the possibility of rescue and the character of most of the members of the group.The fact that they were team mates seemed to play into the 'only for reason of survival' mentality.  People who didn't cannibalize survived. I don't believe they ever disclosed who engaged and who did not.

Just as I will disclose that I would rather parts of my brain that are used in the creation and interpretation of the fine arts remain alive and not die because we begin to lose interest in forms of language, such as cursive. So many people mourned the  loss of great French Gothic art & vowed to rebuild so as not to lose a long gone art form, but are willing to lose an entire art form and language in one fell swoop. 

 Fine arts are a necessary part of a diversified culture, as much as being technologically advanced. What if the vote counter in the Donner Party did not know how to read cursive and got the vote wrong? HIstory may have been changed. But we would not know how because of those damn cursive diaries.

You make some very good points here, Nancy.  Yes, opting to engage in cannibalism does cross a line of sorts but when a person is starving, those lines often become blurred.  Some of those travelers held out and starved to death, others either may have had weaker morals... or maybe they just had a different set of morals or maybe the had very strong survival instincts. 

The disastrous incidents on the east side of the Sierras were actually a culmination of a number of terrible choices made by those families involved right from the get go.  At the outset, they left later than they should have.  They also made a huge mistake trying to take a short cut through the Wasatch Mountains that cost them much time, energy and resources and there were plenty of warning sign that should have prompted them to take the more tried and true northern route through the mountains.  My impression is that these particular families were not well adapted to this kind of excursion.  Other than the hired help, the travelers were mostly well to fairly well off families (poor people could not afford the supplies and resources to make the journey on their own.)  The fact that as many of them made it to California as did is more a matter of dumb luck and brave rescue teams.  Without those rescue efforts, I'm guessing most or all of them would have died.

The few letters and journals that survived did indeed illustrate that those people wrote in cursive but they also illustrates, for the most part, a poor understanding of grammar and spelling.  It's surprising to see how poorly some of that work is written!

It's difficult to judge others in such situations. The survivors of the Andes crash of the plane that was carrying the soccer team and others would not have lived if not for cannibalism.  Not a one of them would have survived.  Should they have all dies or is it right that some lived?  Tough question.

brianlux said:

njnancy said:

brianlux said:

PJ_Soul said:

brianlux said:

Meltdown99 said:

Damn...now we are on to cannibalism.  Nope, I draw the line at eating humans...jeesh gotta have some boundaries.  Do not underestimate people's ability to survive under difficult circumstances...

Yeah, it sounds absolutely disgusting and some of the Donner (and other families- it was called "Donner Party" but there were several families), some of them starved to death because the could not eat human flesh.  In other cases, family member ate family members.  I guess it depends on how each individual reacts under those extreme circumstances.  I don't think I would eat human flesh, but who knows, maybe I would.  I'm sure as hell not anxious to find out!

More than half of them were actually younger than 18. Lots of kids. I suspect the fact that some died because they wouldn't eat people was mostly about religious fervour or lack thereof (I'm pretty sure they were all Christians). I believe the more adherent ones refused to do it, while the less adherent has less of a problem with it. I read that two Native guide who was with the small party that went for help (less than half of them actually made it) abandoned the group because they were so disgusted by the fact that they were eating human meat - they refused to eat it - and also because they were scared the white people would kill them for the meat. But then a couple days later the group found these two again, almost dead from starvation on the trail, and they straight up killed the Natives for the food! Not cool! Those were the only two people who were actually killed for food in the whole Donner party ordeal. Typical. That said, that is probably what allowed those few who actually completed the trek to make it out and trigger the rescue missions that followed.

Good points!  I read the same thing in Rarick's Desperate Passage.  The author hinted at injustice toward Native Americans but went a bit weak on the subject- one of my few disappointments with that book.

Once the decision is made to eat another human, you have crossed a certain line and that encompasses more than the cannibalism. Trust in others is gone. Your personal safety is gone because you are not a fellow traveler anymore, you are a potential food source, esp. if you are well and not 'diseased', more to go around. Some people became gluttons while others adhered to the strict rules made when the horrible decision was made. Some people went insane and were found doing unimaginable things. Some may have survived the Winter, but no one came out of the situation okay. There were one or two people who refused to cannibalize who survived. 

In the instance of the Donner Party, the idea of having a member of my family, especially a child, be dinner would be something that I would not be able to psychologically withstand. The idea or image of people, possibly fellow family members, chowing down on my kid would quite literally break my brain. I'd rather die (and wind up eaten) but at least I wouldn't have to experience human nature at its cruelest and most savage. Sometimes there are situations that are not worth surviving. What do you have to live for when your family has been eaten. One could say living through that makes someone psychologically strong, but I think it is quite the opposite. In the way that it went down with the Donner Party, there was a greed, callousness and disregard for human life that became apparent the moment that line was crossed. There is survival and there is depravity. Depravity over ruled those who were only willing to do the minimum needed to survive. 

I believe that all members of the Donner Party, who were literate, wrote in cursive. A very flowery and Old English sort of cursive, which we know due to the diaries that some kept and are now part of history. It is a shame that people would need to have English translated to English in order to know what they said.

Now, with the plane that crashed, there was not the depravity, due to more provisions, the possibility of rescue and the character of most of the members of the group.The fact that they were team mates seemed to play into the 'only for reason of survival' mentality.  People who didn't cannibalize survived. I don't believe they ever disclosed who engaged and who did not.

Just as I will disclose that I would rather parts of my brain that are used in the creation and interpretation of the fine arts remain alive and not die because we begin to lose interest in forms of language, such as cursive. So many people mourned the  loss of great French Gothic art & vowed to rebuild so as not to lose a long gone art form, but are willing to lose an entire art form and language in one fell swoop. 

 Fine arts are a necessary part of a diversified culture, as much as being technologically advanced. What if the vote counter in the Donner Party did not know how to read cursive and got the vote wrong? HIstory may have been changed. But we would not know how because of those damn cursive diaries.

You make some very good points here, Nancy.  Yes, opting to engage in cannibalism does cross a line of sorts but when a person is starving, those lines often become blurred.  Some of those travelers held out and starved to death, others either may have had weaker morals... or maybe they just had a different set of morals or maybe the had very strong survival instincts. 

The disastrous incidents on the east side of the Sierras were actually a culmination of a number of terrible choices made by those families involved right from the get go.  At the outset, they left later than they should have.  They also made a huge mistake trying to take a short cut through the Wasatch Mountains that cost them much time, energy and resources and there were plenty of warning sign that should have prompted them to take the more tried and true northern route through the mountains.  My impression is that these particular families were not well adapted to this kind of excursion.  Other than the hired help, the travelers were mostly well to fairly well off families (poor people could not afford the supplies and resources to make the journey on their own.)  The fact that as many of them made it to California as did is more a matter of dumb luck and brave rescue teams.  Without those rescue efforts, I'm guessing most or all of them would have died.

The few letters and journals that survived did indeed illustrate that those people wrote in cursive but they also illustrates, for the most part, a poor understanding of grammar and spelling.  It's surprising to see how poorly some of that work is written!

It's difficult to judge others in such situations. The survivors of the Andes crash of the plane that was carrying the soccer team and others would not have lived if not for cannibalism.  Not a one of them would have survived.  Should they have all dies or is it right that some lived?  Tough question.