Something Odd
Mar. 13th, 2010 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
I had a very weird thought today.
Many animals, when grooming themselves and others, will eat what they happen to find. Parasites, dead skin, scabs, loose hair/fur, feces, whatever. I've seen monkeys drink their own urine, pick their noses & eat the boogers, pick their butts, etc. Mother animals eat their offsprings' waste and many eat the placenta & membrane, sometimes to recover protein, other times to cover the scent of a newborn, sometimes for both purposes. When an animal does these things, we as humans may find it distasteful, but it's still seen as natural.
Yet, when a person does any of these things, it's considered a mental illness, usually in the OCD family, even when it's not inherently harmful, like picking one's skin until it bleeds, or hair-plucking or what have you.
Granted, I don't necessarily want to witness people doing things like that, but what a person does in the privacy of their own home is up to them. Yeah, hearing about Tom Cruise snacking on his kid's afterbirth grossed me the fuck out, but honestly he's no different than any wild animal. In fact, after the Oprah couch debacle, one could say that Tom Cruise seems quite comfortable with his inner wilderness. It's just strange how humans see themselves as so separate from their origins that 'perfectly natural behavior' can end up being a mental illness.
Many animals, when grooming themselves and others, will eat what they happen to find. Parasites, dead skin, scabs, loose hair/fur, feces, whatever. I've seen monkeys drink their own urine, pick their noses & eat the boogers, pick their butts, etc. Mother animals eat their offsprings' waste and many eat the placenta & membrane, sometimes to recover protein, other times to cover the scent of a newborn, sometimes for both purposes. When an animal does these things, we as humans may find it distasteful, but it's still seen as natural.
Yet, when a person does any of these things, it's considered a mental illness, usually in the OCD family, even when it's not inherently harmful, like picking one's skin until it bleeds, or hair-plucking or what have you.
Granted, I don't necessarily want to witness people doing things like that, but what a person does in the privacy of their own home is up to them. Yeah, hearing about Tom Cruise snacking on his kid's afterbirth grossed me the fuck out, but honestly he's no different than any wild animal. In fact, after the Oprah couch debacle, one could say that Tom Cruise seems quite comfortable with his inner wilderness. It's just strange how humans see themselves as so separate from their origins that 'perfectly natural behavior' can end up being a mental illness.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-14 05:39 am (UTC)Yes he is. Wild animals are sane.