"Mike is utterly civilized, Martian style.  Duke, I don't understand the Martian viewpoint and probably never shall.  But I've talked enough with Mike on this subject to know that the Martian practice isn't at all dog-eat-dog... or Martian-eat-Martian.  Surely they eat their dead, instead of burying them, or burning them, or exposing them to vultures.  But the custom is highly formalized and deeply religious.  A Martian is never grabbed and butchered against his will.  In fact, so far as I have been able to find out, the idea of murder isn't even a Martian concept.  Instead, a Martian dies when he decides to die, having discussed it with and been advised by his friends and having received the consent of his ancestors' ghosts to join them.  Having decided to die, he does so, as easily as you close your eyes - no violence, no lingering illness, not even an overdose of sleeping pills.  One second he is alive and well, the next second he's a ghost, with a dead body left over.  Then, or maybe later (Mike is always vague about time factors) his closest friends eat what he no longer has any use for, 'grokking' him, as Mike would say, and praising his virtues as they spread the mustard.  The new ghost attends the feast himself, as it is sort of a bar mitzvah or confirmation service by which the ghost attains the status of 'Old One' - becomes an elder statesman, if I understand it."