Perhaps the consumption of the dead is an important ceremonial activity. Some societies would never let their relatives be eaten by dogs and maggots. They even go so far as leaving the bones of their ancestors on display on platforms to show their right to live on the land.
People are beset by forces like ghosts, the Fair Folk, rogue Elementals and gods, even demons and the Deathlords with their twisted machinations. Yet these forces are remote and alien to them. Knowledge and familiarity with the supernatural world has diminished making them all the more threatening. Much superstition and mysticism surrounds the world of Essence so the Exalted whose awareness and control of Essence is intrinsic seem miraculous...or terrifying.
The Wonders of the First Age have been forgotten and decayed in neglect and isolation leaving people only the resources of physical technology to survive when before they had magitech.
Mainstream humanity has been thrown back on it's own resources, now greatly diminished after the apocalyptic horror of the Great Contagion and the ineptitude and internecine warfare of the Shogunate.
