Monday TeaDay 9/22/08 Vegetarian, Vegan, Omnivore, etc?

[Wesli]

I eat meat. I've thought about giving it up, but have found my reasons why not to.

1) Homo sapiens sapiens (and precursor hominids) have eaten meat for their entirety of being.

I don't think this is entirely accurate. IIRC correctly, some of the early hominids had different diets that did not involve meat. Though I will not argue that energy-rich meat had a definitive part in our evolution, particularly in feeding our brains.

Here's a typical article. There are a lot like it.
Diets are very hard to pin down. It's really easy to find supportive evidence for the consumption of a certain thing, but very hard to prove that a certain something did not get consumed. Ex: Bones with teeth marks probably means they ate meat. But no bones whatsoever doesn't say anything about eating meat. Even piles of bones without teeth marks imply meat eating.

2) Homo sapiens sapiens seem to be the first to have fished (earliest fishing artifacts are associated with HSS), and also first to develop art, spaceships, etc. Many anthropologists believe the consumption of fish played a part in early HSS intelligence development.

I've read a few comprehensive anthropology books in the last six weeks, and I've haven't come across this idea.

Now you have. Dr. Jon Erlandson is the one who told me about this. Very smart, wonderful guy.

3) If it weren't for our eating them, these animals would not be born in the first place.

So by my eating meat, I'm giving life. Giving life is what vegetarians and vegans think they're doing, but in reality, they're taking away the need for those animals lives.

These statements sound more than a bit anthropocentric.

To a few, maybe. But the statements are entirely true.

Death and birth are only natural, so why not accept them as such, and use them to create a better balance.

There's nothing natural about slaughterhouses. I am all for the circle of life, but we're not talking about scavaging, or about hunter/gatherer cultures. The way meat is obtained and consumed in the US by and large is anything but natural.

Firstly, hunting is definitely not in balance with the circle of life. Hunting has been the culprit of many extinctions. (Examples are the large North-American Pleistocene fauna, and the dodo.) In fact, our bringing up of livestock in mass is the only reason we can support our number and keep some form of the "circle of life." Slaughterhouses are just the buildings where these animals lives are terminated. Not so different from the cliff bottoms that herds of buffalo were driven to for their ends.

I definitely disagree here, but to argue the definition of what exactly natural and unnatural mean could go on forever. It's my belief that we are following our natural course of evolution, and to say that anything we do is unnatural is being extremely anthropocentric. Was the very first animal to hunt considered unnatural? The first humans to develop agriculture, were they unnatural? Is developing space ships unnatural?

Think of it this way, if we make it to our(my) dream of exploring other worlds, and find a species separating itself in our eyes by developing agriculture and rockets, would we not say that they are only following the natural path, as we did so long ago. It would seem that what is natural is just what is long-established.

Peace, Uncle Al.

[reey]

I eat free-ranged chicken and fish and eggs. Lots of tofu, too, but no beef or pork. I also eat Cheddar cheese, but that's the only one I can manage. I'm lactose intolerant.

Although I don't hunt, I do eat venison...the animal lived a natural life and had more of a chance to escape than some poor cow or pig. Factory farms are an obscenity IMHO.