> So. Mark, your point here is what? If you're trying to say that
> the majority of people on earth would and should have access to a better
> diet, yes, of course, you're right. But [SNIP]
> And as a vegetarian, I can hardly be expected to feel sorrow for
> adults who can't afford more meat to eat. (Maybe if they were yearning
> for more Velveeta...) Adults don't need much in the way of expensive
> meat or dairy products.
First, a point marginal to my main concern: Withrow's final comment (not copied here) that there are plenty of places to get a free meal reveals him to be so profoundly (and willfully) ignorant as to be unfit for even semi-civilized company. (Or perhaps it only illustrates Gandhi's point when asked what he thought of Western Civilization. "It would be a good idea."
But my concern here is with Withrow's illustration of the profound blindness moralistic thinking brings about. It is, of course, utterly idealistic in that it sees "ideas" as having an independent existence of their own, with cause always running from idea to practice. Turning vegetarianism into a moral category (hence not feeling sorry for adults who can't eat meat) is such a flight from reality.
Given the geography of the earth, even in a rational social order with rational food habits and rational population density, meat and dairy products will continue to be essential, since such a large proportion of the world's protein (given rational use of land) would exist only in the shape of grass. Any significant production of wheat and corn on the Great Plains is an ecological disaster. Similarly for large areas of China, and I presume many other parts of the world.
So while it is obvious that meat consumption must fall rapidly if the human species is to survive, it is equally obvious that for an indefinite future adequate nutrition will turn on making use of grassland area not fit for production of grain. Yes -- I know: under present condtions, which cannot continue, the Great Plains grow grain to feed livestock, but it will not do simply to stop feeding grain to livestock there: it will be necessary to stop growing grain there for *any* purposes. A great documentary was produced in the late '40s or early '50s (I don't remember the title) on the Great Plains from the great leap in grain production there during the first w.w. through the dust bowl and on to the revived production of wheat in the post-ww2 period. The refrain (pictorial and verbal) throughout concerned the few rivers in the area, and the inadequacy of the land for intensified grain production. That whole area of course uses immense amounts of petroleum for fertilizers, farm machinery, and grain drying -- but it is going to run out of water before it runs out of oil even if Mark is wholly correct on oil.
So in a rational world economy, those who insisted on a purely vegetarian diet would be as destructive of the world ecology as are those who want grain-fed beef 3 times a day. A rational diet would probably be *mostly* non-animal food: it cannot be wholly vegetarian.
It is impossible to think clearly about diet unless one incorporates history, geography, politics, technology, etc. etc. etc. Here, in their shared inability to see beyond their own moralistic metaphysics, is where anti-communists and dogmatic marxists meet to share essentially common ground.
Carrol