[lbo-talk] Vegetarianism

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sun Aug 28 01:00:01 PDT 2005


--- ravi <lbo at kreise.org> wrote:


>
> response to jks and carrol:
>
> biology, as you well know, is not destiny.

As I _expressly_ said.

nor is
> geography (w.r.t
> carrol's point about the land). but if we must: our
> nearest relatives,
> chimpanzees, are mostly vegetarian (except for some
> bugs and the
> occasional monkey hunt). some biologists and
> anthropologists have
> theorized that humans were much more gatherers (the
> women doing the
> gathering which served as the primary source of
> food) than hunters (with
> the men occasionally hunting something down which
> was quickly consumed
> by them in various ritualistic forms).

I don't believe it, and I did note that much of the contemporary world is involuntarily vegetarian. Be that as it may. We could be today if we cared to, and could be safely if we were careful. Should we be? That's a a hard question. I am familiar with Peter Singer's argument's arguments (for example). But this is not a left-right issue as far as I can see. Hitler was a vegetarian. Marx was not. What does that tell you? Nothimg, I think.


>
> but from a left perspective, all that should be
> besides the point. the
> very horror of animal farming (yet another wonder of
> technology) should
> provide some motivation for a vegetarian diet.

Don't blame factory farming on technology -- it is a matter of markets in general and capitalism in particular. Animinal farming itself needn't be horrible. Animals on Amish farms (for example) do not live bad lives.

Do you think it is OK to eat fish?

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