"to force
tigers and wolves"
*sigh* it wasn't my impression that tigers & wolves engage in factory farming
.... i wasn't aware that they domesticated animals, penned them up,
slaughtered them not to eat but sell on the open market ...
...also remember that the ratio of carnivores to other animals is always very
small, and only in such small numbers is the situation natural ... for humans
to eat too much meat is to interfere with the available dietary needs of other
carnivores in the environment ... and all this in a natural environment ... a
situation where herbivores are being bred is hardly a natural environment ...
so it's not comparable to tigers and wolves...
"For me both extremes -- total vegetarianism and
total hamburgerianism (if I may use such expression) -- seem quite
unnatural."
Just keep in mind that it is you who are defining your center, and only from
that privileged, unquestioned position can you define these other things as
extremes.
Regarding what's "natural", do you act on every impulse that travels through
you?
I am all for being natural.
This means being in touch with one's impulses.
But what do you do with the impulses once you're in touch with them? To me,
this is the realm of classic psychoanalysis : where can id and ego meet in
sustainability?
so if you have an impulse to strangle another human being, in the name of
"naturalness" do you do it?
or do you develop some criteria for harvesting impulses in a sustainable and
ethical manner?
then we can discuss those criteria ...
...certainly it is necessary to give expression in some way to one's impulses
... to not do so would be "unnatural" and would amount to repression, which is
why there is such a good critique available of civilization. ["Civilization
And Its Discontents" for one] ...
so our task is to find a creative way of giving expression to our impulses ...
with this perspective, we perhaps find a marriage between conscious and
unconscious, the conscience and the id, the ethical and the impulsive ...
for all those who are tigers, i welcome you to abandon civilization, go live
in the jungle by yourself, and eat animals with your bare hands, and abandon
all other ethical, conscious notions, abandon technology ... i'm sure it would
be a wonderful life, and your impact upon the earth will be minimal and much
less than any first-world lifestyle ... however, those who do not choose to do
so, I wonder how you will maintain a split whereby ethics and consciousness
functions in one arena but not another ...
this doesn't imply me forcing anyone to do anything ... of course i'm calling
for change from within and tough ethical questions ... someone may decide
differently from me, but i think people are evading the point when they begin
to talk of "extremism" and use the "natural" to evade questions ... "tigers
and wolves" are irrelevant because humans are not carnivores ... technically
we are omnivores, and a critical question remains how far between the
continuum of carnivore to herbivore we lie ... i suspect closer to the
herbivore side than is commonly thought ... in any case, comparing us to
bears, racoons, and crows would be more helpful.
isn't there an issue of feminism involved in breeding? isn't there an element
of ecology involved in breeding, whereby one robs the species of natural
selection and regulating its own gene pool?
We could narrow this topic/debate down to three different areas :
1. Factory farming ("industrial meat").
2. "Traditional" farming with domesticated animals.
3. Hunting in the wild.
#1 is very clearly unsustainable, ecologically devastating, unmentionably
cruel.
#2 still involves the domestication of animals and the entire mindset that has
gone along with that. It's certainly better than #1, though, especially where
the animals are loved, named, allowed to live out most of their life cycle,
allowed a pretty natural existence in freedom, and killed quickly and
mercifully by someone they trust ...
#3 differs according to whether it is a part of ancient hunting-gathering
cultures or more modernized subsistence ... the advantage here is that the
animal gets (hopefully) to live out most of its life under totally wild, free
conditions...
...it should be pointed out, however, that the arguments in The Sexual
Politics of Meat still apply to #2 and #3, and I would be fascinated to see a
feminist critique of hunter-gatherer cultures based on the analysis in this
book and gender politics in those societies ...
...you might want to question abstractions such as "need for animal protein"
especially as they may be based on research funded by meat & dairy industries
... that doesn't condemn them, simply caveat emptor...
...again, if you're finding a need for animal proteins, the highest quality,
highest protein, highest vitamin & mineral content animals you can find are
insects ... start collecting grasshoppers, crickets, cicadas, dragonflies,
roaches,grubs, larvae and fry em up! I'm not joking! If you're going to eat
animal meat, the most ecological way to do so is to eat insects! You also get
higher nutrition than other meats. I'm not using this polemically. Pick up the
book "Man Eating Bugs" put out by the same pair who put out the wonderful
books "Material World" and "Women in the Material World." ... another
advantage to insects is it's much easier to crush the life out of them
instantly with no pain because they're small ... whereas larger animals take
longer to die ... so if you're going to be dealing in death, do it the most
painless way possible ... go for the bugs ...
when it comes to death for feeding, are you ready to lay down your life to
feed another? many in tribal cultures are ... in the sense of its' out there
... there's cougars and wolves, etc ... are you going to shoot (or call in the
police, animal control, etc) when a mountain lion comes down from the hills
and eats a small child, or you? are you going to have the coyotes shot that
come in and eat cats? i think these are relevant questions to ask oneself ...
with no intention of inflaming,
(un)leash
