is eating meat in our nature?

[nd603@soton.ac.uk]

To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org


well people, some interesting arguments there, but i want to look at things
from a slightly different, and more controversial, standpoint. people seem
to be assuming that, whether we are vegetarian or not, the unnecessary
killing of animals is wrong.i want to dispute this, and suggest that it is
in our nature to eat meat and be generally bloodthirsty.

firstly, humans are naturally omnivorous, we have always eaten meat,
and in my opinion, always will.a lot of vegetarians stress the fact that we
are animals too (and therefore equal etc) but that ignores the fact that we
are naturally meat eating animals.what about our natural bloodthirstiness?i
think we need to look at how we treat other human animals for that one.

the most obvious facts to cite are the constant wars that plague the history
of humanity
- there is no evidence, as far as i am aware, of any society that was
purely peaceful, and that actually survived very long.most of these wars
lacked any kind of decent justification - if it was in self-defence, that
was usually only because of the unjustified aggression of the other side.
think of the brutality taking place in some parts of africa at the moment,
all kinds of mutilations etc that are entirely unnecessary to winning the
war, especially since many survive these attacks to retaliate.yet these
things happen. this ubiquity of aggression means that our nature must be
the cause. john gray actually suggests that war may be some kind of natural
faculty within us to control our numbers, and stop us overpopulating our
environment.

humans also liked to hunt - long after this ceased to be a necessary for
survival, people enjoyed hunting animals. just look at fox hunting.spanish
bull fights lack even the direct involvement of most of the
spectators.people seem to enjoy cruelty.

this goes back into our evolutionary past - i'm sure you all remember the
shock of a few years back when they discovered some kind of ape (chimps i
think) hunting down smaller monkeys and killing them quite brutally, toying
with them, only then to discard the bodies as worthless. they were killing
for fun.

we frequently refer to this kind of behaviour as part of our 'animal'
nature, something that should be left behind as we become gradually more
civilised, but frankly i don't think thats possible.not for some millennia
yet at any rate.this barbarous, bloodthirsty part of us is as much what it
is to be a human as any peaceful sentiments.in fact, isn't part of the
reason we drove the neanderthals to extinction our aggressiveness?

so when we assume the killing of  animals unnecessarily to be wrong, surely
this is a mistake? we are in fact indulging an essential part of what it is
to be human.

i should probably attempt to counter two obvious problems to this idea.
firstly - most of the people who eat meat or wear leather shoes will in
fact have nothing whatsoever to do with the killing of the animal. well.
eating red meat obviously does in some way satisfy a bloodthirsty impulse,
especially for those who like their meat rare.and until very recently, when
vegetarian food became more sophisticated and widespread, meat did form an
essential part of our diet.and if you claim we've moved on from those
benighted times, then i would point out vegetarians are still in the
minority, and economics etc could well force their numbers down further
(although obviously the opposite could be true as well).

as for the shoes,how many people actually consider the source of the
leather?this isn't rare leopard fur cloaks we're talking about.this is an
every day item, which most
people are happy for animals to die to produce. why? cos they  don't mind
the thought of animals dying to further humanity. even for something as
trivial as a shoe. however convincing the
arguments that we are just another animal, equal with the others, we
certainly seem to be animal with an inflated sense of its own importance
(as a result of being top of the chain, perhaps?)

the second problem is rather harder to counter, and indeed probably
undermines my entire argument.bloodthirsty we may be, but we also seem to
contain a fairly universal ideal of peace and harmony.this obviously
provides a clash, which is probably due to the difference between our
ideals, and our reality.in which case it is fine to eat meat.we're just
being realistic.

Nick




Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.htm