Indeed, not only the majority of human civilizations but no evidence of a single paleolithic pre-"civilized" group that didn't consume meat or seafood.
Choosing a vegetarian diet is something we can do now, and is always an ideological or religious choice. It was not a choice for our ancestors, even if they often ate way less of it.
The way these groups did it and the way we do it aren’t even comparable.
They didn’t keep animals in piss poor conditions where they can’t even turn around in their cages or are so deformed they can’t stand up (battery chickens are engineered that way so their breasts are more meaty for instance)
Seafood eating didn’t involve dragging dozens of kilometers of net across the sea floor destroying everything in its passage to throw most of it away (dead) because we can’t eat it anyway/it sells too cheap.
I don't have an argument with you there but that is an entirely different topic from claiming meat eating itself as an aberation or vice.
The problem is agricultural meat eating doesn't scale to industrial levels without abject cruelty. To be frank, industrialism itself requires abject cruelty towards humans, too. I feel worse about humans labouring in brutal factory conditions in China making trinkets than I do about chickens in cages..
FWIW I like chickens. We have two pet chickens who stopped laying a long time ago and just live a life of leisure hanging out under a couple very large mullberry trees. I like humans more.
Considering how much environmental damage and how much suffering our modern day meat eating generates, it’s not that much of a leap to see it as a vice: it’s unnecessary and does a lot of collateral harm; mostly benefiting the individual who indulges in it at the expense of everyone and everything else. Isn’t that what a vice is?
It’s not either/or. If we wanted, we could make durable cloth clothing. No need to farm and kill animals for that. Ask your grandparents how long did their clothing last when they were young compared to the junk we get now. It’s not like we don’t know how to weave durable textiles, we just choose not to.
I want, you want, everybody say they want them, but then fashion industry makes billions.
And not for the lack of durable clothing
My real leather shoes are 20 years old
My sneaker are less than a year old and already not good enough to walk
The problem is I can't wear leather shoes all the time and even if I buy expensive clothing,they are not durable enough to be on par with the ones my grandfather (he was a tailor) made 50-60 years ago.
The offer is simply not there (except luxury goods, which are usually made with old school materials, that's why they cost so much) and the bulk of the demand is simply made of cheap and affordable sh*t.
On the other hand my girlfriends owns a fur that belonged to here grand-grandmother, it's 60 years old, it still looks brand new.
1 human of the past = 1 fur for life
1 modern human = at least 2 or 3 jackets every season.
You want durable stuff and not pollute the environment with dangerous chemicals?
The old way it's still the best.
> No need to farm and kill animals for that
The pollution already kills a lot lot more of them than the fur industry.
Simply owning a cat is already a threat to ecosystem that compared to it the number of minks killed for their fur is an insignificant number.
I guess you have to start somewhere though. Anyone could always be doing more but doing anything beats doing nothing at all. Even if pollution kills animals (and humans), it doesn’t mean it’s ok to just throw our arms in the air and say fuck it I’ll keep doing everything the same. There are things you can do to pollute less. There are things you can do so your cat doesn’t kill wildlife.
I think it’s a matter of inertia. Look at oil for instance. For decades, oil companies have made money hand over fist even though people wanted something better it just wasn’t there and it didn’t make a dent in their profits. But now, solar is the cheapest energy we can buy apparently and fully electric car company is a viable business model.
I think it’s a similar situation here. If I wanted to buy durable clothing made out of vegetal materials, I wouldn’t even know where to go. And paying obscene amounts of money for the more expensive stuff just guarantees that I’ll make a statement. The durability of the item will be marginally better than h&m etc but nowhere near the increase in price. And so then, why should anyone not buy the 5$ t-shirt you have to rebuy every year since the 200$ t-shirt doesn’t last 40 times as long?
Same as for energy I believe, when we’ll get credible alternatives then disposable fashion companies won’t make as much money anymore. But the fast that they’re making money now doesn’t necessarily mean people give them their money because it’s what they want... more because it’s all we have.
> Anyone could always be doing more but doing anything beats doing nothing at all.
That's a common misconception though.
US top the charts for meat consumption in the World, Kenya and Uganda are at the bottom.
Does it mean Kenya and Uganda are doing more than US?
I'm asking, because I don't have the answer, but I don't think that farming animals for fur amounts to some significant number and stopping it would change the situation in a meaningful way.
Energy consumption for example is a good indicator of lifestyle.
Norway consumes 3 times on average the average amount of energy consumed by all the other European countries.
Does that mean they are doing three times less than the average EU country?
Oil stayed with us because it's a very dense and easy to transport energy source.
You can' t transport wind or sun, you could use batteries, but they are not as dense and not as easy to stock pile.
Inertia, if you look closely, it's just another world for "lack of equally good alternatives".
The lack of durable clothing is not a direct consequence of not using vegetable materials, hemp has been used for millenia, what changed is that we buy a lot more clothes and recycle/reuse very little of them.
Because, mainly, they go out of fashion!
I believe the way we live has a much bigger impact than anything else and in that regard, even if I would never buy a fur for obvious reasons, I think fur farming is not the worst offender.
You don’t need meat to get nutrition. It was fine to eat meat when it meant hunting it and eating it once in a while. Not so much anymore when the environmental cost is so high and we eat meat every single day.
