Vegetarianism

Is it Really Right?

Vegetarians decry the suffering of animals – only to then start eating their food supply, on a
planet where animal and plant life are perfectly balanced and in the full
knowledge that a death of starvation is worse than that in a
properly run abatoir.

There does exist in this world in general, and in this country in particular, it has to be said, a certain breed of people whom for better or for worse I shall describe as "The Nouveau".

Now in this, I don't mean the nouveau riche, that breed of "new money" people whose degree of sophistication lags behind their wealth by something like half a millennium, I refer instead to a rather peculiar breed which seems to have appeared in the last 30 years or so, perhaps not coincidentally in the time since the education system here first began to assume its modern form.

They tend to be not only products of that system but also rather poignant examples of human beings who have been squeezed through a particular (in this case a purely academic) mould since they were toddlers. They may still wear dungarees, still pack an apple to an eat-away sandwich lunch, and, of course, they are possessed of this nouveau set of beliefs about this and that, together with an absolutely arrogant attitude whereby they undeniably think they know better than the rest of us.

But do they? These people will tell you (not advise you) that the eating of animal flesh is wrong, barbaric, and involves the unacceptably cruel suffering and the slaughtering of poor, furry defenceless animals by we beings who as the custodians of this planet should frankly know better.

Oh really?

Ok, let's have a look at this in a little more detail. Who knows...they might even be right. Let's begin with an experiment.

Let us imagine a planet, far, far away, where there exists nothing but rabbits and lettuces. The rabbits eat the lettuces, and then when the rabbits die, their bodies decay and provide fertilisation for the lettuces. And so, in this sense, both forms of life effectively eat each other.

Of course this system will achieve a perfect balance: the quantity of rabbit material will support precisely the mass of the lettuce material, and vice versa, and also the carbon dioxide exhaled by the rabbits will balance that inspired by the lettuces, and the oxygen expired by the lettuces will precisely support the rabbit population. Likewise the rabbit urine breaking down in the soil will provide for the water needs of the lettuces, and conversely the rabbits will recover that water by eating the lettuce leaves which contain it.

Of course, this balance must necessarily establish itself, as the planet is completely surrounded by the infinite vacuum of outer space, and so naturally there can be no external support for the system from anywhere.

One day, this flying saucer lands on the planet, and out jump Jeremy and Jemima, a couple of nouveau, dungaree- wearing astronauts who have been moulded and stereotyped by their modern education system to a rather alarming extent.

They alight from their craft, and begin to explore, and all goes well until J and J get hungry. Now it is beneath them to kill and eat the rabbits, and so without a second thought (after all, why should such stereotypes ever experience second thoughts?), they start uprooting lettuces and eating them.

Oh no!

Well, I guess the more intelligent, questioning reader has already guessed what happens next. Yep, rabbits begin dying -- not the quick death afforded by a properly run slaughter house, but a long, miserable, lingering death of starvation, which of course is far, far worse, in fact one of the worst deaths possible.

Well thankyou Jeremy, and thankyou Jemima.

But of course, our planet, Earth, is in reality no different from that one. Naturally there are more species here than in that simplified place, but that makes no difference to the principles here because the underlying criteria are identical on both planets. In both places animal balances plant, CO2 consumption balances O2 consumption, etc.  And in both places, for each extra kilo of vegetation you eat, then a kilo of animal matter is bound to die a horrible death, far worse than if they'd been taken through a properly run slaughter house.

And upon that rock, purely and simply, founders the ship of Vegetarianism.

However, because human beings are tribal creatures, descended from and thereby related to apes, these vegetarians will have considerable psychological difficulties in accepting what has been said here, not because what I've said is right, --or wrong-- but simply because it doesn't constitute material which flies under their tribal banner and therefore to them is bound to be unbearable and ‘wrong’. It is a very alarming fact of life that most human beings cannot differentiate between absolute right and wrong, and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as defined by the social rules of their tribe.

Predictably therefore, I have heard some pretty wretched defences to my rabbit/lettuce argument. One of these goes, "Ah yes, but Jeremy and Jemima have interfered in system in which they were originally not a part, whereas here on Earth they are already plugged into the system, and therefore aren't really hurting it". But that's rubbish. The truth is of course that Jeremy and Jemima only fit into a system which has expressly given them canine teeth for the eating of meat, as well as molar teeth for the eating of vegetation, that being "the deal", the terms and conditions upon which they are here on this Earth, and the slot into which evolution has inserted them, and so if they then move over to the exclusive eating of vegetation they are bound to over-interfere into the vegetation supply and rock the boat, --- with the disastrous results outlined above.

But perhaps the pick of the bunch has to be the argument where they say, "Hmmm yes, well...but when we interfere in the vegetation supply, it is only bacteria which suffer, and they feel no pain". However this is also incorrect. The creatures which would then have fed on those bacteria would starve, and then the creatures which in turn fed on them, etc...and so the starvation would therefore climb all the way up the food chain to the very top, until in impoverished places like Africa extra people will starve, the true cause of their death passing unnoticed but directly due to the well-meaning, boat rocking antics of our friends Jeremy and Jemima.

I do wonder about some people. Not least of all because, you see, there is something which Jeremy and Jemima didn't tell you: they came through an education system that has begun to preach concepts which, like this one, are intrinsically wrong, informing the kids instead of leaving these issues to their own initiative. An example of this was telling kids to pack an apple in their lunch boxes, long after some ‘rebel’ noticed that apple juice is citric acid which, like all acids, rots your teeth.

The great mass of them only have intelligence levels which fall within average parameters; we know this must be so otherwise they would have noticed themselves the rabbit/lettuce points above, which clearly they have not, and it is a serious cause for concern that there are far too many people like this in the world, whose thinking only takes them so far, and no further, and whose minds never penetrate through to the bottom of a problem, before they take off and start doing real damage, thinking that they actually know better than the rest of us.

Of course, it is not such people who ever make real discoveries -- that is the preserve of the rebels, like Newton, Darwin or Einstein, who instead had sharp analytical minds, would not accept what they had been told to believe and would never have been do dizzy as to just blindly run along with the flock.

Vegetarians in the main fall into 2 groups: a smaller one which simply doesn’t like the taste of meat, and a larger one which adheres to these flawed principles. This larger group frequently carries an air about them whereby their “enlightening principles” have only just been discovered on an historical timescale and that our ignorant ancestors didn’t know about them. In reality, of course, our ancestors were slightly smarter than we are and must long ago have thought such things through all the way to the bottom. In other words, as in so many cases, we had it right the first time, and many vegetarians have fallen foul of a psychological phenomenon by which if you dwell too much on simple axiomatic facts such as 1 + 1 = 2, you come to doubt it and begin to lead yourself into error, especially if the flock just happens to be heading that way.

Perhaps we should remind vegetarians that yes, we are indeed the custodians of this planet, and in that capacity it is our moral duty to always follow the path of least suffering in all that we do -- something which vegetarians clearly and demonstrably are not doing.

And so, the next time you suspect that you're eating too much vegetation on your dinner plate, please spare a thought for those furry little animals, somewhere out there, who are having to go without, because of you, and how in the mature, grown-up world it is actually kinder to eat them instead of their food supply.

Assuming of course that the slaughter house is properly run. And in that, we should of course side with the vegetarians to ensure that they always are.

--- Michael Alan Marshall

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