Silvergoat
Senior Retro Guru
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The patriarchal creationist Abrahamic conceit that stems from both the Bible and the Koran that 'man' was put here to have dominion over all animals and exploit all life on Earth as he sees fit is an ideology that formed all emergent Middle Eastern cultures and heavily shaped modern Western civilisation, industry and agriculture. It's an ideology that's monumentally misguided and arrogantly assumes that we as species are separate to and better than all other living creatures. It ignores the fact that we too are animals and interconnected with and dependent on the complex processes of all life and living things on the planet.
Through various evolutionary events, we got lucky as a species and became enabled to develop in a more sophisticated direction to other species with the ability to fashion things, collectively think and ride mountain bikes. Although not exclusively vegetarian or vegan, Hinduism (Buddhism and other variations that originate from the Asia continent) is older than the Abrahamic belief systems but in some ways it's a belief system and way of life that may seem more appropriate to the sustainability of all creatures and the ecosystem of the planet – the notion of avoiding meat eating because it reduces hurt to other life forms.
Another great conceit is a modern one – that only veganism can save the animals and the planet. The idea that "meat is murder" or that any form of animal husbandry is unacceptable, is well-intentioned but again monumentally misguided. Whereas vegetarianism has both historic and universal foundations outside of and prior to Western civilisation, veganism is something that's developed out of the modern affluent West, with disregard to how most people around the rest of the world subsist in poorer conditions and have to eat to live. Essentially, veganism is a modern construct of the wealthy in the West – those who can afford to choose what they eat and how they live.
Veganism takes no account of sustainability. Firstly, the vegan diet itself by excluding all animal products, does not contain certain nutrients that human health needs. These therefore have to be provided by artificial supplements – the production of which relies heavily on the petrochemical industry. Secondly, many of the staple ingredients that the modern Western vegan diet is based around (such as “milks”, soya in its many forms and wheat protein based substitutes for conventional foods) require highly industrialised production methods and many of these foods (soya and other pulses, coconuts, palm oil, almonds, quinoa) cannot be grown with any great success in most temperate to cool regions, so have to be grown in and imported from subtropical regions, where their production is often detrimental to local resident populations and the ecology of that environment with land clearance, destruction of forests and habitats, which are leading to accelerated species extinctions.
Even with crops that are suitable to raise in the cooler temperate regions, the impacts of concentrating on arable go beyond those mentioned in terms of soil degradation, such as the distruction of hedgerows, clearing of forests, and draining of fens and marshes. Livestock rearing often takes place on land that is not suitable for arable growing, such as moorland and river meadow, so does not take land that could be growing other crops – a common argument used against the raising of livestock.
If we did away with the farming of livestock and animal husbandry, would we be happy for many of the associated species to become extinct and habitat that was normally grazed by them to become scrub land unsuitable for arable production? Some militant vegans out there seem comfortable with the extinction of farmed species because they feel that these are species bred by Man and therefore they don’t have a valid place.
The patriarchal creationist Abrahamic conceit that stems from both the Bible and the Koran that 'man' was put here to have dominion over all animals and exploit all life on Earth as he sees fit is an ideology that formed all emergent Middle Eastern cultures and heavily shaped modern Western civilisation, industry and agriculture. It's an ideology that's monumentally misguided and arrogantly assumes that we as species are separate to and better than all other living creatures. It ignores the fact that we too are animals and interconnected with and dependent on the complex processes of all life and living things on the planet.
Through various evolutionary events, we got lucky as a species and became enabled to develop in a more sophisticated direction to other species with the ability to fashion things, collectively think and ride mountain bikes. Although not exclusively vegetarian or vegan, Hinduism (Buddhism and other variations that originate from the Asia continent) is older than the Abrahamic belief systems but in some ways it's a belief system and way of life that may seem more appropriate to the sustainability of all creatures and the ecosystem of the planet – the notion of avoiding meat eating because it reduces hurt to other life forms.
Another great conceit is a modern one – that only veganism can save the animals and the planet. The idea that "meat is murder" or that any form of animal husbandry is unacceptable, is well-intentioned but again monumentally misguided. Whereas vegetarianism has both historic and universal foundations outside of and prior to Western civilisation, veganism is something that's developed out of the modern affluent West, with disregard to how most people around the rest of the world subsist in poorer conditions and have to eat to live. Essentially, veganism is a modern construct of the wealthy in the West – those who can afford to choose what they eat and how they live.
Veganism takes no account of sustainability. Firstly, the vegan diet itself by excluding all animal products, does not contain certain nutrients that human health needs. These therefore have to be provided by artificial supplements – the production of which relies heavily on the petrochemical industry. Secondly, many of the staple ingredients that the modern Western vegan diet is based around (such as “milks”, soya in its many forms and wheat protein based substitutes for conventional foods) require highly industrialised production methods and many of these foods (soya and other pulses, coconuts, palm oil, almonds, quinoa) cannot be grown with any great success in most temperate to cool regions, so have to be grown in and imported from subtropical regions, where their production is often detrimental to local resident populations and the ecology of that environment with land clearance, destruction of forests and habitats, which are leading to accelerated species extinctions.
Even with crops that are suitable to raise in the cooler temperate regions, the impacts of concentrating on arable go beyond those mentioned in terms of soil degradation, such as the distruction of hedgerows, clearing of forests, and draining of fens and marshes. Livestock rearing often takes place on land that is not suitable for arable growing, such as moorland and river meadow, so does not take land that could be growing other crops – a common argument used against the raising of livestock.
If we did away with the farming of livestock and animal husbandry, would we be happy for many of the associated species to become extinct and habitat that was normally grazed by them to become scrub land unsuitable for arable production? Some militant vegans out there seem comfortable with the extinction of farmed species because they feel that these are species bred by Man and therefore they don’t have a valid place.
