Do you think one day eating meat will be viewed upon as barbaric and primitive?

I suspect the middle and lower parts of society will come to think of it as barbaric.

The rich will continue to consume it as a status symbol.

Possibly but we have been eating the same meats since we first domesticated cattle and sheep 12,000 (give or take) years ago. How much time do we need to work out it’s barbaric?

I sure hope not!

I already think eating non grass-fed meat killed in a non Temple Grandin designed slaughterhouse is barbaric. Humans are omnivorous, and cattle are prey animals.

As long as we raise and treat them with respect and kill them in a dignified manner, we are not being barbaric.

No, because we always remain primitive and barbaric ourselves. We can’t escape our origins.

If consuming cultured meat becomes the norm, then it might.

Who knows. I think it’s more likely that archeologists will find our primitive obsession with cheesy import stores barbaric. lol

Everything else I do is looked upon as barbaric and primitive, so, yes, I do think so. And thinking that is probably also barbaric and primitive. Sigh.

I eat meat only one time a week. I do not feel any bad repercussions from this.

I know a number of people now that view eating meat as barbaric and primitive. As long as humans are omnivores, eating meat will very likely be prevalent. Unless, of course, circumstances make it unfeasible to keep raising meat-as-food, i.e. population pressure, unreasonable cost, resource depletion, etc etc.

Of course what we do today will almost certainly be looked back upon as barbaric. However, it’s hard to tell exactly what form that will take. It might just as easily go something like:

Can you believe that those barbarians cut down thousands of acres of rain forest in order to grow soy beans to make tofu!?!?!?

I rarely eat meat as it it. I’ve got no qualms against it, it just works out that way. Though I’ll usually treat myself to a roast beast sub or KFC on my way home from work once a week before I catch the bus home. Later today, I think I’ll take a walk down the block to get Chinese take out: rice, potatoes, fried noodles, and stuff like that.

I doubt it.

Being that it’s the only way to get B12, which is necessary for humans, no. Humans are supposed to eat meat.

@perspicacious B12 is available from dairy so we don’t need to eat meat to get it

source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#Sources

@perspicacious and how have vegetarians and vegans got by so far?

@RareDenver Supplements probably, or maybe that’s why they look washed out.

The more prissified we become as we “civilize” ourselves, the more likely that eating – period – will one day be viewed as barbaric and disgusting.

@RareDenver Not many of us drink seven cups of milk per day. Vegans don’t consume dairy anyway.

@perspicacious my wife is a vegetarian and has been since the age of 8 and she doesn’t look washed out here she is with the hat

I already view it was barbaric. I came to this conclusion 22 years ago, and have never once reconsidered my position.

@perspicacious I’m well aware that vegans dont consume dairy, i just used it as an example of B12 intake, we still have living vegans though

Well, once we start to create cultured meat, I believe that, hundreds of years from now, eating meat will still be accepted.

Hope so

Nah, eating a pie with your hands though…...maybe.

@ucme I had a good pork pie walking home from the co-op today, lurve a good pork pie

@RareDenver Yes, i’m a steak & kidney man myself, bought from Greggs. Delicious!

No. We’re an omnivorous species. The only way for us to live sustainably is by hunting and gathering (and gardening, forest gardening, etc.). It varies by climate, but some amount of meat is always involved. Adopting any other way of life, even the meat eating industrialism we have now, will lead to species extinction for us.

@YoBob – the soy ain’t for tofu.

I doubt it. Personally I find not eating meat to be appalling.

Oh yes, definitely. I feel that in the future, terms, definitions will correlate with philosophy early on the public schools. For instance, I’ll demonstrate some very basic logical philosophy right here. An animal feels pain. This is scientifically proven. If we can all agree, that pain is discomforting, then inflicting pain upon an animal is an act of cruelty. Cruelty can be defined as causing pain to. Therefore, killing an animal is cruel. I believe fundamentalist will combine with philosophical logical students one day and determine that, if we as humans, have the ability to understand something, such as the pain an animal goes through, and we as humans can understand there are alternatives, then why continue to move in the same direction as our cavemen ancestors? From an Anthropologist standpoint, which is also to say scientifically, humans ate animals for their high fat content. Mind us all, these were the ancient days. When food was very hard to come upon. When there was no calendar and set agricultural references. So man was always moving around and its surroundings weren’t set in stone, instead they were constantly shifting. The human body has evolved in a way that it loves to store fat, because back in the day, fat was hard to come by. Unfortunately, for the most part of the 1st world countries, we’ve become highly obese and the evolution of storing fat has finally caught up with the human race at such a fast rate. It’s going to take a really special team to take this hypothesis and bring it to life.

@dreamwolf wish I could hit the great answer button a few more times :)

There are reasons to eat meat . In fact there are quite a few .. but don’t take it from me. There are plenty who eat meat and have their reasons. Some are funny but some are realistic . The bottom line is that God intended for us to eat meat. That’s why he made the baconator so delicious.

I don’t doubt that in time people’s noble intentions will outweigh their ability to survive. However, despite the reasoning of a few . It will take quite an uprising to get rid of the big mac , the whopper , baby back ribs , and most challenging of all bacon itself.

No one ever cries when a wasp is flattened. No one bats an eye when a rattlesnake is shot. No one loses sleep when a mountain lion is removed from a suburban neighborhood. And no one weeps (unless for joy) when the biggest barbecue takes place.

If, in the future, we were to stop eating meat it would probably be just another ingredient in the culmination of self destruction that will have become society.

@digitalimpression why do you think it is ok to kill animals but not humans?

P.s. I’m not strictly a vegetarian because I eat fish (because they don’t feel pain etc), and that is one of the healthiest diets one can have.

@lemming Because I believe animals were put here on earth for humans to eat. I also don’t believe that animals have a soul. This could get a little too deep if we keep discussing this. XD

Why is it ok to kill something simply because it does not feel pain? Ending life, painless or otherwise could be considered cruel right? Unless of course you’re dr kavorkian.

@digitalimpression you had me up till the the word God. best of luck

I’m pretty careful about making sure that the meat is not feeling any pain while I eat it.

@digitalimpression I believe in God. But in my heart, God tells me, “Have I not given you gift of reason?” And let’s be reasonable, you’re coming from the Old Testament with your statement that we’re to dominant over animals correct? Why not love them, instead of eating them? Animals have no souls? My dog just survived parvo through prayer. He lost his hmph and attitude totally changed to lethargic. Does a dogs tail not wag when his owner comes home? I just witnessed an Orangutan get upset when it’s foster kid was taken away from it, furthermore, a male dominant Orangutan began to share because it was in captivity, and no longer in the wild. For sure, animals have souls. It’s so sad a majority of westerners have forgotten the spiritual side of their lives. I’ve come in counter with many Christians who are so stern and black and white about the Bible. The Bible can be as colorful as we let it, however, western society, although claims to be a predominantly Christian nation, has not the time to truly become spiritual amongst its world. Oh, and to the Christians who believe in Not Of This World, you’re buying into a system that says its okay to forget about this worlds future, so you get sloppy and lazy into dealing with the future. Not Of This World may mean your soul doesn’t live on earth after you’re gone up to heaven, but it doesn’t mean you go and trash the place as well with your monster stickers of NOTW on your monster sized trucks.

@RareDenver Sorry to hear that.

@JilltheTooth LOL

@dreamwolf Looks like you’ve proven that animals have emotion. I’m not denying that. However, I don’t believe that emotion=a soul. It’s a dog eat dog world. It’s also a man eat bacon world.

I think refusing to eat meat will be looked at as pretentious and condescending.

(of course, I already look at it that way. :-P )

Possibly, but it may also be the case that vegetarianism (or any refusal to make use of available food sources) will be looked upon as sentimental and foolish, a luxury rejected by the practical and the desperate.

You don’t say whose future view this might be, so I presume you mean humanity as a whole. I, for one, doubt that humanity as a whole will ever come to that much agreement about anything.

@lemming – I challenge the notion that fish don’t feel pain. link link link link

This is not to say that I think eating meat is wrong, just that we need to be honest about what we’re doing.

Is whether or not they feel pain the issue? Putting aside the fact that one can kill painlessly, or at least with little pain, there are other issues to consider. I’ve made the case numerous times that what is really the important ethical issue in reducing overall suffering is the maintenance of biological diversity and overall health of the biosphere. “Keeping the balance”, as it were. In that way, killing some animals from time to time can decrease the overall suffering.

Given that, I think not keeping our landbases healthy, whether it’s through industrial vegetarianism or industrial meat eating, is the most “barbaric” course we could take.

You may be onto something, @incendiary_dan. Let’s apply that to Congress now…

No way.

@MrItty why is it pretentious to not eat meat? i honestly dont understand why, if you someone is a bit odd, or doesnt fall in line, isnt general enough, they get mocked or made fun of. okay, on screen it looks funny because sometimes people do really ridiculous things that make them different and some just go out of their way too extremely and may come off foolish. but in all honesty, who gives a shit. and sorry my tone is not in a scolding manner. its just crazy that “general” people taxonomizes pop culture to pieces. “oh that guy is a jock, that guy is a hipster, that guy is blah blah blah” who caresss.

@digitalimpression
emotion and soul are attached. are you really going to sit in your chair and tell me that emotions are just purely hormones, (chain links of proteins made up of tiny cells) moved by electricity (the very basic non living essential element that gives us thought and makes us move). i dont think so. soul and mindset correlate, emotion and physicalness are attached. i dont understand how you could think animals dont have souls.

I think eventually everything we do will be considered uncivilized.

You wipe your ass with paper? Don’t you know about the 3 sea shells?

@dreamwolf I don’t understand how emotion and soul are attached. They are two totally separate entities.

@dreamwolf – Back when I was trying to be a vegetarian, I felt pretentious sometimes, not eating meat. Often, it went something like this: a visit to a relative’s place, who hadn’t gotten the news that I didn’t eat meat, or who didn’t quite understand what it was all about, and who served me up something she’d made herself, like a seasoned hamburger or slow-cooked pot roast with gravy and vegetables. Something she’d put work into, ya know? And for a while, I’d stare at the murderburger down my nose and say, “Um, yeah, I don’t eat that.” And it would make her feel horrible. And I’d feel bad after that, because someone put a great deal of effort into making a meal they thought would please me, and nourish me, to the best of her know-how, and here I was saying that I was better and more moral than she was, because I preferred my factory-made spun-soy industrial fake meat. Yeah.

Eventually, I decided that I wouldn’t make meat at home, but if someone was going to be so good as to cook me a meal, I couldn’t really complain about what they served up, could I? In many places, being able to eat fake soy meat or turn up your nose at the locally-available, low-impact protein is a luxury, and one that poor folks don’t get to choose. People do the best they can.

And then I realized still later on, that locally-produced grass-fed meat, fed only on local pasture, actually built soil in a time when the the kind of farming that grows wheat and soy, tilled by gas-guzzling machines, erodes arable soil by the day. And soil is one of our key resources – we need it to grow food to eat. I couldn’t realize how I was more moral to eat fake soy meat, when that caused more widespread destruction of land than just eating a local steak, made me a better person. Yes, a cow dies, but that is one death to feed many, whereas I hurt the very ground that feeds all of us when I eat food farmed in a conventional way. Life feeds on death no matter what you eat, whether it’s a cow or a chunk of tofu. So, yeah, I see it as pretentious in some ways, to choose a vegan diet for moral reasons.

I don’t imagine eating meat will be looked down upon. Factory farming on the other hand….I at least hope that that will someday be looked down upon.

@digitalimpression Google, Kirlian photography. This is science evidence that people have auras. Still very new, but auras reveal different colors. Different colors means different energies. The way you think, the way you act, the emotions emitted from your very existence, from your soul are captured scientifically already. Take a psychology class, then take some philosophy classes. Maybe you might learn to feel something in your soul. Of course, not everyone can tap science, art, and spirituality right off the bat. It takes practice.

@laureth Okay so you feel its pretentious if you were to turn down someones offering which included meat. I call it, you don’t have conviction with why you were vegan in the first place. There’s no problem if you turn it down, be ecstatic about it, have more conviction you know? Pretentiousness is totally different than your own intention. If one were to go about life, imagining they were too please what everyone else might think, we’d be in trouble. Intention topples everything, don’t fake yourself out. You think it’s pretentious because you’re not honest with yourself and your mind is still aimed to please someone else and not yourself.

Anyways, there are only a couple of actual good answers to this well put question. Sucks that people just try to throw quick and thoughtless answers together for some points. Personally, I wish they took the points off. Then we’d get some good discussion.

Only a couple of good answers or only a couple you agree with?

I personally don’t believe in a “soul” at all – human or animal. I therefore can’t really justify why killing an animal is okay vs. killing a human (which I do NOT believe is okay, don’t misunderstand what I mean when I say I don’t believe in a soul) except to say that many of those animals would just as willingly kill me if given the opportunity – animals eat each other, that’s just how it is and it’s been for millenia.

I disagree that cruelty = causing pain, too, otherwise killing something very quickly (a quick beheading, for instance – which, incidentally, is used in factory farming) in which there is probably little or no pain would not be considered cruel. And I’m sure we can all agree that that is erroneous.

I don’t know, if I really had any choice in the matter I might actually struggle with this decision a bit because I can’t justify it in a very sound way, and I hate factory farming and I cringe to support that, but I would be even more unhealthy than I already am if I couldn’t eat meat so it’s not really a choice for me.

Can I recommend that you not reference auras in serious debate? You’re going to lose a lot of people with that.

@dreamwolf : I find that you are being disrespectful of other posters because they don’t agree with you. What you express re: emotions, souls etc are opinions, not absolute facts. Your argument about killing animals for food because animals feel pain and all killing involves pain is frankly silly, not all humane methods of animal slaughter-for-food are painful. Your use of conceptual, not scientific, absolutes seriously dilutes any credibility your argument might merit.

@dreamwolf The type of “aura” you are talking about can also be found around a tesla coil or an electromagnet. Am I to believe that those devices have souls as well? Anyway, you’ve just introduced a third ingredient to this strange brew which is also a separate entity.

@mariah Erroneous? You just acknowledged there may be pain in a quick killing. You also stated that you don’t believe Cruelty=Causing Pain to. So you cancelled that out. Look, I would recommend taking a class in philosophical logic before you try and attack me personally. Can I recommend that to you? Thank you. You know with your argument that Cruelty=Equal Pain, are justifying the fact that if you kill something quick its okay? That’s horseshit. If a murderer shoots a man in the face and blows his head off and dies quickly, is that not cruel? It’s the same result and shooting someone in the artery and letting them bleed out. Same goes for animals.

I certainly never meant it to be a battle between vegetarians and meat eaters, it was just an honest question on peoples perception of meat eating hundreds of years from now, I eat meat and my wife is a strict vegetarian but we still get along just fine. I guess you could look at it in the way that hundreds of years ago it was perfectly acceptable to many ‘civilised’ people to own other people and it’s not now. What other acceptable behaviours will become unacceptable?

@dreamwolf You have completely misunderstood what I said.

I said that I disagree with the idea that causing pain is the definition of cruelty because there are acts that are cruel that may not cause pain (a quick beheading, for instance). Please reread.

[mod says] Please stick to the actual topic, folks. Thank you.

@dreamwolf – You say, “Okay so you feel its pretentious if you were to turn down someones offering which included meat. I call it, you don’t have conviction with why you were vegan in the first place.”

It’s not that I lacked the courage of my convictions. It’s more about how I’m not a single-issue moralist.

I love how my evidence pertaining to my backing up of the auras has been totally dismissed. It wasn’t off topic, it was backing up a state I made. And the mob wins of course again, because I finally got someone else intrigued with the aura as a scientific proof. @laureth I didn’t mean to disrespect you. I know what you mean because, I’ve been in the exact same situation I was vegetarian at a time. Buddy brought me over to his place, his dad cooked meat, offered it to me, how could I refuse? I didn’t stick to my guns on why I was vegetarian, and lost mine in that hot situation. Same as you.

As being barbaric, no, not by the general population. Only by the most radical faction of the vegan movement.

But hopefully the vast majority will view excessive meat consumption as unhealthy for the human body and damaging for the atmosphere of our planet.

@dreamwolf , OK, for the sake of discussion here,and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, honest, that is the second time you’ve referred to the “mob” here. Of which “mob” do you speak? I personally didn’t agree with some of your assessments related to emotions = souls, and some others have not agreed with your statements about auras, but I am missing evidence of “mob” mentality. Auras or not, are you denyinmg the omnivore aspect of humanity? Physical markers would indicate that it was not simply convenience that led proto-humans to the eating of meat.