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Wyrd: My point was that our attitudes to the ingestion of meat are usually cultural. Generally, in the Western World the idea of eating dog, cat or horse is considered abhorrent because to us they are pets and/or friends, while in the East such animals are eaten regularly. People don't seem to mind eating cow, sheep or pigs because they're not cute or friendly (general opinion). I find these distinctions to be interesting, because they are all so personal and arrived at for various reasons. Why do you place dolphins or humans above dogs? That seems to be a decision you have made based on your own reasoning, and not based on any actual animal hierarchy that is in operation.
It is true that attitudes to meat eating are culturally influenced, but I think what's going on is a lot simpler than a "hierarchy". I've just been reading Steven Pinker's "How The Mind Works", and, drawing on Paul Rozin's work on the universal human emotion of disgust, he says the following:
Disgusting things come from animals. They include whole animals, parts of animals (particularly parts of carnivores and scavengers), and body products, especially viscous substances like mucus and pus and, most of all, feces, universally considered disgusting. Decaying animals and their parts are particularly revolting. In contrast, plants are sometimes distasteful, but distaste is different from disgust. When people avoid plant products - say, lima beans or broccoli - it is because they taste bitter or pungent. Unlike disgusting animal products, they are not felt to be unspeakably vile or polluting ... Inorganic and non-nutritive stuff like sand, cloth, and bark are simply avoided, without strong feelings.
Not only are disgusting things always from animals, but things from animals are almost always disgusting. The nondisgusting animal parts are the exception. Of all the parts of all the animals in creation, people eat an infinitesimal fraction, and everything else is untouchable. Many Americans eat only the skeletal muscle of cattle, chickens, swine and a few fish. Other parts, like guts, brains, kidneys, eyes, and feet, are beyond the pales, and so is any part of any animal not on the list: dogs, pigeons, jellyfish, slugs, toads, insects, and the other millions of animal species.
...
Though disgust is universal, the list of nondisgusting animals differs from culture to culture, and that implies a learning process ...
He goes on to describe how, in the absence of being specifically conditioned by parental influence in early life to tolerate certain animal foods, the 'default' reaction for all animal foods is disgust. So the cultural differences are made up of the exceptions to this general rule that each culture allows.
My personal experience certainly chimes with this theory. I can totally empathize with SFD's nauseated reaction to the smell of chicken. I've been a vegetarian since I was about 12 years old (17 + years) - and I only waited that long because I wasn't entirely allowed to make my own food choices until then. But it was not a moral or political decision - I simply found meat disgusting, and I am still unable to get beyond that primitive disgust reaction, even at times when I have considered eating fish or meat for health reasons.
I think I've noticed that a slight majority of the vegetarians on this board are female - is this right? Offline, I know more female veggies than male. I've also read - and my recollection is shaky - that vegetarianism has some negative effect on testosterone levels in men - does anyone know anything more about this?
While I am aware that I am on very shaky ideological ground, are there any physical/biological reasons why one person might tend towards vegetarianism more than another? Taste/disgust based vegetarianism appears to run in the female side of my family (of course, even though my mother tried to get me to eat meat as a child, it's likely her own tendency to dislike it was evident, thus arguing for culture vs. nature ...). |
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