My perception is that very few people are intelligent or do the wise and intelligent, or the best thing, and that most people are stupid and corrupt. Not ALL people, just most, but that just means 60%. There are very few Leonardo Da Vinci's in the world. In my mind, only the perceptions of the exceptional people have any real credibility. So what if most people in recorded history have eaten a meat based diet? It doesn't mean that any of them were right.
While I would not disagree that it is difficult to break people of irrational habits, I would disagree that only the perception of the exceptional is valid. That is the cornerstone of a highly elitist mentality, and was best articulated by Plato in his
Republic, where it was posited that the best government was one ruled by the intellectual elite. The Roman Empire comes to mind. His first major heir St. Augustine, and now you have Dark Ages Christianity. His first modern heir was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work was the single greatestest influence on the French Revolution, and guaranteed the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. Rousseau's legacy continued through Immanuel Kant, and 19th century German philosophy. The progeny of their work was 20th century totalitarianism from the Bolshevik Revolutionin Russia, to the killing fields of Cambodia.
That is particularly relevant when it comes to this next post...
Resources certainly are limited, just as space on this planet is limited.
It is to a materialist mindset that fails to consider the role of the human mind in the process of producing values for human consumption.
There is limitation to the surface area of the earth. Ignoring the fact that shorlines can be built up and extended, there is only so much acreage. That is true. However, I believe you are neglecting to look in a direction other than down. The buildings of the World Trade Center had their own zip codes. What is the acreage of Manhattan Island? How many people live there? I'm sure that to some, Manhattan was full many decades ago. Short-sighted? Yes.
The same goes for resources. How much petroleum was available for use in 10th century B.C.E.? There was none. No one knew how to use petroleum. It was not until someone did that petroleum became a resource. Not until a human mind entered the equation was oil a value. Apply the same model to fertilizers. None existed until it was learned that certain combinations of substances could be used to enhance the fertility of the soil. Prior to that, humans were constrained by the limits of natural cycles. If they used up the arable land, it was gone. They were at the mercy of nature's limits. Until, of course, they hanged those limits. (Ooops. I'm getting dangerously close to genetically modified food with that comment, aren't I?)
If one assumes that there is no alternative to the same conventionalism that you have been lamenting, then of course there will never be an alternative to the state of available resources. But if there is a real alternative, and people are capable of not being locked into the presumptions of the past, then no, resources are not limited in the least. There will always be something new so long as there is someone with a mind active and original enough to find it (a mind that may or may not belong to one of the intellectual overlords posited in the first part of your post).
Blackthorneone said:
Well, you wouldn't eat a loaf of bread to replace eggs. You would need tofu or seitan, or beans or nuts, or a protein powder to get a protein source for the day. Nevertheless, a chicken had to cause more resources to be consumed, and more waste and methane to be generated, as well as more topsoil to be lost than if you ate a plant based protein. Topsoil is a resource that we all need, and it is being used up at a rate that is totally unsustainable. It is because more crops are being grown to feed animals to produce animal products that there is an unsustainable topsoil loss. Water consumption is critical too. The Ogallala aquifer is being depleted faster than can be replenished with rainfall for the same reason. Looking at the BIG picture, in terms of energy for WHOM, you can see that the plant based diet does allow more resources to be available for humans.
80% of agricultural water usage goes to animal agriculture. That means it causes a drought.
Are you still talking about Africa?
The soil of the Ukraine is the most fertile in the world, and the Soviets were unable to feed themsleves. What part of the role played by government do you not understand?
To the best of my knowledge, American farmers don't have the same issues. I'm sure you can construct a panic scenario along the lines of a mean global temperature rising one degree, and indicating catastrophic global warming, but those kinds of arguments are really no different than those which take a strange light in the sky and extrapolate alien invasions. I'll start to worry about the topsoil in the U.S. when I see the government begin to consume the agricultural industry on a scale similar to those industries that it has already expropriated.
Just as there is no need to eat tofu in lieu of eggs, there is no need to farm strictly for vegetarian consumption in lieu of cattle. There is no need because it is unnecessary to farm like the tools who have destroyed Africa's farmland. In 1901, James J. Hill (the greatest railroad builder ever) wrote a series of lectures on how the U.S. would be unable to sustain the population booms looming on the horizon if it permitted the independent farmers to continue destroying farmland one plot at a time. It was guaranteed that it would not be possible.
And here we are. Presumably, those practices ceased, and now large scale, vertically integrated farming has taken us to this point. Compare the populations of America in 1901 and now. Now consider how much of the rest of the world we feed.
