Occasional Tales

“Well, just eat the chips.” This whole debate boring me somewhat, I’ll finish it off today. Plutarch returns in Dilemma 66 with an emotive appeal about blood and gore. More ancient superstition rather than reality. And if the superstition of the classical world isn’t enough, St Paul turns up assuring everyone that it’s all right to eat meat ’cos the god of the Christians says it’s all right. The Bible is its usual inconsistent self and even seems to be advocating eating things alive (Genesis 1:29). Also, it’s easy to forget that plants are living things, which means that almost nothing natural we eat isn’t already dead. Chrysostom turns up to irritate everyone with his Christian asceticism, which pretty much makes all good things bad. Pope Pius XII isn’t impressed, although his view appears to be that animals don’t have (emotional) feelings, quite ignoring that they still have a nervous system. I remain on the side of nature. Humans as omnivorous creatures have a choice, although the a...

Here come the Nazis. The star of today’s dilemma is Oswald Spengler who was, apparently, some Nazi philosopher following in the footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche. Anyway, unlike Plutarch, he thinks that humans are predators, his ideas appearing to stem from Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch. Like Plutarch, this clown boy is only seeing half the picture. Like vegetarians faced with a famine, Spengler’s predator would graze on grass and leaves when faced with a shortage of prey. Or perhaps, taking Spengler’s notions to their logical extreme, cannibalism then becomes acceptable. “Let’s go vegetarian,” said Göring looking hungrily at Hitler. Interestingly, the book says that the amount of resources required to produce meat in the States is so phenomenal that the bulk of agricultural produce goes towards feeding the animals which the Americans then eat. And that bulk could, allegedly, feed the human population of the planet five times over. (Presumably one adequate, nourishing, hunger-assua...

How chewy and delicious. Someone, Plutarch apparently, observed that humans are not the usual design for predators having none of the sharp claws and teeth for hunting. He noted that we then cook the (dead) meat and season it in various ways. So should meat-eaters be allowed into philosophy heaven? I’ll remind you of the chimpanzees which hunted down some other monkey and tore it apart for food. Chimpanzees, being similar in configuration to humans, are obviously hunters by nature, but like humans, omnivorous. (Strictly speaking, common chimpanzees are omnivorous; bonobos frugivorous; if I’m going to talk about chimpanzees, I’ll mean the common sort.) In other words, Plutarch is noting physical differences without considering behavioural ones. As a species we both hunt and gather; we eat both meat and vegetables. It gives us options which other species lack especially when food might be scarce. I’d defy a starving human (perhaps apart from a few extreme religious nutjobs) to remain veg...