Free Plenty

1521: 

Change happens when we have a majority making it happen, both by way of moral outrage or fashion change.  If fashion is the main driver, then when the majority are ready to change they'll do so, and coincidentally send the ‘animal businesses’ broke.   I doubt if we'll witness an upsurge of ethical maturity, nor see a legal change happen.  Perhaps that follows later.   More likely it will be a saunter towards avoiding being uncool, just like any other fashion change.   When something goes out of fashion it starts to look odd, and then ugly.  And as the ‘yuck-factor’ kicks in, so will animal foods be seen to be absurd, and then they'll become too expensive or just no longer available.  Plant-based foods will push them off the shelves.

If fashion dictates it, habits will change, but never in a suicidal way; we will always want to look after our safety, and this will coincide with having enough arable land to make a vegetarian choice more realistic.  Obviously there are communities who are solely dependent upon animal foods for their survival because they simply can’t grow crops to eat, because they have no suitable soil, or the climate is too harsh for manageable plant growth.  But for us, there are no excuses.  We've fallen for the want it-must have it habit.  So often for us, all sources of food are plentiful, but most people have adopted this unfortunate habit which makes them go for animal.

With those who can't grow crops, this matter of using animals for food is just as relevant to them as it is to us, but with one big difference, they have far less choice, and are living in an age where animal rights consciousness hasn't reached them.  So this is not just about animals, and hurting them, killing them and eating them (which is a huge issue in itself) but about reasons why humans are acting negatively when they could be acting positively - when there is a realistic choice available.

This is surely one of the most interesting characteristics of our age - the psychological impact of plenty on we Westerners and Easterners and everyone else who live in fertile zones of the planet.  Our societies have become seduced with the 'free plenty' of exploitable animals, instead of the free plenty of plants, and all the miraculous foods and fabrics that can be made from them.  This is all about the psychology of preference.  And to some of us, it seems like a very gung-ho attitude which is not so very far from being entirely unintelligent.  It's that preference which we can identify as the Voluntary-Omnivore, a person who will never allow themselves any quality of connection with life, because they are, daily, in cahoots with killers.

How sad.

So, morally the islanders and desert dwellers and ice-shelf livers may have a case to argue.  But there is nothing here that applies to the majority of communities around the world, where people have access to abundant plant foods.  The question arises then, as to why anyone would want to poison their bodies with animal protein or live with the shame of killing countless animals, simply out of a somewhat juvenile preference for free plenty.