Yes, we used to be a lot less sentimental about meat eating. We used to be a lot less sensitive about a lot of things. I’m not sure I see this change as a bad thing, all told. Do you?

I realize that thanks to our modern industrial farming and transportation infrastructure we can live as vegetarians outside the tropics without starving to death, but really without our upright posture, language, and ability to eat meat we’d still just be a bunch of apes flinging poop at each other in the jungle. I think (but sometimes I wonder) that I prefer humans being able to fling poop at each other from anywhere on the planet via abstract symbols transmitted electronically, but I frankly don’t have too much faith in our ability to maintain the techno-marvels we’ve created and now take for granted for too much longer; maybe 20-25 more years tops and then it’ll time for Plan B.

If our modern transportation infrastructure or our GMO monocultures fail (among myriad other possibilities), we will instantly -meaning within a year- be back to a situation where we won’t be able to live in about 3/4 of North America unless we consume animal protein. That means being a healthy vegetarian living far away from the tropics is a luxury that has only been made possible by industrialization, and there’s no reason to think our modern industrial civilization isn’t as temporary a condition as all other human endeavors throughout history have proven to be, so being an omnivore affords a great deal more flexibility should things not go according to plan. That all probably seems like a strange and obtuse rationale for eating meat, but it’s all connected more intricately than most people can possibly imagine. You’ll see…