Of Man and Meat: An Argument against Vegetarianism
A comedy article
by Dave's not here  52,827  16
09/17/2006 03:36 AM 935 views
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I was reminded by the recent E. coli outbreak of a night a few years back. I was sitting around at home, drinking a beer and watching a wildlife documentary on the discovery channel. David Attenborough was talking about undersea thermal vents and the unique ecosystems that thrive around them and suddenly the screen was filled by a writhing soup of thousands of pale pinkish-white shrimp, amazingly thriving in 350 degree water at tremendous pressure. This, to my way of thinking, represented possibly the greatest zoological discovery in the history of mankind, animals that could be harvested from nature pre-cooked and ready to serve.
It was at that moment that I began to reflect on the role meat has played in human history. It is my contention that meat is not merely a factor, but is the driving force behind our culture, our civilization, and our very evolution.
To begin with, let's look at tools. Tools set us apart from the lower animals with a few exceptions, and it's the exceptions that here, as they often do, provide illumination. If we look at chimps, our closest surviving cousins, we see that they also employ tools. Specifically they use twigs to dig termites and other insects out of their burrows. Animals driven to innovate in the quest for meat. Primitive? Certainly; but were our own beginnings really so different? Lets transfer this idea back 2 million years or so.
Meaty Beginnings:
Zog and Og are sitting on a hill overlooking a herd of meat. Og is smart, Zog is strong and fast, and both are hungry. Neither is much more than a tall ape, until that one day when Og accidentally pokes himself with the stick he's been rubbing on a rock all morning. (We should point out here that smart is a relative term to the time period.) When Zog looks to see what Og is shouting about, Og grunts at the hole in his hand and then pantomimes stabbing it with the pointy stick. At that moment, bleeding and looking out over the fleet-footed steaks below, an idea forms in Og's tiny brain, and the ascent of humanity is begun. A few more grunts at Zog, this time jabbing the pointy stick toward the animals in the valley, and nothing is ever the same again.
Later, when Zog and Og arrive back at the cave hauling their furry take out, they begin to transform the simple alpha male pack hierarchy into the first social order. Zog has the pointy stick and the meat. Now, instead of having to chase down and fight for the women they come to him willingly (Mercedes Theory), so his genes are the most widely propagated. Zog is just smart enough to realize that he will need Og to make more pointy sticks, and also that it's not only the attractive females who are lining up, so Og's genetic heritage is also assured (Wingman Theory). This simple partnership of a few smart men capable of making better meat killing things and a larger group of less intelligent but more violent men willing go out and use them is still the basis of our social order and government today. (Bush Theory)
From there things take off. Og and his ilk are making better tools, not only to kill the meat, but to cut it into more manageable pieces and remove it from the non-meat useful bits. Others are applying those tools in various ways. Industry, job specialization, social structure; it's all about the meat.
Modern Day - Meat under Fire:
We love meat. We love meat so much that when we've done everything we can to harvest all the meat available from an animal we grind up the slop that's left on the floor and stuff it into sausage casings to render it meat like enough that we'll still eat it. When we look at women in a purely carnal manner it's said that we're treating them like a piece of meat. Our penis, the pointy stick at the center of our lives, is lovingly called our beef stick, our sausage, our tube-steak, our meat. When we look at a shapely set of hindquarters somewhere in our subconscious we know that that's where the roast is. Do I even have to go into the term "meat pillows?" We are meat eaters. We have canine teeth, protein digesting enzymes and gas grills. It's what we're designed for.
Unfortunately there are always those who will piss on the campfire before the marshmallows have even started to brown. Vegetarians. Tofu scarfing elitist bastards with "Meat is Murder" bumper stickers on their Previas. It's not that their very existence is offensive. It is, but mostly to nature. No, the real problem is that they think it's their moral obligation to get between the meat and the pointy stick. In the past this wouldn't have been a problem, after all, we're meat too. Zug would've handled it, I promise you, and it's a good thing too or we'd still be up a tree waiting for the lions to go away.
It's a simple truth that it is impossible for an herbivore to be on the top of the food chain! You think you're morally obligated to step down the ladder just because life is precious? Fine, go ahead. Not me. I'm a man, and I like to be on top, doing what I want, when I want, with my meat. And I'll tell you something, life isn't just precious, it's Frost-ing delicious.
You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat:
Who wants pudding anyway? I love animals. I love them so much that I feel it is my solemn duty to try as many of God's delicious creatures as possible in all of their wondrous varieties of form, flavor and dipping sauces. I will not divorce myself from my biological birthright just because some weenie in a pair of Birkenstocks (made of leftovers) has issues.
I'm not saying we should eat every animal. The endangered ones should be left alone. That would be like snagging the last buffalo wing while your date is in the bathroom. It's important to leave something for the future generations to snack on, but beyond that it's all about what tastes good. You think we wouldn't eat dog if it went well with cabernet? Pork chops are as smart as your dog and venison and bunnies are as cute as your cat. They just cook up better. You want to save the dolphins? Help them evolve by eating the dumb ones who play in the nets. Whales are smart, but they're huge. Eat one whale you could save three-thousand chickens. Don't whine to me about sentience. If intelligence makes one animal more valuable than another, we win. If not, we have no moral problem, and we still win. Either way I'm preheating the oven.
Meat is good for the environment:
At least it could be if we were sensible. We're about to take a side road, try to stay with me and watch the bumps.
1. The world is overpopulated.
2. Each human's biological footprint is drastically increased by the amount of land it takes to support their diet.
3. Every day we take thousands of tons of perfectly good meat, stick it in a box and bury it.
Cemeteries are a waste of meat and land, and waste is bad.
I'm not saying we should eat our dead. I'm just saying that someone should, or at least they should have the option. The third world needs food, we need real estate. Seems like win-win. We control the deer population by hunting, and if we didn't they'd over-breed and starve. We're killing people every day anyway, why compound that by just tossing them out. It's time to get over our taboos and be sensible
So you're saying Hitler had it right?
Of course not, don't be stupid. I didn't say anything about harvesting live humans or singling out any particular group. Hitler was evil, probably one of the most evil people ever. All I'm saying is that not only should he go to hell for putting people in ovens, but that it's just a little bit worse because he overcooked them. Life is a terrible thing to waste. As for me, when I die rub me down with some garlic and thyme, shove a stick of butter up my ass and toss me on the coals. Just remove the penis first; I don't want to be gay about it.
A Brave New World:
Let's get back to those shrimp and the thermal vents. Discoveries like that and others like deep cave ecosystems have dramatically expanded our perception of what kinds of environments are capable of supporting life. Whereas once most scientists were skeptical about the possibility of life elsewhere in our galaxy, there are now very serious speculations about life right here within our own solar system. The oceans under the icy crust of Europa might perhaps have thermal vents similar to those found on earth for example.
It won't happen in my lifetime, or my son's or his son's, but after that it starts to become possible. My great, great grandchild may live to witness the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Will it be intelligent? Almost certainly not. Will it go well with a side of fries? 50/50.
We've come a long way since Og and the stick, but we have a lot further to go. If we really want to continue as a species, someday we're going to have to move to the stars. This is going to require voyages that take not just years but generations, and some far off day, when that first noble pioneer sets foot on the shore of a new world after a lifetime of travel, I can guarantee you he'll be hungry. Science fiction flicks always have the aliens eating us. I say we eat them first. Top of the food chain baby, to infinity and beyond.
That about sums it up so it's time for me to stop. The point has been made as well as I'm capable of making it, plus it's dinner time and those baby seal burgers aren't going to cook themselves.
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Hilarious
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17 Comments on "Of Man and Meat: An Argument against Vegetarianism"
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Midgets 96,092  48
01/11/2007 10:09 PM
First?
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Midgets 96,092 48
01/11/2007 10:17 PM
Awesome, I hope you dedicate this to Skippy.
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Chit 178,781 15
01/11/2007 10:35 PM
Classic !
And a subject I can really get my teeth into...
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Briham's Doobs Secrete Eggnog! 38,843 10
01/12/2007 07:58 AM
As for me, when I die rub me down with some garlic and thyme, shove a stick of butter up my ass and toss me on the coals. Just remove the penis first; I don't want to be gay about it.
Because someone else eating your penis makes you gay, but shoving butter up your ass is perfectly fine.
Great article. I'm thinking about bringing it to my humanities class. We're studying the differences between man and animal and the moral consequenses of said relationship.
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Briham's Doobs Secrete Eggnog! 38,843 10
01/12/2007 08:01 AM
By the way, I remember watching a documentary on early man. I think it said our first tools weren't pointy sticks. We were pretty pathetic in the beginning. Basically, we had to wait in the scavenging line, behind the jackals and vultures. All that would be left of the carcass were the bones, and we used rocks to break them open and get to the marrow.
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Stone Cold Bikini 62,262 18
01/12/2007 08:23 AM
Why is the date on this sometime in last year?
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Fratberry 283,018 53
01/12/2007 08:28 AM
Because Chi-Chi has been busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.
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Jepperoni 58,758 13
01/12/2007 08:32 AM
Bravo Dave! Bravo! Well done! Like a Filipino Filet!
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Tweak - Friend. Lover. Spoon 18,881 12
01/12/2007 08:37 AM
Brilliant. One of the best articles I've ever read. Keep up the good work and maybe someday you'll set up your own message board like CodeslKERBLAM!
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Trixxie Ya Ya 65,026 15
01/12/2007 08:50 AM
Those little critters you describe in the first paragraph are called chemosynthetic organisms. They are the only life on Earth that exists with out any kind of dependance on solar energy. Yes you could turn the sun off and all life on Earth would perish but chemosynthetics; who, like us, are also dependant on dead dinosaur juice. The environment in which they live: incredibly deep ocean trenches, deep deposit oil reserve seepage, and thermal vents from underground volcanic activity, is theorized to be duplicated on Europa and leads some to speculate a similar type of life form could exist there.
And I would also like to point out that feeding a species their own dead leads to spongiform encephalopathy.
We now return you to your regularly stupid Trixxie.
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Phuc 237,919 21
01/12/2007 09:35 AM
<action>sheds a single tear. Of joy.</action>
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Dave's not here 52,827 16
01/12/2007 11:35 AM
I linked to it in a thread a one point. It had been a few months and I didn't really expect to see it.
I am a man of little faith.
None actually.
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Blueberry Pan-cake 2,382 8
01/27/2007 10:25 PM
Reminds me of A Modest Proposal.
Dave is the modern Swift - full of sense and reason, of course.
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peoriagrace 6,166 11
07/18/2007 10:22 AM
It must of been the ugly women who thought of ranching.
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