dohboi wrote:
So really, vegan non-flyers are not some kind of weird ascetics or whatever special name one wants to come up with. It is regular flyers (only about 6% of the world's population are thought to fly regularly) and heavy meat eaters (more than an a few ounces a week) that are the outliers, and who truly deserve to have therefore 'marked' terms applied to them, perhaps flesh-glutton, jet-setter planet destroyers, perhaps??
This is a good point. Although I wouldn't say vegan was the historical default of humans, but certainly mainly vegetarian with much much smaller quantities of meat and yes no flying around. T
I have mentioned in the past that humans do not handle abundance well since nature always historically set the limit and we never had any real cultural or biological mechanisms in place for self regulation of consumption in times of abundance. And once we achieved extended abundance during the fossil fuel age we have proven to be miserable at any significant type of self regulation.
And so we can see how consumption in modern civilization goes through this cycle where once you lift out of poverty you recklessly ramp up consumption. This happened in America in the 20th century, happening to China today. Obesity and excessive material consumption are symptoms.
Meat consumption follows this. You lived for generations cherishing those few ounces of meat when available. Suddenly its available in abundance and you consume it to excess. And now we do find more and more people completing that cycle and actually today choose for health reasons to consciously go back to the historical norm you mention Dohboi of having a largely vegetarian diet. That is my family's diet since a couple of decades. Not vegetarian, just greatly reduced amounts of animal protein.
So again, between the historical norm of tiny amounts of meat consumption because it was not readily available and the conscious choice to not eat a lot of meat when abundantly available we have this large and quite ugly middle ground, this learning curve where we have to go through gluttony in order to begin to self regulate.
To get back to the thread how much of flight is superfluous, in excess? Whether it be for tourism, business, military. Certainly there is an indulgence in this excess, flying to Las Vegas out of boredom more than for any nourishing reason for the body or soul. How much of modern human consumption is because of boredom and a general unfulfilled life? You wont find a graph or statistics on this unless you look at the cruise industry for example and see how that has grown.
I call cruise ships shit factories, they leave port loaded with 1 or 2 weeks supply of food and all the passengers work all week in converting all that food to excrement. The cruise ship comes back to port at the end of the trip with the job complete and giant septic pumps suck out the product and then the ship is once again filled up with food and then the 2000 plus new passengers wait in line for another week work converting all that food to shit.
Most everyone who takes a cruise on these shit factories had to fly to the port to start their trip. Just consider a moment this sector of tourism, driving to the airport, flying on a plane, getting on the cruise ship, consumption gluttonous amounts of food, ending the cruise, getting back on a plane and arriving back home. What well being was actually generated on this kind of tourism? Nothing, just a whole lot of excrement!
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
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