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Alternative interpretation is that we've reached a limit on the globalization and scaling. Had countries been much more independent of each other, and open abou

Alternative interpretation is that we've reached a limit on the globalization and scaling. Had countries been much more independent of each other, and open about the pandemic, an early lockdown/quarantine would have contained pandemic to a single region. Also careful with meat guilt. Our brains have an inherent need for setting hard-to-achieve goals that require overcoming hardships. That's how humanity progressed from living in caves to what we have now. The concept is widely studied in ancient philosophy. Google up eudaimonia if you want. It used to translate to people setting hard constructive goals (like building a house in a frontier land or inventing a car to replace horse carriages). Except now that we automated most constructive things to do, this part of our brain is capturing guilt-driven self-restricting goals. Don't eat meat, don't have a nice house, don't drive out, don't have a vacation, don't have family/kids, don't pick friends you like... Except these goals are divisive by definition. You can't make everyone accept every possible "don't", so people are forced to argue about whether their set of self-stigmas is holier than their neighbor's. This is textbook medieval tribalism and it's unfortunately a very stable (and grim) state of the human society. I'm not trying to bash anyone, I'm just saying be careful with your goals, as they may not always bring the happiness you want.

BillyTheKing 6y ago
those are fair points, but I specifically tried to avoid saying 'do not eat meat', I said it's something that we should reduce or cut down. Those don'ts that you listed unfortunately conflict... most people weren't able to have a vacation this year because of the pandemic, which in all likelihood is related to our relationship with animals. Same with meeting friends and family. In my opinion those aren't all equal, there are certain desires that are incredibly important to us as a species as well as our democracy, and those include social interactions with other humans and arguably more important that the ability to consume meat thrice a day. I'm not saying humans shouldn't eat meat at all, eating meat has been part of the human diet for many centuries - but eating meat day in and out, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that's where we took a wrong turn, we're on an extreme side of the spectrum here, and that's never healthy.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Eating meat has been a large part of the human diet since the very beginning. It is what allowed us to grow our huge brains. It is what made us what we are. I agree that the problem isn’t meat, the problem is scale. We are having too many kids, and the population is way too large for our limited resources.

BillyTheKing 6y ago

those are fair points, but I specifically tried to avoid saying 'do not eat meat', I said it's something that we should reduce or cut down. Those don'ts that you listed unfortunately conflict... most people weren't able to have a vacation this year because of the pandemic, which in all likelihood is related to our relationship with animals. Same with meeting friends and family. In my opinion those aren't all equal, there are certain desires that are incredibly important to us as a species as well as our democracy, and those include social interactions with other humans and arguably more important that the ability to consume meat thrice a day. I'm not saying humans shouldn't eat meat at all, eating meat has been part of the human diet for many centuries - but eating meat day in and out, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that's where we took a wrong turn, we're on an extreme side of the spectrum here, and that's never healthy.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
Eating meat has been a large part of the human diet since the very beginning. It is what allowed us to grow our huge brains. It is what made us what we are. I agree that the problem isn’t meat, the problem is scale. We are having too many kids, and the population is way too large for our limited resources.