Context matters. It matters to be on the morally wrong side when society is at a decision point. By and large, we don't judge romans because they practiced slavery. We judge people who have chosen to defend slavery when it was not a moral consensus anymore and on the verge of abolition. Plenty of slave owners have their names on university buildings, but they never went to war to defend it.
There is a strong argument to be made that we are at a decision point on vegetarianism. Of course we'll only know for sure in retrospect, but
* Vegans and vegetarians are growing groups, especially among the young.
* Food technology is improving and making it easier and easier to not eat meat. There are a few startups in this area, such as Impossible Foods, that may revolutionize how we eat.
* The world is becoming increasingly aware of the risk of climate change, and that consuming animal products is a significant factor.
* We have plenty of solid scientific evidence showing people can live healthy lives without eating meat, removing the "we need it to survive" argument. (There is also some evidence that eating less meat is good for you, but there is a lot to debate there.)
* Legislation is moving more and more towards protecting animal rights, even if we have a lot left to do.
So yes, I think the top comment is right. People eating meat today will be judged poorly in a few generations' time.
Only about 3% of Americans are self-proclaimed vegetarians (less than 1% are vegans), and there's good evidence that the majority of those eat meat, fish, or poultry on a regular basis [1].
Of course, future generations may be 100% vegan and look back on us with horror at the way that we treated animals, our planet, our bodies, etc. But that's distinct from looking back on individuals who didn't choose a particular niche lifestyle and having it tarnish their memory.
Your points seem more about why you think that individual non-vegetarians should be judged harshly by history, but I see little reason to think that a lifestyle that less than 1% of the population strictly adheres to is going to become a source of individualized historical shame.
I believe your data is out of date, here is Wikipedia's summary:
> In 1971, 1 percent of U.S. citizens described themselves as vegetarians.[104] In 2008 Harris Interactive found that 3.2% are vegetarian and 0.5% vegan,[105] while a 2013 Public Policy Polling survey of 500 respondents found that 13% of Americans are either vegetarian or vegan—6% vegetarian and 7% vegan.[106] U.S. vegetarian food sales (meat replacements such as soy milk and textured vegetable protein) doubled between 1998 and 2003, reaching $1.6 billion in 2003.[107]
So in five years, veganism rose 14x while vegetarianism doubled? Color me skeptical. You also didn't address the issue that most of those people probably aren't even very strict in their diets.
And given previous results, I highly suspect many of those have eaten meat or fish in the last year.
And so my point stands: even if strict vegetarian / vegan lifestyles become the majority view in the future, it'll be many decades from now, and individuals in our era won't be widely shamed for not adopting such a lifestyle, given that only a tiny fraction of the population does.
Oh, I don't think strictness is the issue here. Sure, very possibly most vegans/vegetarians eat animal products now and then. It's hard to be 100% perfect, given how society is set up right now.
I agree this is a process that will take decades.
I disagree about the criticism. I think those future generations will be horrified at how we so casually accept the eating of animal products, factory farming, and so forth. (And they might feel some unease at the vegans/vegetarians that are just 99% perfect, too.)
The fact it's only a growing fraction right now doesn't mean the future won't be shocked at the majority today. There are plenty of examples where we are shocked by the majority in the past.
Yes, but that's not what we're discussing. We're discussing individualized shame in the future. And for that metric, strictness absolutely matters.
So in 200 years, will they remove the name of someone from our era from monuments or buildings because they weren't vegetarian? Especially considering almost no one was, and the people who claimed to be were mostly lying?
I am definitely in that overlap! I think food/water security is going to be vital in the next few years, particularly with some of the predicted challenges with global warming. I think that we NEED both advances in synthetic meat AND crop production. But then, I'm one of those crazies that think that Monsanto is only as bad as can be expected of a company of it's size.
