I’ve been flirting with the ‘taboo’ thought a fair bit. To my mind, trying to encourage, even educate people into better patterns of behavior just never works as well as frightening them into submission. It’s the thinking behind making things taboo and it’s form of regulation from a long, long, time ago.

So what would I want to make taboo? Eating meat for one thing. Before roasting me, know this - I’ve eaten meat all my life, even been called ‘meat mouth’ on more than occasion by the wife, but I think it’s time to change that habit. Well of course it’s a habit.

Humans do not need meat in their diet. They weren’t even evolved to process meat in their digestive systems. They get along fine without it to the point that non-meat eaters of long standing can safely turn up their cancer free noses at the poor sufferers as if to say ‘told you so!’

The reasons to do with my change in diet has to do with survival of the species. Homo Sapiens are at risk in the near future. If present population continue to grow as it has been doing over the last fifty years, the world gets additional humans, equivalent to the 2007 population of the United States of America every thirty three months?

Something has to give, and since people, in their own eyes, are the most important life form on the face of the Earth, it’s imperative to them that they take the land space to create homes and farm plots.Therefore as the population grows so does the acreages for food and animal habitat decrease.

Arguments abound that science will take care of things. Science has always risen to the challenge some say, and man will always prevail especially when things look grim. In fact it was a thought coming out in the movie ‘The day the earth stood still’, if I remember correctly.

It’s not true though. Earth has woven a net among her citizens, humans even have terms for it. They call it ecology, aspects of which are known as biodiversity - all life on earth. She, Earth that is, made sure each depends on the other to live. In essence we cannot exist without the support of other organisms here on earth.

Earth’s only error , or is it wisdom? - is that the other life forms can do without humans. Don’t doubt for a minute we cannot be eradicated. She’s tried in the past. Remember stories of the plagues from the past? Now see the viral spread of bird flu, swine flu and those others we presently suffer through in this  decade. AIDs? I wonder.

You may wonder what’s else to make taboo then? Reducing the size of the human population? There is that, but since it’s frowned upon, it’s best to work smart and feed the population in a sustainable manner. Feeding meat to feed humans who can live (better even) on a vegan diet makes little sense.

Observing a taboo in the past meant to hold forbidden anything that could threaten the good of the fragile human groupings. So, as communities grew, rules evolved to keep them from fragmenting. In those bad old days of dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers (my ancestors ogling the semi-naked Raquel Welsh types running around), the unformed groups were at risk, hence the need for the taboo rulings.
Here’s some strong taboos that are familiar now, which have their origins back then.

• Do not kill friends. It weakens the group.
• Do not sleep with mommy, nor sister! Why? Angry cave man daddy may kill horny son and so further weaken the group as the group must then kill him.

Of course it was so, only later would our sciences prove genetic inheritance; So it was more of a jealousy thing back then at Caveman Home.

Caveman Central evolved other taboos too. They prayed to trees before cutting any, and then only taking what they needed, usually only the weaker ones. If the tools they had were poor, the ecology they benefitted from was rich, so it was still all good. Killing animals for sport? Unheard of for a long, long time. Recreational hunting only began when we became ‘civilized’.

Beyond those personal considerations, there were other advances toward modern community behavior; Thus collected berries all had to be brought into the palisade and shared. A group could not have starving members while some were well fed, it may force those without enough berries to leave and so further weaken the group.

Now, in more modern times we cut all the trees down to make more land available to grow feed for our red-blooded food. It’s a silly cycle and not an exercise we can afford. The resources necessary to produce meat-based versus vegetable-based food are disproportionate, and eating lower on the food ladder requires fewer resources. Generally, nine calories of resources are required to produce one calorie of food. For example, to produce one pound of wheat, twenty -five gallons of water, sun, and less than an acre of land are required. To produce one pound of beef, sixteen pounds of wheat and soy, and twenty five gallons of water are required. Now since water ‘grows off trees’, in a manner of speaking, we need the land to make water, food, nurture life. See?

The case for creating taboos to protect human life persist, its just more obscure, a bit. Wheat needs (okay I forget -someone tell me in the comment  box)  of land for a farmer to grow a  metric tonne. In all it seems to me we can ill afford to give the landspace needed to grow fodder for meat protein when we can get by quite nicely on what plants give us.       
Something has to give in the light of the tightening situation.

It will be humans. We may have better tools now, it’s true but we cannot eat those. Speaking as an advocate for the sanctity of all life on earth, even humans, I think the only rules the future caveman will obey as the pressure of landspace increases are the taboo ones we can create now to hold communities safe.

So I’m not eating meat in an understated effort to make more land available to grow more grain - for humans. Fruits and vegetables are all we need. Let’s make killing the life forms that support our existence a cultural taboo. I need no modern tools to tell me this - I’m using caveman knowledge.