David3
Forum Legend
.my take on it is more colored by philosophy. It's not a foregone conclusion. and certainly there is not a lot of supporting evidence, but my opinion is that an advanced civilization should also have an advanced moral code. Not up-to-date on my Star Trek stuff but I'm pretty sure that the Federation did not have a live stock industry. They had those machines that transformed matter and had syntheitic meat. I remember that in one episode the Klingons ate things that were alive - so they probably weren't synthetic. but I think they were just worms. It probably is pretty hard to keep a herd of cows or even a flock of chickens on a spaceship.
I can't remember what movie or TV show but the characters had a lot of meal worm recipes. On a space ship without transformers, meal worms might make a lot of sense.
I don't think the Vulcans even had a moral code. they governed themselves with logic. And I'm pretty sure that with the inefficiencies of livestock production - they would have abandoned animal husbandry as illogical
In Larry Niven's universe he liked to play around with how biology could affect a civilization. He had one civilization that were herbivores, Puppeteers. and another that were like tigers, K'zin.
Sometimes non-vegans will pose a question like, what would happen to all the livestock if the world turned vegan. I always point out that the world, could not, would not go vegan overnight.
but just for fun I invented a scenario where the world goes vegan overnight.
Astonomers detect a space armada heading for Earth. The Admiral sends a message to Earth that we have to decipher. they have not yet figured out how to read, listen, or view our transmissions. but they have come in peace and hope share their advanced technology and learn about life on earth. when we finally decode their messages we get video. and this alien race look remarkably like cows.
the earth goes vegan overnight.
Larry Niven! Love his stuff. David Brin, too.
I saw Larry Niven speak on a sci-fi panel at the Los Angeles Festival of Books in the late 1990s. The best part of the panel was when a young woman in the audience asked the panelists if they would consider writing sci-fi novels wherein the protagonists were cats. So many people started laughing, I'm guessing because (1) the "cats-are-girly" thing plus male stereotype-threat, and (2) Larry Niven had already written multiple novels about the cat-like Kzin species. I almost wonder whether it was staged - the comedy was sublime.
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