Millions of human beings live not only in want, but in hunger. This month of August, which begins the harvest season, leads me to reflect on those human beings around our planet, who are dying from starvation and kwashiorkor. There are millions of them, captured by drought and crop failure, who do not have enough to eat, do not have help to save them from starvation, and who do not know how to get out of their prison to find sustenance elsewhere, They are trapped, and watch their children die as they are crying and suffering. Those of us who have, do not really seem to care too much. We are happy to have our comfortable homes and delectable meals. We do not rise to action when we see pictures in the paper of children who are malnourished and crying in hunger. We do not understand what he was saying when John Donne told us that “Every man’s (man, woman or child) death diminishes me, for I am involved in all mankind.” We don’t seem to understand that all humans that exist are all in this together. We all survive as a group, we all recognize that we are in this with all other life on this planet, or we all fall in a dead heap together.
I remember when our family was not in hunger, but certainly in want. My father’s ministerial salary was minimal during the great depression of the 30’s. There was no grocery store to go to for prepared meals and frozen dinners, fresh baked goods, and fresh vegetables. There was no restaurant we could visit for exotic cuisine; not only did they not exist, but we also had no money to pay for such food. We had to dig a well to get our water. We had to heat with coal. We had no meat source other than the chickens we raised for eggs, and an occasional broiler, most of which was used for flavoring. We raised our own vegetables. All of us had to hoe the garden, pick the beans, snap the beans, dig the potatoes, pick the tomatoes. We all savored the occasional melon, late in the year. When harvest occurred, my mother became a canning demon. The kitchen was a steaming mess, producing tables full of glass jars containing various vegetables, all labeled as to type and year. We all had to help carry them down to the basement, where there were shelves of canned vegetables in a long line. During the winter, we all picked up jars from this stash for our evening meals. We had a Billy goat too, until he strangled himself on his leash, probably trying to get away from a dog or other predator. We all survived, doing what we had to do to get by. Our first big meal, after the depression ended, was baked pork chops and macaroni and cheese. We all ate so much, we got terribly sick, and could not face mac and cheese for the next year. That meal we always remembered as the best meal of our lives, because it ended a long period of great want.
Unfortunately, more want is on the way. We have enjoyed that marvelous ride through plenty, when there is a plethora of savory and tempting food of all sorts and all nationalities waiting for us around every corner. We have enjoyed the freedom to go out to restaurants of all venues, titillating our palates, and surfeiting ourselves on heaping portions. We have so much surfeit of tantalizing food, we have given those on welfare, dependent on the rest of our society for sustenance, such an abundance of appealing entrees, that many of them are terribly fat. Those in want, in our society, if they pull the right chains, never had it so good. We have had so much of the good stuff, that clean platers seldom exist anymore. It has become gauche to show an empty plate. Anyone who is fashionable always leaves some food on their plates. The dumpsters behind our restaurants are filled with cooked items that were not chosen, and fearing retribution, dumped by those restaurants who offer freshly prepared meals. We live, at current time, in the world of plenty, in our developed nations. This cycle, however, will not last forever.
As the human population grows, as the fertile soil is depleted, as soil and water contamination continues, as tillable land is lost to desertization and salinization, there will not be enough land to continue large scale animal husbandry, and largely meat diets. Only ten percent of the calorie content of our grains is conserved, when those grains are converted to meat. Our crops will be enough to sustain us only if used as our primary source of food. Besides being a necessity, there is an even more compelling reason for all of us to become vegetarians: the use of animals, just to savor our palates, defies the need for all of us to respect all life. No life should be taken unless it is absolutely needed to sustain another life.
When the Jewish Bible told us that humans were in command of all other animals, and all other life, to use as we chose, we got a terribly wrong interpretation of that command. That command was not to use all other life as sport, or target practice, or big game hunting, or one inch thick prime ribs. It was a command to protect all other life, in any way necessary, so that all of us, as a symbiotic life organism, could survive together. If we don’t, we will all be in want.