Does Eating Meat Lead to Homicidality in Humans?

Rambo: Of course vegetarians say the reason human beings are bloodthirsty murderers is because of the consumption of meat. If everybody just went veggie, people wouldn’t be so lustful for blood.

I’m not so sure that is true. First of all, we don’t kill most of the animals we eat. If we had to, we might not eat them! When I eat meat, I purposely put the idea of the fact that this meat I am eating came from a living animal that had to be killed in order for me to eat it out of my head because it’s so upsetting. So when I’m eating spare ribs, I may as well be eating carrots for all my moral mind knows.

Killing Animals and Killing Humans May Be Two Completely Different Thought Mechanisms in Humans Having Little to Do with Each Other

But I’m well acquainted with homicidal feelings, as I’ve experienced them much of my life, although much less often now that I am older. The odd thing is that I’m a pacifist, maybe the nicest guy you’ve ever met, the least irritable person around who is bothered by nothing that others do, and I’ve never even tried to kill anyone in anything other than self-defense (we won’t discuss the possible exemptions to this rule here), much less a completely innocent person. So you can see that if even a passive pacifist like me has led this homicidal of a mental life, God forbid what your ordinary person thinks like, and I think we don’t even want to know what your average aggressive hypermasculine male thinks!

So homicidal thinking seems quite universal in humans, or at least in males. Yet I never think with joy about the animals I eat, and not only that but I brainwash myself into thinking that a living animal did not have to be killed for me to eat it. So I take my mind completely outside of the knowledge and awareness that an animal had to be killed in order for me to eat it. Such knowledge would seem to be necessary in order for there to be a connection between meat-eating and homicidality.

People who brainwash themselves into thinking eating a pork chop is the same thing as eating Brussels sprouts hardly have the murderous mindset necessary for the theory to be true. And as I pointed out, completely passive and more or less harmless people can think in markedly homicidal ways. So it seems that eating meat in which an animal had to be killed in order for one to eat it and homicidal thinking towards other humans are two completely different mechanisms and in many cases, have little to do with each other.

Actual Hunting of Animals Doesn’t Seem to Lead to Killing Humans

What about hunters? I used to be friends with a taxidermist who was an avid hunter and even a hunter guide. I brought up the question of whether killing animals may make someone more likely to kill people. He’d thought about it a bit, and he said that the thought streams were two completely different mechanisms. There is a huge gap or fence in place between killing animals and killing humans, and most hunters are aware of it. It’s as if the thoughts of killing animals and killing humans were from two different planets.

Hunters section these thoughts apart and make a vast divide between them as if they are two completely different things altogether. I’m not sure what the literature shows, but it seems as if hunters deliberately create a mental barrier for themselves when they kill animals, possibly to make sure that murderousness towards animals does not lead to homicidality towards humans. Or perhaps the two thoughts are already walled off that way due to socialization. Or perhaps the hard divide between them is hardwired into our brains.

Boys Killing Small Animals in Almost All Cases Does Not Lead Them to Kill Humans

Notice how easily children, especially boys, kill bugs, fish and in less frequent cases, amphibians and reptiles, even less often birds and least of all, mammals? Well, as a boy, I had no issues killing bugs and fish; in fact, it was a cause for delight. But those feelings would not even extend to amphibians, much less anything higher than that (We caught snakes but that was in order to make pets out of them!), and I’ve never killed an amphibian, reptile, bird, or mammal in my life. I tried to kill frogs recently because the ones around here are pests, but my mind stopped me. It seemed too cruel and disgusting.

So when do you hear about about even the cruelest animal-killing boys killing other humans, except in the case of adolescents? Almost never.

So already in boys the killing of lesser organisms, especially at the lower end, is sectioned off with a hard wall, probably genetically based, against even killing more advanced creatures, much less humans, which is verging on the unthinkable.

Teens Torturing Mammals to Death, Especially Dogs and Cats, Is Different

However, once teenagers get to the point where they are killing mammals, especially beloved domesticated ones like dogs and cats, a hard line has been crossed, and they are now more likely to kill higher mammals like humans. This is particularly the case because boys killing lesser animals often involves torture (it certainly did with us), and kids who kill dogs and cats often torture them to death. Torturing a mammal to death is completely different from a hunter killing a deer quickly and cleanly. The former is much more likely to be escalated to killing humans due to the sadistic nature of it.

The Original Theory Appears Unfalsifiable

But this is unfalsifiable in a sense. Where are all these human vegetarians we can test this theory on? They don’t really exist (but see below). So there’s no way to even test out the theory. Theories that can’t be tested out are nonfalsifiable; that is, there is no way to prove them wrong. Another way of saying is by saying not only is the theory not right, it’s not even wrong!

Largely vegetarian Hindus have conducted some major massacres in past decades.

And Hitler was said to be a vegetarian, and Nazis promoted vegetarianism due to an animal rights project they had that they unfortunately did not extend to human animals.

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4 thoughts on “Does Eating Meat Lead to Homicidality in Humans?”

  1. I’ve always had a reverence for nature, animals, and pest killers. I was especially close to the cat I grew up with and considered a sister. I read Ranger Rick, wanted to be a naturalist and interviewed one for school. I felt no guilt about racialism because it was the same noble principle as protecting the forest, White European society.

    I grew up with a LOTR-type view of trees. I try to avoid walking on worms because they are good for the soil. I rescue many of them from the hot sidewalk, like helping a turtle cross the road. Only bugs I hate are litter. Recently a woman wanted me to kill a beetle, and I refused but took the beautiful colored bug outside. She was angry I didn’t kill it and said she was no treehugger. I rescued a bat as well which was rewarding. The bat flew to to a wall and looked at me for a moment as if to say “Thank you” before flying away eat many bloodsucking mosquitos.

    1. That’s good. That’s a really beautiful, Buddhist-like aspect to your personality.

      I rescue bugs myself. I do kill pests though. Flies, silverfish, and especially cockroaches. I even kill cockroaches outside. I really hate those things. I also kill mosquitoes sometimes, even when I’m outside. I rescue snails and slugs on the sidewalk. I remove them and put them over on the land where they won’t get stepped on. Of course I always rescue spiders! Except black widows! We had those regularly at my old house and I killed quite a few of those fucks.

      I’ve rescued mice before. I always wore plastic gloves when I dealt with the mice. My cat used to catch them and I would take them from him and take them inside and study them. Then I put them way out in the field where the cat can’t get them. These were field mice, not house mice. House mice should be killed! Rats are evil. I would be honored to kill a rat. Screw those things!

  2. Robert,

    Hate to rain on your parade, but the vast majority of Indians do NOT self-identify as vegetarian:

    https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/08/eight-in-ten-indians-limit-meat-in-their-diets-and-four-in-ten-consider-themselves-vegetarian/

    And Indian omnivores consume MUCH less than their counterparts in developed nations:

    https://data.oecd.org/agroutput/meat-consumption.htm

    If we want to correct for “cultural factors”, you can select the graph that compares poultry consumption by country.

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