If I had to bet, the prohibition on eating pork evolved out of fear of trichonosis. I've always heard of "long pig" or "long pork" being associated with the age of sail, during which cannibalism became a bit more common. But who knows. Maybe they picked up the phrase somewhere in the Pacific. Apparently pig parts are used in some surgeries (like heart valve replacement) because at a cellular level it's relatively similar to humans. So makes sense it might taste similar. In the end I'd expect it mostly comes down more to how you spice it. Anyway, loved the cannibalism chat!
Personally I think cannibalism is the most primal taboo in this area, and the other taboos are extensions of it. Having a taboo against cannibalism makes sense, both because killing and eating other humans is not great for the survival of the human race, but also because of the unique potential for diseases (e.g. kuru).
To the extent that nonhuman animals are perceived as being like humans, it makes sense that the same taboo would extend to them. And pigs certainly have some human-like qualities. We of course have strong taboos against eating animals that we form strong bonds with, and can observe as individuals and empathize with better.
For me, I see similarities in all kinds of life, and I would sooner go vegan than eat lab-grown meat. Having said that, I’m a vegetarian and I do eat some dairy and occasionally a dessert with egg in it; I’ll certainly be effectively vegan for a stretch, but I never feel right not eating dairy. And I do agree that the vegans make some good arguments. I used to live near a chicken processing plant and trucks full of dirty cages full of abused birds would drive by. The stench was awful. Factory farming cows is horrific, as is a lot of modern agriculture. The sooner that’s over, the better.
I'm not sure that during the evolutionary period leading to modern homo sapiens there was a great deal of empathizing with pigs. The wild varieties in particular aren't especially likeable - if anything, I'd expect they might have been singled out for special animosity (this might indeed indicate other ways they are human-like, but not in a positive sense). Noticing that people were getting sick and/or dying after eating pig and not knowing that more thorough cooking could alleviate it seems like something that would definitely get noticed.
But, I've no reason to believe pork prohibitions even existed in paleolithic times. In which case we could be talking about customs that arose entirely from domestication. Still you'd think the risk of disease (and lack of understanding that it had anything to do with insufficient cooking) would have been conspicuous.
Or it could just be that pigs like to roll around in filth, which is pretty unappealing in its own right. Goats, cows, chickens, etc. don't tend to do that.
(Worth noting that the social prohibition seems to be limited to Middle Eastern cultures, too. There wasn't much aversion to pig consumption I'm aware of in eastern Asia or Europe. No idea about southern Asia.)
My counterargument to that would be that in prehistoric times, encounters with wild pigs (and most other animals) were fleeting. I think that early hominids might well have the capacity to empathize with a pig enough to feel a sense of disgust from eating it under certain circumstances, but that those circumstances weren’t the ones they actually lived under.
There are clearly a lot of facultative moral stances in contemporary humans, when you compare across cultures.
Wow. Sarah was on 🔥🔥🔥 I really appreciate seriousness. I’ve been noticing the growing antisemitism on the progressive left for years. I’m just glad it’s out in the open now. Really hoping people continue to recognize it.
When I was stationed in San Antonio, about 23 yrs ago, we had a female soldier bring in homemade muffins one night to share. This was a night I wasn’t there. One of the male soldiers tried a muffin, complimented her on them, and then she told him it was made with breast milk she bought over the internet.
I think Meghan and Sarah exaggerate the absence of reliable information. Anyone can go to the NYT or the BBC or whatever and get serious professional reporting on the conflict. People go to Twitter instead because they prefer argument and sensationalism. It’s a consumer choice, not a necessity.
Triangulation of events by multiple legacy outlets that is then fact checked by independent media is arguably leading to more accuracy. WSJ reporting on the hospital bombing evidence offers a case in point. However, so many people think everything that challenges their views is disinformation that I’m not comforted by this. At least I trust my ability to evaluate information but I will add that I don’t think civilians have ever had or will ever have complete information about foreign affairs. We’ll never know what is really said behind closed doors by world leaders.
Sadly, these have both become biased news sources. So, I recommend anyone review publications from both sides of the aisle to receive a more complete picture.
Thank you Sarah and Meghan for you valuable commentary in this episode. It is important to hear from people other than Jews and Republicans about the toxic antisemitism that has become commonplace among far too many progressives in the US and globally.
October 7 will likely be a watershed event for Jews worldwide, but especially those of us in America. There will probably be fewer knee jerk Democrats. There will be reduced contributions to institutions - especially universities - that have become unwelcoming to Jews. And, it will likely lead to a greater sense of a Jewish community, which has been diminishing for a generation or two.
I think you'll see a lot more circling the wagons among Jews in America and globally, and a lot less 'let's try to solve everyone else's problems'.
Sarah condemns those who justify the killing of innocent civilians (by Hamas), and I wholeheartedly agree with her. I also see, on the other side, justification of the killing of innocent Palestinians by Israel -- the idea that sorry but Israel simply has to do this to protect her citizens. I'm really starting to feel like the polarization around the conflict hinges on these evil twin justifications. Until each side says unequivocally that killing civilians is inexcusable and off the table, I don't see a path forward.
Well, you aren't going to hear it from Hamas. And if you heard it from Israel, it would mean Hamas has carte blanche to continue slaughtering Israelis until there are none left to slaughter (as they have stated they would). I guess that's a "path forward" in a sense, though it smells more like something medieval to me (at best).
There are many formulations under which war is necessary. There are none under which it is pleasant. This is why it's a shame that Hamas insists upon it, and also the reason Israel cannot be morally asked to shoulder the burden of tolerating the human costs of its continued existence as an effective organization. This is what Hamas invited. Any and all ensuing blood is on its membership's hands - and theirs alone.
I’m weirded out by the concept of lab-grown meat. When I’m eating something presented to me as beef or bacon or chicken, I want to know that it was once a living creature. And what’s the point of being at the top of the food chain if you can’t feast on lower animals?
And while I’m all for renewables, nuclear, electric cars, and high speed rail, I would rather watch the last glacier melt while eating filet mignon than go vegetarian for the sake of the planet.
It seems that Sarah and Meghan posit that simple video/photographic evidence of tearing down kidnap posters is insufficient and needs to be contextualized. And tearing down a poster from ignorance rather than conscious anti-Semitism is excusable? Maybe if the person tearing the poster is an 8 year old .
Say in 1965, a Mississippi newspaper photographer captures an image of two young white men burning a cross in a black neighborhood. Should we have asked for more context? Should the men have been extensively interviewed so we can parse whether they were just ignorant of race relations instead of conscious racists? Should their faces have been pixelated? I'd like to think that both Meghan and Sarah would respond to this situation with visceral disgust.
Meghan and Sarah implied that the people taking the pictures/video of the purported anti-Semites are similar to Libs of Tik Tok. Riddle me this: has anyone proven that Libs of Tik Tok has falsified or doctored the videos she presents? Has she clipped videos to intentionally take them out of context? If so I'm all ears. But in the absence of such evidence, it sounds like the critics just don't like the truth being exposed.
Not saying that lack of context should cause us to question whether they're horrible people. Besides, in the case of tearing down posters, the context is clear. I just hate to see us giving them what they want, which is attention and in many cases victim cred with their peers -- "look, I'm a hero! I'm getting dragged and doxxed!" That said, obviously there's a huge case to be made for calling them out and showing them to the world. The whole thing is just ugly all around. As for Libs of TikTok, I've never liked it because I think it reacts to people who are often trolling and in fact probably want to get dragged by Libs of TikTok. It's nutpicking, which weakens the overall argument.
Tearing down the posters has become a new TikTok challenge. Get videoed tearing down posters and earn the admiration of your bubblemates! Post video of some scumbag tearing down posters and earn the admiration of *your* bubblemates! Another win-win! The whole thing's become purely performative with stunning speed. (I have a premonition that we'll see some actor hold up a picture of an Israeli hostage at the next Academy Awards and tear it up to the sound of applause, then have it all be the main point of conversation on FNC for at least the next three days.)
Many of the actual residents of Nazi Germany claimed to be unaware of the events now referred to as the Holocaust. The government did do quite a bit of work to disguise what was happening, but that just doesn’t seem totally exculpatory. Surely they realized something terrible was happening.
Similarly, there was an enormous amount of contemporaneous Holocaust denial in the U.S. during and before America’s entry in the war.
History doesn’t look kindly on those failings, and even if we might argue that the current day college students tearing down posters are genuinely ignorant/brainwashed, I don’t think it gives them a pass either.
I would've claimed first, but there was actually something posted before me. But it seems to be gone now. My moment of glory, lost, like tears in rain.
Starting about the time period the Americas were discovered through to the invention of the steam engine, though I usually think of it as really getting going around the point when the ability to calculate longitude was developed. Height was generally the Napoleonic era, when Britain became the undisputed world naval power. (Think "Master and Commander.")
If I had to bet, the prohibition on eating pork evolved out of fear of trichonosis. I've always heard of "long pig" or "long pork" being associated with the age of sail, during which cannibalism became a bit more common. But who knows. Maybe they picked up the phrase somewhere in the Pacific. Apparently pig parts are used in some surgeries (like heart valve replacement) because at a cellular level it's relatively similar to humans. So makes sense it might taste similar. In the end I'd expect it mostly comes down more to how you spice it. Anyway, loved the cannibalism chat!
Personally I think cannibalism is the most primal taboo in this area, and the other taboos are extensions of it. Having a taboo against cannibalism makes sense, both because killing and eating other humans is not great for the survival of the human race, but also because of the unique potential for diseases (e.g. kuru).
To the extent that nonhuman animals are perceived as being like humans, it makes sense that the same taboo would extend to them. And pigs certainly have some human-like qualities. We of course have strong taboos against eating animals that we form strong bonds with, and can observe as individuals and empathize with better.
For me, I see similarities in all kinds of life, and I would sooner go vegan than eat lab-grown meat. Having said that, I’m a vegetarian and I do eat some dairy and occasionally a dessert with egg in it; I’ll certainly be effectively vegan for a stretch, but I never feel right not eating dairy. And I do agree that the vegans make some good arguments. I used to live near a chicken processing plant and trucks full of dirty cages full of abused birds would drive by. The stench was awful. Factory farming cows is horrific, as is a lot of modern agriculture. The sooner that’s over, the better.
I'm not sure that during the evolutionary period leading to modern homo sapiens there was a great deal of empathizing with pigs. The wild varieties in particular aren't especially likeable - if anything, I'd expect they might have been singled out for special animosity (this might indeed indicate other ways they are human-like, but not in a positive sense). Noticing that people were getting sick and/or dying after eating pig and not knowing that more thorough cooking could alleviate it seems like something that would definitely get noticed.
But, I've no reason to believe pork prohibitions even existed in paleolithic times. In which case we could be talking about customs that arose entirely from domestication. Still you'd think the risk of disease (and lack of understanding that it had anything to do with insufficient cooking) would have been conspicuous.
Or it could just be that pigs like to roll around in filth, which is pretty unappealing in its own right. Goats, cows, chickens, etc. don't tend to do that.
(Worth noting that the social prohibition seems to be limited to Middle Eastern cultures, too. There wasn't much aversion to pig consumption I'm aware of in eastern Asia or Europe. No idea about southern Asia.)
My counterargument to that would be that in prehistoric times, encounters with wild pigs (and most other animals) were fleeting. I think that early hominids might well have the capacity to empathize with a pig enough to feel a sense of disgust from eating it under certain circumstances, but that those circumstances weren’t the ones they actually lived under.
There are clearly a lot of facultative moral stances in contemporary humans, when you compare across cultures.
You claimed FIRST wrong and now this episode is ruined
I would like to extend my most sincere apologies to Meghan and Sarah.
This isn't a snarky question: what's the age of sail? Like, when people invented sailing and they started to migrate faster?
"you can't even get a memoir out of it" - comedy gold!
Wow. Sarah was on 🔥🔥🔥 I really appreciate seriousness. I’ve been noticing the growing antisemitism on the progressive left for years. I’m just glad it’s out in the open now. Really hoping people continue to recognize it.
When I was stationed in San Antonio, about 23 yrs ago, we had a female soldier bring in homemade muffins one night to share. This was a night I wasn’t there. One of the male soldiers tried a muffin, complimented her on them, and then she told him it was made with breast milk she bought over the internet.
omg, I'd love to have seen his reaction.
I think Meghan and Sarah exaggerate the absence of reliable information. Anyone can go to the NYT or the BBC or whatever and get serious professional reporting on the conflict. People go to Twitter instead because they prefer argument and sensationalism. It’s a consumer choice, not a necessity.
Triangulation of events by multiple legacy outlets that is then fact checked by independent media is arguably leading to more accuracy. WSJ reporting on the hospital bombing evidence offers a case in point. However, so many people think everything that challenges their views is disinformation that I’m not comforted by this. At least I trust my ability to evaluate information but I will add that I don’t think civilians have ever had or will ever have complete information about foreign affairs. We’ll never know what is really said behind closed doors by world leaders.
Sadly, these have both become biased news sources. So, I recommend anyone review publications from both sides of the aisle to receive a more complete picture.
Thank you Sarah and Meghan for you valuable commentary in this episode. It is important to hear from people other than Jews and Republicans about the toxic antisemitism that has become commonplace among far too many progressives in the US and globally.
October 7 will likely be a watershed event for Jews worldwide, but especially those of us in America. There will probably be fewer knee jerk Democrats. There will be reduced contributions to institutions - especially universities - that have become unwelcoming to Jews. And, it will likely lead to a greater sense of a Jewish community, which has been diminishing for a generation or two.
I think you'll see a lot more circling the wagons among Jews in America and globally, and a lot less 'let's try to solve everyone else's problems'.
Sarah condemns those who justify the killing of innocent civilians (by Hamas), and I wholeheartedly agree with her. I also see, on the other side, justification of the killing of innocent Palestinians by Israel -- the idea that sorry but Israel simply has to do this to protect her citizens. I'm really starting to feel like the polarization around the conflict hinges on these evil twin justifications. Until each side says unequivocally that killing civilians is inexcusable and off the table, I don't see a path forward.
Well, you aren't going to hear it from Hamas. And if you heard it from Israel, it would mean Hamas has carte blanche to continue slaughtering Israelis until there are none left to slaughter (as they have stated they would). I guess that's a "path forward" in a sense, though it smells more like something medieval to me (at best).
There are many formulations under which war is necessary. There are none under which it is pleasant. This is why it's a shame that Hamas insists upon it, and also the reason Israel cannot be morally asked to shoulder the burden of tolerating the human costs of its continued existence as an effective organization. This is what Hamas invited. Any and all ensuing blood is on its membership's hands - and theirs alone.
Religion for Breakfast has the most convincing explanation for the pork taboo I’ve encountered so far:
https://youtu.be/pI0ZUhBvIx4?si=o1z7Oqai9ii6qcSQ
I’m weirded out by the concept of lab-grown meat. When I’m eating something presented to me as beef or bacon or chicken, I want to know that it was once a living creature. And what’s the point of being at the top of the food chain if you can’t feast on lower animals?
And while I’m all for renewables, nuclear, electric cars, and high speed rail, I would rather watch the last glacier melt while eating filet mignon than go vegetarian for the sake of the planet.
If I missed the point, someone please correct me.
It seems that Sarah and Meghan posit that simple video/photographic evidence of tearing down kidnap posters is insufficient and needs to be contextualized. And tearing down a poster from ignorance rather than conscious anti-Semitism is excusable? Maybe if the person tearing the poster is an 8 year old .
Say in 1965, a Mississippi newspaper photographer captures an image of two young white men burning a cross in a black neighborhood. Should we have asked for more context? Should the men have been extensively interviewed so we can parse whether they were just ignorant of race relations instead of conscious racists? Should their faces have been pixelated? I'd like to think that both Meghan and Sarah would respond to this situation with visceral disgust.
Meghan and Sarah implied that the people taking the pictures/video of the purported anti-Semites are similar to Libs of Tik Tok. Riddle me this: has anyone proven that Libs of Tik Tok has falsified or doctored the videos she presents? Has she clipped videos to intentionally take them out of context? If so I'm all ears. But in the absence of such evidence, it sounds like the critics just don't like the truth being exposed.
Not saying that lack of context should cause us to question whether they're horrible people. Besides, in the case of tearing down posters, the context is clear. I just hate to see us giving them what they want, which is attention and in many cases victim cred with their peers -- "look, I'm a hero! I'm getting dragged and doxxed!" That said, obviously there's a huge case to be made for calling them out and showing them to the world. The whole thing is just ugly all around. As for Libs of TikTok, I've never liked it because I think it reacts to people who are often trolling and in fact probably want to get dragged by Libs of TikTok. It's nutpicking, which weakens the overall argument.
Tearing down the posters has become a new TikTok challenge. Get videoed tearing down posters and earn the admiration of your bubblemates! Post video of some scumbag tearing down posters and earn the admiration of *your* bubblemates! Another win-win! The whole thing's become purely performative with stunning speed. (I have a premonition that we'll see some actor hold up a picture of an Israeli hostage at the next Academy Awards and tear it up to the sound of applause, then have it all be the main point of conversation on FNC for at least the next three days.)
Point well taken. I'm sure these people tearing posters crave the attention and some even like the idea of being martyred by "the Right".
Pardon my ignorance but is "nutpicking" akin to "cherrypicking" extreme examples of a phenomenon to make it look worse than it really is?
I've wondered that, too.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nutpicking
Sounds like nut-picking is an idea that grew out of cherry-picking.
Many of the actual residents of Nazi Germany claimed to be unaware of the events now referred to as the Holocaust. The government did do quite a bit of work to disguise what was happening, but that just doesn’t seem totally exculpatory. Surely they realized something terrible was happening.
Similarly, there was an enormous amount of contemporaneous Holocaust denial in the U.S. during and before America’s entry in the war.
History doesn’t look kindly on those failings, and even if we might argue that the current day college students tearing down posters are genuinely ignorant/brainwashed, I don’t think it gives them a pass either.
Well put
Second :((((
I would've claimed first, but there was actually something posted before me. But it seems to be gone now. My moment of glory, lost, like tears in rain.
Wait, who *was* first? That person needs to identify themselves!!!
My whole week is ruined
human tastes like pork because humans are 'white meat.'
some journalist in west africa bought meat from a morgue and did cook it and said it tasted like pork too (this was like in the 1930s)
Starting about the time period the Americas were discovered through to the invention of the steam engine, though I usually think of it as really getting going around the point when the ability to calculate longitude was developed. Height was generally the Napoleonic era, when Britain became the undisputed world naval power. (Think "Master and Commander.")