Meat: Final power journey?

For years, animal rights activists have argued that Eating meat is harsh. They provide stark pictures from inside the internal slaughterhouses, show distorted animals, and point statistics that highlight billions of animal deaths every year that supports our meals. Their position is that the consumption of meat is immoral abomination.

Recently, Climate Activists have added their voices, and clarify the risks that meat consumption offered to The health of our joint environmental system. These arguments usually depend on the assumption that we care about nature and wildlife and secure a suitable future for living for our children.

Meat in height

However, despite the increasing coverage of these negative aspects, Global meat consumption continues to rise. This is true in many demographic areas and groups, especially between Younger men– Part targeting heavily marketing To enhance Benefits of high protein meals For muscle growth, strength and fitness.

Besides a direct discussion of the dangers and benefits, it seems that something deeper into playing when it comes to discussing meat limit. Anyone who tried to talk about reducing meat will know this well. Contrary to the decisions needed to reduce fats, sugar or salt, options that usually respond to supportive responses from spectators, the proposal to remove meat often raises hostility.

Death and domination

So, what is meat?

First of all, meat carries a complex set of symbolic meanings. Cruelty, cruelty and increase can be equal, but on an equal, it can evoke wealth, success, virus, nutrition, and long -term cultural traditions. Perhaps the most related to understanding hot reactions often to reduce meat is the implicit relationship between meat and meat Feeling of hegemony.

A large group of research indicates that killing and eating animals symbolizes, for many, The ability to control Other objects. This literature connects the desire for domination and the situation Traditional concepts of masculinity– Signs such as ingenuity, control, strength and strength.

Whether it is aware or not, we continue to kill and eat animals, partly, as a method Enough our own image And a symbolic confirmation of hegemony. Although the same action has been used largely to external sources to the vast automatic slaughterhouses run by companies such as Cargill, Conagra and JBS, these associations carry.

Heart control

Studies have found a higher consumption of meat among those who carry Stronger authoritarian valuessincerity Ritting social dominationMaintaining fixed beliefs about Out of certain groupsAnd share more Solid traditional sex roles. Even there is evidence that links more meat for individuals Machiavelian Difficulties. Meat seems to be a strong symbol in our personal questions of power.

This concept is hardly new. The idea of ​​power as confirming itself is essential to many philosophical and psychological frameworks, from “Nietzsche’s will to power” to theories that contain Self -efficacy and Democratic control Benate found in social cognitive psychology. While the latter focuses on mastering the actions of the individual, the primary topic of confirmation – more organisms, tasks and environments. It is understood that: Our perceptions are decisive to us Psychological well -beingAnd our freedom and our presence.

Many current efforts to encourage meat reduction recognize these deep roots associations, yet they often try to confront them by enhancing alternative values, such as sympathy And global. While this approach is impressive from an ethical point of view, this approach, from the perspective of behavioral science, is somewhat limited.

Many individuals are not resonated simply with the ethical or environmental arguments that activists put forward, whether on realistic or moral foundations. More importantly, such appeals often provoke psychological interaction, because it threatens the basic aspects of the personality identity And the situation, the basic psychological concepts that we strongly protect.

Personal strength through control (self)

This raises an important question: identifying these associations, and leaving the biggest task of transforming the moral beliefs of others, how can those of us work to move the meals of people who have our essential need to power and domination to support meat limit?

One of the possibilities is to redirect the dynamic power itself. We may reformulate the decision to give up meat as the main act of domination, given that it undoubtedly requires Psychological control, mastery and strong self -definition. The choice of withdrawal from behavior is a prevailing social base and rejecting common accounts about traditions, masculinity, necessity and strength, in itself, a clear form of clear forms confirmation. Consequently, flexibility, plant and plants can not be rewritten not just care, moral or positive options, but as rational, disciplined and reliable decisions made by those who have authority over their own options.

Perhaps it is time to go beyond moral calls and make our dark pulses towards more constructive ends.