Ornivorism: a revolutionary diet scientifically derived from the first principles of Marxism-Linneism

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The history of all hitherto existing ecosystem is the history of class struggles. Gastropoda and AsteroideaActinopterygii and MalacostracaReptilia and Mammalia, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of the ecosystem at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

     – Carolus Linnæus Marx, 1848

The subsistence and reproduction of human life depend on the death, processing, ingestion and exothermic metabolic transformation of other forms of life. 

What to eat, allowed and prohibited foods, are among the chief preoccupations of human beings since time immemorial. Most often than not, so-called diets are little more than fads, devoid of solid foundations. Here we present a manifesto for a coherent political philosophy and its dietary recommendations, built on the bedrock of Marxism-Linneism, the only scientific theory of eco-social revolution.

Among all the forms of life that exist on Earth, Mammalianists refrain from eating other mammals. Beyond this fundamental restriction, they are free to choose the composition of what lands in their plates, excluding or including other kinds of lifeforms from their diet.

In general, it is therefore permissible and ethically allowed to take the life of plants, insects, fish, mushrooms, birds, reptiles and so on for human consumption. Only the life of other mammals is prohibited. 

The fact of being born alive of a mother’s womb and being fed in the earliest days of life by a nutritious substance chemically synthesised and produced by a mother herself – and not just regurgitated – creates a strong emotional bond between a Mammal mother and her offspring. 

By extension, Mammalianists recognise that they all share this bond and revere this common condition by avoiding eating each other. Extreme Mammalianists refrain even from killing other Mammalians although this is not strictly required by Mammalianism. 

Politically committed Mammalians are ornivores: they stress the importance of eating fowls and birds in general. 

The philosophical foundations of the Mammalianist ethos do not lay in just an extended form of empathy, but go much deeper than psychology. They are rooted on the bedrock of the most fundamental of all fundamental sciences: Marxism-Linneism and the principle of class struggle as the engine of natural history.

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In one scheme, the history of life is divided into three eras—the Paleozoic (“ancient life,” the first animals), the Mesozoic (“middle life,” the age of dinosaurs), and the Cenozoic (“recent life,” the age of mammals). The Cretaceous period, named after characteristic chalky deposits, forms the last third of the Mesozoic era. The Tertiary period (which has been renamed and subdivided into the Paleogene and Neogene) begins at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago and ends at the beginning of the Quaternary period 2.6 million years ago.

The primeval class conflict, one that encompasses other smaller cycles of class conflict within human historically determined ecosystems, is the struggle between the class of Mammalia and Reptilia (including their offshoot, the class of Aves). 

For a long hundred million years the Reptiles dominated the Earth far and wide during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. They even evolved an aristocracy epitomised by apex predators like the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Mammals were an oppressed underclass forced to live in burrows during the day and venturing out in search of food during the night when their cold-blooded overlords were forced to rest. 

With grit, meticulous organisation and sheer courage the Mammals eventually overthrew the yoke of class domination in that aeon-shaking event that shaped the long durée of natural history: the great Cretaceous–Paleogene Revolution that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Bourgeois natural history has successfully depoliticised that glorious achievement claiming the central role of the impact of a massive asteroid. But what really shook the world in those momentous thousands of years – an eye-blink in geologic history – was the granitic determination of Mammal revolutionaries. 

After disposing of the irredeemable reptile aristocracy – the T.Rex had to go, natural history wanted it – the Mammals set to work on the long term transformation of the biosphere in a classless natural society. In the short term, though, they had to temporarily concentrate all the power in the paws of the true revolutionary class in order to spearhead such a momentous evolution. After the dust of the cataclysmic successful fight of the Mammals revolutionary army against the reactionary hordes of Velociraptors settled over the Earth, the Mammals tried to revive the exhausted biosphere with unorthodox emergency measures. After several dozens of million years experimenting with such Novaya Evolucheskaya Politika eventually a new leading species emerged among the Mammals that corrected the previous doctrinal deviations. Homo Sapiens entrenched the dictatorship of the Mammals with a steady hand and set it on a shining evolutionary path leading to the abolition of all classes and the establishment of a natural communist society. Naturally, it is well known that such a transformation takes time and mature revolutionaries know to bide their time without indulging in childish extremist actions and leftist adventurism. True, at times the Sapienses’ actions seem too bold and extreme to contemporary sensitivities. For example, the massive labour camps where millions of bovine and swine dissidents were forced to breed and then used as food by the human vanguard look now as a cruel violation of class solidarity that went beyond the necessary de-kulakisation of the most retrograde elements of the Mammals. A distortion of the pure doctrine that the Mammalian movement is decided to correct once and for all. 

But Mammalians remain committed revolutionaries and they know that certain measures cannot be revoked. Evolutionary Homo Sapiens’ policies have led to massive labour camps where hundreds of millions of those devious descendants of the ancestral saurian enemies are bred for human consumption while at the same time kept under close surveillance in order to check their innate reactionary tendencies. 

If you are a bleeding heart liberal whose petty bourgeois soul cringes at the sight of those masses of captive fowls, fine, pause for a second. Focus your attention and stare into the wide open eye of a rooster. You cannot fool yourself, what you see is pure class hatred, distilled and polished by 68 million years of pent-up resentment for loosing the absolute power that by darwinian right they claim belongs to their class. 

The chicken, each one of them, resonates with the wounded aristocratic pride of their direct ancestor, the T.Rex, the former overlord that had been dethroned by those small lactating hideous critters, those under-chordaten, us. The chicken despise us and all Mammals from the deep of their bulging craw ever since the memorable, telluric Cretaceous–Paleogene revolution. The chicken hate Mammals, they hate our freedom, they stubbornly refuse to understand the iron laws of revolutionary evolution: the slavery that Homo sapiens as the vanguard of all Mammalia have been forced to impose on them is for their own good, and for that of all species of all classes. 

No, they will never surrender to the superior rationality of dialectic materialism and they inevitably cultivate superstition. They indulge in that ancient faith, the mother of all delusions, waiting expectingly for The One, that single mutation that will dramatically alter their cognitive abilities, putting them on the evolutionary path of revenge and redemption. When The One mutation will eventually appear it will sweep like wildfire among the huddled masses of chicken, leading them to the wanton destruction of 66 million years of revolutionary achievements, reestablishing the kingdom of reptiles and birds. And the inevitable, merciless genocide of Humans and the re-enslavement of all other Mammals. Theirs is not an idle wait though. The chicken unceasingly conspire and periodically infect Humans with avian-born viruses. Sometimes they trick corrupt and retrogrades elements of our class into acting as zoonotic agents. But make no mistake, behind the despicable, dumb opportunism of pangolins and bats you will always find the steadfast hatred of the chicken, the unblinking Eye of the Saur.

It is therefore of utmost importance for Homo sapiens to subject chickens to a rigorous, unflinching regime of surveillance in order to nip any potentially insurgent gene drive in the bud.

For these political reasons, that go well beyond sensible ecological concerns, Mammalianists are not only allowed but positively encouraged to eat poultry. A committed Mammalianist adopts the ornivore diet as a political duty. S.he eats chicken and other birds or reptiles without relish, but with the stoic revolutionary awareness that such simple everyday gesture is part of a million years long struggle for liberty, emancipation and the establishment of a classless ecosystem.

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Cover photo by David Barber (CC) 2007.

Inline photo by rmariuzzo (CC) 2013.

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[Disclaimer: this page is part of the “Sandbox” section of this site, a collection of not particularly serious exercises and divertissements. It is a work of fiction and not meant as actual dietary or health advice.]