Dietary Advisory
I wouldn't expect anyone to really care, and I'm only saying this on the blog because I feel like making it public will encourage me to stick with it, but here it is: from now on, for ethical/enironmental reasons, I'm gonna be a vegetarian. I've realized that I can't simultaneously eat meat and be the kind of person I want to be. I don't mean for this to sound judgmental or hectoring; it's just that, for me personally, it's the way it's gotta be.
The prospect of this makes me cringe a little--don't think I don't love the shit out of burgers and wings and subs--but it is my conviction that morally speaking, I shouldn't eat animals, and if you don't have the courage of your convictions, they aren't really "convictions," per se--just vaguely conviction-shaped objects of no real utility.
The prospect of this makes me cringe a little--don't think I don't love the shit out of burgers and wings and subs--but it is my conviction that morally speaking, I shouldn't eat animals, and if you don't have the courage of your convictions, they aren't really "convictions," per se--just vaguely conviction-shaped objects of no real utility.
posted by GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. at 12:48 AM
Morals without action are idle considerations. This is true. But I have found no convincing argument for vegetarianism or veganism which cannot be more pleasantly construed as a plea for the more ethical, and less cruel treatment of animals we intend to butcher or otherwise treat as cattle.
Nor do I consider Singerian arguments about animal rights being a necessary underpinning to human rights to be all that powerful. The traditional Kantian position that being a butcher will fashion you into a cold blooded killer seems the stuff of Hollywood fluff, while the Neo-kantian idea which may be boiled down to the claim that we negate all life in killing any seems laughable to me, particularly considering how life naturally feeds on life--nevermind our generally symbiotic relationship with many of our domesticated animals.
Perhaps more importantly, I have never heard from anyone a workable end game here. What would happen to the animals were everyone to stop eating meat or animal byproduct? We can't just unleash them on the countryside or in some unfamiliar territory, can we? Most wouldn't be welcomed as pets. And, of course, it would be immoral to kill them or simply let them starve.
So, as a movement or an argument, I find it less than compelling. As an individual choice, I take no issue with others not ordering delicious, succulent lamb (or the like) when we go out together. So. Good luck!
I don't have any particularly rhetorically sophisticated reason for this. I just don't feel like I don't have the moral authority to eat animals. Of course, nightmarish slaughterhouse conditions don't help either.
Still, I have no interest in lecturing anyone. That would make me all too similar to those insufferable dudes who suddenly become born-again Christians and immediately start evangelizing to their friends and acquaintances while only having a vague idea of what they're talking about.