« Butterfly McQueen | Main | Cool »
November 12, 2002
Vegetarians
Vegetarians
I've been thinking about this since visiting with my long-lost friend yesterday. She'd said she had become a vegetarian some time ago. (She's also apparently morphed into a card-carrying protesting liberal, but I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that one.) Now I don't have any real problem with veggies, as long as they stay out of my face while I'm eating a big rare slab of dead cow. But their position has never made sense to me. They say killing & eating living things for food is wrong. But why the distinction between animals & plants? Plants are living things. Do they feel pain? Some studies suggest that yes, they do. My own observations suggest the same, they do experience pain, on some level. (For an interesting twist, read "Vegetarian's Nightmare," a poem by Baxter Black. Sorry, no link, I've never been able to find it online. If anyone knows of a link, please let me know. It's side-splittingly funny. And yes, I know he's a "cowboy" poet. Don't be a cultural snob. It's good.) And to turn the pomo argument against them, just because we are unable to observe something doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist. If Schroedinger's cat meows, does it make a sound?You kill living things with every breath you take. Death is a part of life. Big deal. Do we have a moral obligation to not kill unnecessarily and with the least amount of pain possible? Absolutely. Do we have to kill to survive? Of course. That's the way living things are designed. Look around, Nature is described as "red of tooth and claw" for a reason. And don't give me that crap about how pre-historic people lived in tune with nature, primarily living on nuts, berries, and grain. Well, duh. What's the easiest food to get in the wild? Things that can't run away. Did they eat meat whenever they could manage to get it? Of course they did. (I don't know how to break it to the veggies, but we're omnivores. Look it up.) Their lives were also short, and it was a daily struggle just to stay alive. They weren't "in tune" with Nature. They either figured out how to meet basic needs, food shelter water, or they died. Not pretty.
So, if you don't like meat, don't eat it. I don't have a problem with that. Just don't try to convince me it's somehow wrong to do so. And BTW, yes, I do know that a cow died so I could have leather shoes. At least I hope so. It would be too cruel to skin her otherwise. Now if y'all will excuse me, I gots to get the BBQ started.
Posted by Rita at November 12, 2002 11:41 AM