11-13-01

I had jury duty today, and it was completely anti-climactic. No chance to stick it to the man. No need for outrageous lies. I just sat around all day reading comic books, and the new novel I picked up called Ghostwriting. I thought maybe I'd get some really interesting material for my next novel or at least a journal entry. Nope. It was dull as dishwater.

A friend of mine who used to be a vegetarian told me that what I wrote yesterday made him think about going back to being a vegetarian again. So I thought I might reiterate some of my other reasons for being a vegetarian.

From the moral standpoint of wanting to reduce pain and suffering - there is no doubt that many animals suffer horribly when slaughtered. It often takes a while for them to die as they "bleed out." This is the kind of cruelty that I think the majority of people are only able to ignore because the processing of animals is so separated from the eating of it. Very few people could slaughter a cat (especially a pet) or a dog and then eat it. That requires a person who has very little sensitivity, a strong streak of cruelty. And yet, there is really no difference between a cat and dog (even a pet) and a cow or chicken. Only the fact that you didn't cuddle that cow before it was killed. However, not knowing something is not moral justification for killing it.

People say we're animals, and animals kill other animals so why is it wrong for us to do it? Well, if you admit we are animals, then that would also imply that there is nothing wrong, per se, with cannibalism. And surely just because "some other animal does it" isn't a moral justification for us doing it? Female Preying Mantises sometimes eat their male partners after sex, so I assume that's not appropriate…okay, wait, maybe that is okay.

Once you admit humans are also animals, then I see no reason to justify that humans are in some way, categorically, above animals. You can't justify it by intelligence - because then it would be okay to eat people who are severally mentally disabled. The only reason we can get away with it is because we are more powerful than animals. We can subdue them. And I have never considered might to make right. I guess that's a strong feeling I've had ever since I got beat up at the bus stop by bigger kids when I was in elementary school. And for those who believe (let's say, religious people) that humans are above animals via some God-thing, then again, that merely highlights the fact that it's our position of power (God-power) that gives us the right to kill the weaker. Show me the money, baby.

What about the environment? Cattle is the worst for the environment, although huge hog farms are also major polluters. Cattle take up tremendous amounts of land, very wastefully. Much of the rainforests have been chopped down to create grazing land for more cattle. The amount of land required to grow the grain to feed the cattle over its lifetime is tremendously more than the amount of land that is needed to produce an equivalent amount of soy protein. And, don't forget - this sounds really weird- but it's true, cows fart a lot. They produce so much methane that the tremendous number of cattle in the world contributes to global warming. And the oceans are being dangerously over-fished threatening the world-wide eco-system, as well.

And I'd like to briefly mention health reasons - cows, pigs, and chicken these days are injected with many growth hormones. Subsequently, anti-biotics are used to attempt to keep them from dying because they become so sickly from the growth hormones. Those weird animal hormones and anti-biotics are going to be in the animal muscle you eat, and then concentrate in your body over the years. I'm believe this leads to many health problems later in life such as kidney failure - because your kidneys have worked too hard over the years trying to pull out those chemicals. My father died of complications from his second kidney transplant (I believe), and I'm going to do everything in my power to avoid that happening to me.

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