> But I don'tg see why John Thornton made his legitimate _general_ point
> in a response to B and Mike Beggs, both of whose posts seemed to deny
> a wish to impose their preferences on others.
Yeah, quite. You know it happens to come up in conversation mainly when I’m out to dinner with people and I choose a vegetarian option. If that’s rubbing people’s noses in it, maybe people ought not be so sensitive! I only mentioned it here because B’s story struck a chord.
But now that I’ve started... For me it was a decision I made aged 16, an age of supreme earnestness. At the time it was mainly about sympathy for the animals, plus a vegetarian girlfriend, plus to some extent the vege slant of the punky milieu I was kind of into. I think my basic ethic here has always been pretty much the one laid out in that great Simpsons episode ‘Lisa the Vegetarian’, which came out around the same time: ‘animal slaughter is pretty horrible but there’s no need to be a dick about it, if you judge people you’ll alienate family and friends and Paul and Linda McCartney might judge you in turn’. (Funnily enough when some friends and I put a recipe for ‘eggy tofu’ in our zine we copped mock outrage letters from vegans – ‘what a waste of tofu!’)
Nowadays (I’m 30) I couldn’t really care less about the ‘ethics’... I doubt I’ll ever eat meat, I still feel sorry for the animals and it grosses me out. While I’m glad people like Ravi are fighting the good fight, I think Jordan’s response that there’s nothing wrong with eating meat because it’s just what people do is fine. What are ethics but social norms entangled with personal sympathies?
But if someone like John rips into me about it after I order a vege main, sure I’m going to argue back.
Mike Beggs