22 March 1999: Putting My Foot in My Mouth

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Wear labels I do, but wear them visibly I do not. The exception is Levi's, whose denim and stitching are so familiar they serve as a label. I ripped out the labels on the overalls I just bought. I wear very little with any words at all. Years ago I made a t-shirt with Sneetches on the front upon whose back I have long meant to inscribe "Ain't no time to wait/Barely time to wait." And another I had printed with "Hellespont Swim Team" on the front and "Leander" on the back--not my own idea, but I liked it so I pirated it. So the only words I wear on my clothing are deliberately chosen. I don't advertise, is the bottom line. Oh yeah, except my UConn sweatshirt.

(While we're on the subject of giving money to the person you're advertising, which you do if you wear Tommy Hilfinger or whoever, what's the deal with the periods in B.U.M. clothing? If it doesn't stand for "Buy Ugly Merchandise"?)

With all that said, I wear a brand name on my very eyes. I realized this partway into my first morning in two-week disposable lenses. I was washing my hands and inspecting my eyes in a just-back-to-contacts kind of way, when I noticed letters on one lens. I leaned in for a closer look. AV. Hm. Aha, I realized, AcuVue.

I'm wearing a brand name on my eyes.

Since then, the letters have been most useful to me. Two-week lenses are very flippy-floppy and the only way I can tell that they're right-side out is if looking into the concave side, I read "Veterans Administration." If I read "Audio/Visual," I must turn the lens right side out. I wonder if this trademarking is the method by which a blind fumbling person is supposed to be able to tell a lens's proper side. I doubt it. I really think it's a mere logo. Hyperopic people could not benefit from this and maybe not even people with better distance vision than mine, if better distance vision means poorer close-vision. I am near-sighted, and my uncorrected focal point is so near my eyeball that I could easily number the pores of your skin, so these little letters are easy. I don't suppose everyone else could see or read them, so I don't think they're an inside-out indicator. It's just a stupid logo.

One that I will not take my seam-ripper to.

Last night HAO came over for supper and the Oscars. Those Oscars! What Stooge-pod has taken up residency in Peter Gabriel? Of course he can sing for "Babe" if he wants, and I hope "Babe: Pig in the City" is worthy of him too. But the song was not. The quality of his voice, the hand of his voice if I may use an analogy for fabric, in that song's restraints--I actually wanted to mute him, it was so painful.

Anyway, we'd bought a pound of grouper because at 1:30 this afternoon, when we shopped, my latest information was that HAO eats fish. When I talked to her at 2:00, I realized RDC and I would each get a larger portion of fish. This got me thinking again about eating vegetarian and where I stand on it all.

Over a three-year period, I ate four-legged meat about a half dozen times. That period ended when I moved in with RDC and decided that my principles were not as strong as my desire not to cook. It is very easy to be a vegetarian when it means not eating my mother's bad cooking and the only cookery of which I myself am capable is cinnamon toast. I never considered omitting poultry or seafood from my diet. I never called myself a vegetarian, because I would eat meat; I said I didn't eat red meat, which was mostly, except for semiannual occasions, true.

These are my starting points:

  • Usans eat too much meat. Having a quarter- or half-pound of meat every day is more protein than anyone needs, and just because a food tastes good is not necessarily a reason to eat it. I disagree with the idea everyone should be allowed to eat what they want, when they want, without worrying about social stigma, calories, or whatever. Only a Usan could think "Well, I want it, therefore it's okay for me to want it, and therefore I should have it.")
  • Commercially-raised meat is a waste of land and water and an inefficient source of protein. The land- and water-acreage available could sustain more people adequately on a plant-based diet than they can on a meat-based diet. Furthermore, the animals are riddled with chemicals, and mass slaughter imbues them with more as panic fuels them with adrenaline.
  • As societies around the world decide they have more disposable income, the proportion of meat in their diets increases because a) it tastes good and b) it's a status symbol (because Usans eat it, it's expensive, and it tastes good).
  • Meat is a natural food source for humans. Look at our teeth. It's not natural for people to eat a lot, though--look at our intestines.
  • The oceans are being fished out. Swordfish, cod, sturgeon, and other fish populations are at critically low levels; the individuals remaining may not be able to replace themselves.

What all these arguments have meant to me is a dramatic reduction in the amount of meat I was fed as a child. I have no plans to strike meat or other animal products from my life altogether, though. I am part of the ecosystem and live within it (except while driving a car, I live on top of it and squash it rather); some animals eat animals and some eat plants and some eat both. I'm one of the last group. What I have heard proposed (not by HAO) is that a person who lives vegan--no meat, no diary, no honey, no silk, no wool--aspires to or has reached a higher level of consciousness, and people who still eat meat etc. don't all have to get into the boxcars now but simply haven't reached that plane yet. (The "yet" reminds me of the socialist view of history--maybe not yet but certainly one day and the "higher consciousness" phrase reminds me of the Heaven's Gate cult; both of these associations are unfair accusations but they do amuse me.)

This is where I get resentful. Maybe it's guilt: I started eating meat again, I drive a car, I don't have a garden or a compost heap, I don't read all my books served from Project Gutenberg through a public computer but buy books made from trees. I am a Usan and consume a great deal more than either my fair share or my minimum-sustenance share of the planet's resources. I used to like Ayn Rand, who wrote two characters (Dagny Taggart and Henry Reardon in Atlas Shrugged) who assert that by the time the sun burned out, humans would have thought up a substitute, which is an unparalleled example of unnatural arrogance.

Maybe it's not guilt. Why must a human dissociate herself from her planet, from the ways of life espoused by every other animal? Is a dolphin inferior? Any animal that gets to swim around naked all the time is in my idea of paradise, give or take a fishing net or two--has a dolphin not reached a higher plane of consciousness because it eats sashimi at every meal? Or a wolf? or a penguin? You'll notice my favorites are all carnivores (except I think wolves might be omnivores), and maybe point out that humans maybe could be herbivores without too much trouble.

Herbivores live in their ecosystems too. Are there straight-edge elephants out there trying to get along without rooting up trees? Are there vegan deer who induce vomiting if a bug got caught in their bite of grass? Everything lives in an ecosystem and every species is vulnerable to something else, except manatees. Hmm. Maybe manatees ought to be my ideal animal. Another mammal, they also get to swim naked all the time, and they've reached a higher plane than dolphins, since they're herbivores. They're ugly, though, and slow-moving. A butterflier like me (koff koff) would rather be the faster animal.

Anyway, every species is part of an ecosystem. Except humans, particularly Usans, don't live much in the ecosystem. Asphalt, Cheese Whiz, saran wrap, central heating, techno music, toothbrushes as art. We already do not make ourselves readily available as food to any but bacteria, what with embalming fluid and soldered coffins. If we don't offer ourselves as meat, maybe we shouldn't consume any. I myself want to be wrapped in undyed linen and shoved under an acorn, but I doubt I'll get my way, because I'll be dead and therefore less argumentative and also there are laws against it because we're so overpopulated (a point down to which all my arguments logically reduce).

I can understand and I do respect choosing not to eat meat (and poultry and fish and crustaceans and insects and eggs and diary and honey) and making that choice for valid reasons. Ethics, health, and environment seem to be the main reasons. I understand and respect opting away from wool and silk. I do think there are other options that better serve the health of the planet than those, but the health of the planet might not be a vegan's primary concern.

I approach this issue with the environment my first priority, whereas the ethics of exploiting animals is the first priority of the stance I'm arguing against. Attacking. Finding the flaws or inconsistencies in. Examining. Whatever. If animals should not be exploited by humans, then are animals evil for exploiting other animals? Is it that humans exploit animals when we eat them because we (should) know better, but animals don't exploit their prey because they have no free will and don't know better? That smacks of missionry (a word I've invented in preference to "missionizing," Webster's suggestion): the assumed responsibility of those who have seen the light to flip the switch for the ignorant heathen.

Two paragraphs ago I said I respect the vegan decision, didn't I? My mean streak is showing through, which means something's still festering. It's the "higher plane" thing still and again. Humans might be the only species with self-awareness--a possibility I am far from granting since I long to hear the creation myths dolphins tell--but even if we are, that does not render us into a discrete plane or ecosystem of our own. We are terrestial, on the Earth and of the Earth. To choose to live making as little impact on the planet as possible I respect. To separate humans from the rest of the animal kingdom by virtue of our intelligence or free will or soul is, I posit, a hypothesis possible only in a post-industrial society of excess, and therefore one I reject. Especially if being righteous is part of it.

And here's a red herring I just have to throw into the ring. As far as I know, the Venus flytrap and its fellow carnivorous plants are inedible. But if the Venus flytrap were edible, could a vegan eat it?

I'm not satisfied with this argument yet but in my usual slapdash manner I'm going to post it anyway. Further reports as events warrant.

(The exception was Charenton lamb, the only small-scale, privately raised four-footed meat I had access to.)

990329:

  • In which I try to explain myself better. There's nothing like virulent antagonism to provoke clearer thought.
  • I deleted a bit in which I blamed this justification on NAAFA because someone pointed out I didn't link to a specific page with that explicit statement, and I did extrapolate the subtext. If NAAFA doesn't posit this as a justification for obesity, then I apologize for misrepresenting the organization; I do not apologize for thinking obesity to be generally unjustifiable.)

Describing "The Cement Garden" to HAO as "Faulkner writing Lolita" only reminded me that I haven't read Lolita and she hasn't read V.C. Andrews. And HAO told me I shouldn't read Waiting for the Barbarians until I've read The Penal Colony. My next stack of books from the 'brary will be interesting. Nabokov, Kafka, and Lily's Purple Plastic Purse.

 

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