01/16/2009: "Further Thoughts on Vegetarianism"

music: Rent - "La Vie Boheme"
mood: Dull

So I've been helping with Richmond Animal Rights with the website (www.richmondanimalrights.org) and the Facebook page! Our next protest is coming up on the 24th outside Alan Furs again. Still working on the job search. Just finished with the animal rights debate in class, which went okay. The pro side tried to argue that animals should have equal rights because they all serve different purposes to people. Talk about anthropocentric. Actually, it doesn't make much sense anyway if you break it down... different purposes, different rights. We basically argued different needs/interests, different rights. It makes sense, as long as I can say that all animals should be equally considered. They don't need the same rights.

Anyway, I wrote this next tidbit back in 2005 and just discovered it. Thought it would be relevant to share. I called it "Further Thoughts on Vegetarianism."

I think it's awful that people eat animals from factory farms; the conditions are so cruel and treacherous. Would ANYONE like to live like that? Some people are bothered by the lobsters that sit out in tanks at WalMart and Red Lobster, while people pick one out, and the cook takes it in the back, throwing it ALIVE into a boiling pot of water. Yet people don't feel that way about cows and other animals: How would you like to go out to the pasture at your favorite restaurant and pick out your hamburger and then watch it get slaughtered? Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not existing. If you went into a factory farm, and watched the atrocities that occurred every minute of every day, you'd probably be so sick that you'd never want to eat meat again.

But people PURPOSEFULLY make themselves ignorant of the conditions. They don't want to know what goes on because it will make them feel guilty. And they don't need that, so they put the lives and well-being of millions of creatures on the line every day.

I don't think we have a right to treat other creatures so inhumanely while we bask in lavish... Just like we have no right to torture or molest small children. It's not right to cram all these mass-produced creatures into small spots; cut off their beaks so they won't peck each other to death; pollute the environment with all of the filth that factory farms emit; and feed the animals HUGE AMOUNTS of antibiotics just so they won't die from coexisting with their own feces, which in turn contributes to numerous strains of bacteria becoming resistant to drugs, which puts a demand on the field of medicine to produce new antibiotics constantly so that in the future people won't be unable to rid their bodies of harmful diseases that are resistant to every medicine.

It's not JUST the animals we're affecting; it's the whole society... with all of our factories and vehicles and all the other toxin producing creations we've neglected to control. One day no one is going to live on this planet, but down with us will go every other living organism. Maybe it's a good thing - maybe people need to become extinct. And then maybe a new species, millions of years down the road, will talk about humans like we do with the dinosaurs.