I love going home, but I have to be increasingly careful about shooting my mouth off around the non-vegetarians (my brother is mostly vegetarian, my sister and her husband are David Suzuki fans and try to go meatless a couple days of the week for environmental reasons, but my parents are still the same as they ever were).
Basically I'm trying not to be one of those loud and vocal vegan/vegetarians who can't let a moment go by without saying something insulting about the practice of eating meat.
For example, my sister recently posted some photos on facebook of her vacation in Cuba, and she had a few photos where she was swimming with dolphins.
So in a subsequent email I said "Hey Leeyann, did you know that 100 000 dolphins a year get killed by the fishing industry, and in fact that 1/3 of all the fish hauled out of the ocean are promptly thrown back in - dead - because they weren't the type of fish the trawler was going for?"
So I don't need to be doing that all the time, but in my own defense, when you've read all the stuff I (and probably we) have, it's sometimes hard for your brain not to make a connection between one inocuous thing (i.e. songbirds) and factory farming, and to then shoot your mouth off about it. I came across a book today about how all the songbirds are dying away, and since my mom loves birds and has two birdfeeders in the front yard, I'll probably mention it to her, and then try to stop from saying something like "by the way, eating meat is killing the planet and killing the songbirds."
I wonder why it is so easy for some of us to read the literature, understand what is happening, and decide to make a life change, and so hard for others to even contemplate doing this?
P.S. I'm curious about reading this book sometime. Apparently Kingsolver and family, while remaining anti-factory farm, do give up the vegetarianism. I suppose the argument will be on the "happy life / quick and humane death" side, and I'd like to see how she describes coming to this decision.
Have a good weekend everyone. Enjoy the quinoa and the beans and the soy/frozen fruit shakes.
1 comment:
I could have written this almost word for word. It's tough to be enlightened and quiet simultaneously.
These days I'm trying the, "Are you kidding me?" and leave it at that approach when someone asks if I want a burger or something. People hate being preached to so I'm thinking they might respond better to the suggestion that maybe I know something important that they don't.
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