So how can a visit to bingo cause a sudden change of heart where the thought of eating an animal is concerned? Well ok the visit to bingo was an incidental factor. Bingo by the way is surprisingly fun, even for an active young adult like me.
Matt’s girlfriend Charlotte is a vegan. One of the people that was going to bingo had recently had a birthday and Charlotte had baked him a vegan chocolate cake that was actually very nice. With no eggs or milk I have no idea how that works.
Charlotte explained (after revealing the lack of animal in the cake) that she always hoped that people would turn vegan after realising that it’s not actually all that bad.
This is not the reason I have been considering the whole vegetarian aspect. What really impressed me was Charlotte’s compassion towards all living things, including flies. Conversations can meander and an anecdote came up to illustrate this point, but I won’t delve into that now.
You see this compassion got me thinking. I’ve always been interested in Buddhism, Taoism and general eastern philosophies and religions. Quite a few of these condemn or discourage the consumption of meat. So the thought came about that perhaps if I feel like taking any of these beliefs seriously I should give vegetarianism a go.
However considering vegetarianism from a moralistic standpoint raises lots of problems with my lifestyle. I couldn’t take the ‘moral high ground’ of not eating meat without becoming a hypocrite. I have leather shoes, and a suede jacket. I live far from work so my journey is probably quite bad for the environment. My job basically entails making it easier for people to kill other people. I’ve always taken a slightly patriotic and pragmatic standpoint to this; I can’t stop there being wars and I’d rather that ‘our guys’ had as much of an advantage as possible. All this would be called into question if I became a vegetarian for moral reasons.
There is a possibility that I would try it for a few months ‘just to see’, I can quite easily imagine my resolve crumbling the first time I had a meal out though. (Unlike with the whole alcohol thing, still T-total and three days to go).
So will I become a vegetarian? It’s still a thought that’s going to tumble around in my head, but in the short term is seems highly unlikely – i.e. not today.
randomtask 
Flies and wasps are pointless vermin…
Think of all the lovely flowers you’d miss out on without flies.
Or Honey.
Erm, flies aren’t so much with the flowers, they’re more for left out food / scraps / poo.
It’s the bees you have to thank for the flowers and the honey.
Bees are ok, coz they don’t bother you in the unnecessary manner like flies and wasps do, and they at least have something to show for their work (honey and beeswax).
What do wasps have to show for their time? Nothing but a papery kind of hive. No honey, no syrup, no jam. It’s all take take take with wasps.
However, I will say one thing in favour of them; I don’t know of anything else that can make Greig leap 20ft sideways from a sitting position, and that’s damn funny to watch.
Squirrels and foxs are considered vermin too, so that gives us a free right to go around killing them?
I’ve never willingly, in my adult life, caused harm to another living creature, unless they’re dying a slow painful death then I might put them out of their misery… doesn’t mean I’d ever consider vegetarianism. It’s 100% natural for us to eat meat, our body’s designed to digest meat so why not do just that? It’s the circle of life, we eat cows, cows eat the grass and then the grass eats us… er, or something like that.
I’m with you Pete, flies vomit on their food before eating it, as do wasps, spreading disease, eating scraps and doing nothing for the environment, unlike birds and buzzy bees, which make honey, pollenate flowers, spread seeds etc…
…although anything that makes Greig move fast cant be all bad, I should keep some wasps as pets and set them on him when he is being slow 😉
What do the birds eat? Spiders, berries, worms, flies… I don’t actually know for sure but I’ve seen them eat those things 😛 What do the spiders eat? Flies. So without flies then the spiders don’t eat and the birds don’t eat, seeds don’t get spread, flowers end up being killed off, bees end up dissapearing because they can’t get the honey they need… I have no idea if bees actually NEED honey ;P Basically by killing off the smaller ‘vermin’ you end up killing off the larger animals that rely on them to survive.
Now flees, there’s a different story altogether >.>;;
Bees don’t need honey, they make honey. It’s the pollen they feed on.
As for fleas, i’m not entirely convinced that they’re a necessary part of any creature’s food chain, and i think that’s pretty much where the term “parasite” comes from; to hell with the food chain and sponge off something bigger. Who needs tapeworm? These things can bugger off till they make a useful contribution. Unless you consider that it puts money in the vets’ pocket so that they can sustain themselves and their family, but i’m not entirely convinced that evolution had that in mind.
It saddens me to know that we hunted out dragons and unicorns to extinction, but allowed the tapeworm to get by…
Oh, the state of humanity…
Actually, after a bit of reading on the subject bees do in fact need the honey. They use it as food over the winter months when there’s little to no nectar. Bees don’t hibernate during the winter, they huddle together and eat honey, sounds like fun.
Going back to vegetarianism, I think less meat eating makes sense, so that we are farming and killing fewer animals, but I don’t think this automatically extends to not using leather because while animals are being used for food by non-vegetarians we might as well use all the parts, skin etc and not waste it and then have to use energy and other planetary resources making replacements such as plastics, fabrics etc.
Waaay too much spare time 😉
But what happens if there were no humans? Quite possibly many of the animals that are common place today; chickens, cows, sheep etc would be extinct due to natural selection, or maybe they would have all grown evil looking spikes to fend off predators! I personally don’t think one should distinguish between types off life. Why is it perfectly acceptable to rip healthy potatoes from the ground, peel them, boil them and eat but not mammal based foods? It’s merely because people feel guilty about the pain and suffering that these animals may go through in their life (something I don’t agree in of course) whereas we don’t believe in our supreme knowledge of the universe that plant life is capable of suffering so we can therefore rid ourselves of any guilt associated with their death. Oh how wonderful we are 🙂
Either way, you are consuming something that was once living in order to satisfy your own need for nourishment.
Personally I think instead of going Vegetarian you should refuse to buy meat from places such as tesco which encourage the use of over-production and mass farming of poultry and such in as cheap as possible conditions. I mean how can Tesco do buy one get one free on a £3.00 chicken breast, they are basically valuing that entire chickens life at £1.50 and then more than likely still making a profit on it. Gone are the days of the local farmer who produced enough food to feed the village, no more, no less. Our price obsessed public means that Supermarkets strive to offer products as cheaply as possible which can only be met my reducing the quality, enviroment and upbringing of the meats in question. The more chickens you can fit in the smallest area, fed on the cheapest food, in the cheapest living conditions, the more profit you can make.
I’m just as guilty as most of us here though buying Tesco Value chicken purely because of it’s price and not the quality of the meat. Who cares anyway when you fry it up and cover it with some kind of sauce which masks any sort of flavour the chicken might have had anyway.
I need to make more of an effort to find the local farmers produce and appreciate the meat I eat for what it is.