Walk on two legs, not on four

[unmaker]

I'll never understand mankind's need to differentiate itself from "the animals." Most primates have opposable thumbs. Gorillas mourn the loss of family members. Grey parrots can achieve a vocabulary of nearly a thousand words. Dolphins use symbolism, abstraction and culture. The ways in which we differ from the other species are merely a matter of

Comments

[dragonblink]

Even if I were more fond of vegetables, I'm not sure that I could ever be vegetarian because I just can't shake the knowledge that the migrant farmworkers who pick much of the fruits, veggies, and grains we eat are treated practically like slaves in many places, especially if they work under the table where the threat of a call to La Migra keeps them from complaining.

Meat doesn't come from the supermarket. It comes from killing things. I never forget that. But nothing else comes from the supermarket either. No matter what I eat, drink or wear, someone suffers. Gets kind of depressing, that does.

I think that we need to find more humane ways of treating livestock, and that we need to wean ourselves off this culture of meat gluttony that makes us use our land so inefficiently. But I also think that we (as a species, not as a country) need to find a way to make the world so that people aren't forced to labor in fields for slave wages to keep themselves and their family from starving to death.

[unmaker]

I feel for the migrant workers, but I do have to eat something... or I die. Anyway, the problem stems from the same source: unrepentant capitalism. Corporations, concerned only with the bottom line, will do anything to feed the lucrative (and still expanding) appetite of the economic elite. They have to do this in plain view of the public, so they make sure the tab is picked up by those who haven't the voice to complain: the poor, the "animals" and the environment. At least as a vegetarian, I feel, I'm helping one of the three.