Here’s an old one that I should have typed up weeks ago.

Nov 03, 2002 22:12

I went to register my disapproval of the countryside alliance march. I didn’t hoot or holler, but I gave them my best mean glare. Foxhunting fills me with such sadness I can’t express it, my love affair with foxes going back to my first ever clear emotional memory when I was around 3 years old and the small cub nuzzling into my hand sticky with ( Read more... )

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Comments 14

stoopidbird November 3 2002, 14:46:44 UTC
Possibly of all the currently topical issues, this is the one most likely to get me up on my soap box and stay there until a load of big burly men drag me off again. But my opinion is much more humanist and drawn from a background of watching farmers being forced out of business by conglomerates and having the government fuck them over with their subsidies. Whilst I could in no way deny that essentially it's a cruel sport, what the countryside stands to lose by banning hunting plus the monumental knock-on effects are almost immeasurable; sending the agriculture industry even further down that slippery slope on which momentum has been gathering rapidly over the last decade or so.

Congratulations on being one of the few Londoners to see further than the end of their nose.

Oops, I had intended not to rant. Actually you're lucky, I barely started there. Best shut up now.

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zerozero November 3 2002, 15:15:59 UTC
Don't you have to be up at 5am? Go bed.

Far be it from me to not accept any kudos with good grace (ha!) but I’m not exactly a huge fan of our agriculture system as it stands. I just think that foxhunting is one of the least of the things we need to be addressing as far as animal cruelty is concerned, riddled as it is with hypocrisy. Maybe we can have a big row about this at some point - that would be fun.

Oh yeah, and you are lucky I’m leaving or I’d have taken you off my friends list because of what is now referred to as "the milky way stars incident" you big liar.

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bohofaery November 3 2002, 15:54:16 UTC
Milky way stars. I knew I was craving something.

You know what they should make? Milky way hot chocolate. That would rock more than rock cakes.

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Re: stoopidbird November 4 2002, 01:24:48 UTC
Oh sure thing, that would be most fun, I can and will argue about this until I am blue in the face.

And hey, I tried with the stars, truly I did.....next time I shall look for them more than an hour in advance. Not my fault the magic star makers decided my sole purchases alone were not enough to keep the market running. The big meanies.

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ali_highland November 3 2002, 15:39:38 UTC
I was going to post a comment, but it looked like getting way out of hand so I am posting an entry instead.

It has got way out of hand by the way, this sort of topic has long been one of my soap boxes too.

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chiller November 4 2002, 01:18:12 UTC

Good lord, I never thought I'd see someone else voice that particular set of my thoughts.

I've not hunted foxes because you can't eat them. But I've hunted other things, without beaters. They fly out of their shrubbery or run out of their bush and you hit them or miss. Either way it's over in a second. I also visited an abbatoir when I was a kid and listened to the pigs screaming. That went on and on, and god knows how long it took them to get there. I would like to claim it is the reason I am avidly against factory farming and factory abbatoirs, but that wouldn't be true, it just reinforced something I already felt on an emotional level. Living things don't belong in any system which includes the words "mass" or "factory".

Humans are hunting animals. Good ones. We set that fact aside as inconvenient at our own peril. Because like a disused immune system, if it doesn't have anything external to focus on, it turns inward.

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soapbox corner. zerozero November 4 2002, 11:54:51 UTC
Living things don't belong in any system which includes the words "mass" or "factory".

Or "supermarket" or "Sunday lunch" or "gourmet" - but then I’m in the (growing) minority on that one.

Humans are hunting animals. Good ones. . . . like a disused immune system, if it doesn't have anything external to focus on, it turns inward.

"good ones" - I beg to differ, any instincts we once had that make us good hunters have long been bred out, given a harsher environment most of us would starve. I find the "humans are hunting animals" argument disturbing on many levels - I hear it time and again and it always strikes me that you can use it as a reason for remaining a carnivore, but you can logicaly extend it to justifying war and inhumanity. We are good at it - it’s in our nature - so we do it, why fight our natural instincts?

We are capable of change, our evolution is not complete and for me at least that makes the decision to not eat meat a moral imperative.

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Re: soapbox corner. chiller November 4 2002, 15:12:20 UTC

Well ... the thing is, I really AM a hunting animal. You're probably right about most people. But it's a generalisation and my ability and urge to hunt things is strong and undimished by breeding. ;) Yes, I think war is an inevitable, warped expression in cases where people repress their natures (not necessarily the hunting side of the nature, but let's face it, we suppress a LOT of our natural instincts - fighting, dealing with a sense of threat and defending ourselves from other predators are also instincts we possess, and in the absence of other predators, the only thing we have to point at is other humans, or we keel over through stress-related illness and overindulgence).

We are capable of change and evolution. But there's a big difference between change and evolution, and simply corralling ourselves into unsuitable, but ethically pleasing shapes. I think hunting is a good thing. Provided the hunter, being spiritually aware, does so only to eat the thing hunted, and does so in a way which makes the death, where possible, ( ... )

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Re: soapbox corner. zerozero November 4 2002, 16:58:19 UTC
Twisting something into an unsuitable ethically pleasing shape- I think I know what you mean, for example - The notion that being hunted and shot is the best death a wild animal could hope for.

Nature in the wild is so tough it’s a wonder they don’t fling themselves onto the traps with a smile! Go Lemmings go!

Joking aside it’s always nice to be a vegetarian who has killed and eaten his own food whilst most of the carni’s I know have not - it’s an experience that anyone in this day and age should not miss. (Or if I were in charge, would be compulsory if you wanted to eat meat.)

It’s odd how two people with similar viewpoints can end up at different ends of the table, I rather like it: It makes me feel as if somehow we must both be right. Certainly more right than everyone else.

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