Paradigm Shifts and Meat

The majority of people who know me know that I've been a pescetarian for a couple of years now. My decision to cut out land animals came from an Ethics class taken in my Freshman or Sophomore year of college when I looked logically at the factory farming industry and thought rationally about whether I'd ever be able to kill an animal for its meat. I realized that I've never had the chance to slit an animal's throat to gain access to its tasty bits of muscle and arteries and blood, and even if I did, I didn't know how comfortable I would feel killing another sentient being. I had tried being a vegetarian once in Middle School, but it hadn't worked out because I was dizzy, weak, and obviously not getting the right nutrition. I wasn't getting nearly enough protein and my body was suffering for it, so I went back to eating meat, but sparingly.

What was I going to do about protein this time to make sure what happened before didn't happen again? Yes, this was my question, too. The protein factor is why I continued to eat fish for years, rationalizing that a fish can't really feel pain or suffering the same way a cow does. Also, I was taken on a fishing trip when I was younger, and I watched my mother behead a wriggling fish on a table before barbecuing it. I'll admit, as a child, I was very frightened by how quickly life could be taken, and how red the fish's blood was, and how it just seemed to gush out like a river once the head was removed. Anyway, graphic and beside the point.

Another factor in my continued consumption of fish is a cultural one. I come from a Russian family which, while surprisingly liberal compared with other immigrant families, still has certain cultural traditions and habits in the kitchen. My grandfather eats meat with every meal, and my mother likes eating chicken legs because of the bones and marrow contained therein. Russians put meat in almost everything from pirozhki (stuffed rolls) to stroganoff (duh) to potato salad to sala (basically salted lard; the unofficial national food of Ukraine) to soups. Everything has meat, and it's considered very unhealthy to forsake red meat.

The way my mom describes it, there are certain cells available in red meat that are good for your body that you can't replace by eating beans or tofu or lentils or quinoa. I completely dismiss this argument because I think the science that backs up her ideas is either outdated or completely based in some kind of Soviet post-poverty propaganda that has to do with the inversely proportional relationship between high-calorie diets and freezing to death, and if there's one thing you CAN find in meat, it's a lot of calories. Also, something about me having type O blood and therefore needing lots of meat because that's closest to what the cavemen ate. Forget that the blood type diet has been completely debunked as utter hogwash and cavemen ate more raw grains and fruits and nuts than meat because a caribou is freaking difficult to chase down on only two legs.

Suffice to say that I didn't take my mother's advice on dietary matters but made up my mind to keep eating fish and cephalopods to avoid arguments and okay, they're pretty darn tasty. Seriously, I love some calamari and squid and delicious rubbery things and sushi and lobster (even though it's not kosher and breaks the hearts of my grandparents a little every day) and the taste of spicy tuna. Can't get enough of them. I thought that a land-animal-free diet was good enough, ate mostly tofu and seitan or yogurts as protein, and often indulged in fish.

More recently, I saw a video one of my friends had linked on the facebook to a speech by a very persuasive vegan activist. His name is Gary Yourofsky, and reader, if you haven't seen his video yet, you really should. In fact, I'll imbed it below, at the very bottom of the page. If you want to watch it immediately, go ahead. I'll still be here when you get back.

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After watching the video, I did a little research, and decided to go full-on veg. My reasons for this are pretty much outlined in the video, but here's a quick (SUPER condensed!) recap if you didn't feel like watching through the whole thing.

1. I completely and utterly oppose factory farming. Even if humans were intended biologically to eat meat, and even if you support the Biblical idea that God created animals to be used by man, there's no need for senseless cruelty, and that's all that happens in factory farms.  If you're not convinced of this, do some research or go to PETA's website. While I agree that each factory farm is different, a chicken's life is already over when it's transported there, and the workers don't care much if they tear a wing or two out when grabbing chickens to be placed in the assembly line. Industrial milking is disgusting, and have you ever seen a cow that's been injected with Bovine Growth Hormone? Plus, milk contains a large amount of pus, and it's weird to drink the lactation that comes from another animal's teat.

• Parenthetically (and this will sound a bit crazy for people who don't know me, but indulge the insanity for a moment) I strongly believe that IF there are aliens waiting to make contact with human beings, they won't come near us with a ten-billion-lightyear-pole (completely official and scientific figure, I swear) provided they see the way we treat other animals. If we can't live peacefully as a community regardless of species on our own home planet, how the hell can we expect to live peacefully with some Interstellar Beings we have no ties with? Like I said, simply a parenthetical point.

A cow that's been injected with rBGH.

2. Personally, unless it were a dire emergency, I doubt I'd ever be able to kill a large animal. I mean, I get squeamish about spiders and bees, and always release them rather than squashing if I have any control over the matter. I just don't condone violence towards animals. Seriously. Children are like this too when they're first born, and only become accustomed to the idea of eating meat and killing animals because of cultural indoctrination, very much like my reluctance to part with the training wheels on my attempted vegetarianism because I was SO indoctrinated into the cultural aspect of meat-eating.

3. It's unfair to select certain animals we like (cats, dogs, parakeets) and certain animals we don't (cows, pigs, sheep, salmon, etc.) and systematically destroy one group while punishing those who would hurt the other.

4. Producing meat on the scale we produce is unsustainable and, ultimately, simply bad for the environment, not to mention expensive and a poor allocation of our resources as a planet. I'm sure you've heard the statistic about 500 gram of meat versus 500 tons of grain, but this argument never seems to convince anyone. I included it anyway because it's a contributing factor.

5. Humans were not biologically designed to eat large quantities of meat. Truly, the human body wasn't designed to eat any meat. Our jaws are designed for grinding and chewing, and while canines can be found in any number of herbivorous animals (most obviously, primates), the ability to move one's jaw side to side, as necessitated by eating vegetables, fruits, and grains, is found only in herbivorous animals. We also can find all the necessary nutrients in cruelty-free products and in fact eating meat contributes to hypertension, clogged arteries, heart disease, and cancer.(http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html for information about the human body and herbivorous animals, http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/risk-factors-heart-disease for information about lowering heart disease. Right underneath smoking? Reduction of bad cholesterol, which is found in fatty foods like meat)

6. Non-meat or -dairy based products simply TASTE better. I'm serious. They do.



This is a round-about way of getting to my actual point, which is one part of my initial inspiration for creating this post. I watched the Yourofsky video with my boyfriend, who enjoys a steak every once in a while. I'm not the type of person to shove my ideals down someone's throat, but I was bored and wanted someone to watch the video with me.

Gary advocates a full-on vegan lifestyle for all people for the non-personal reasons I stated above. I know a lot of them are personal, but a fair-minded reader could easily read between the lines. Anyway, as a result, I decided to cut back on my consumption of dairy products and completely remove meat. We started buying dairy alternatives for milk.

I won't lie, a big contributing factor to buying the non-dairy milk is cost. When you start comparing side-to-side, you'll find that an average gallon of milk costs waaay more than the same amount in soy or almond milk, but that's another digression.

So David and I went out and bought our first carton of almond milk. It was cheaper than soy, and I'd never tried the store-bought kind. When we got home, we each tried half a glass and I think at that moment, David was hooked. It's hard to describe the taste of almond milk to someone who's never tried it, but the vanilla kind tastes exactly how you'd expect a melted marshmallow to taste. The milk is creamy, delicious, and refreshing. Personally, I prefer the taste of plain soy, but that's definitely something you have to acquire. Both alternatives have the same amount of calcium as cow's milk (or more!) and neither almond nor soy leaves you with the phlegmy feeling in the back of your throat that is the hallmark of cow's milk.

The other morning, David let me know he was out of almond milk and mentioned off-hand that he didn't think he'd ever go back. I started going off on how much better I felt about not drinking cow's milk and how great it was for the environment to have our household abstaining from dairy when he interrupted me before I could start waxing poetic about the joys of liberation from the cow's teat. What he said completely floored me, because it characterized the dearest hope of almost every vegan on the planet.

"Yeah, that's nice, but I don't care about any of that stuff," he said, dismissing all my elaborate, iron-clad chains of logic and appeals to higher reasoning. "I just care about the taste."

And there you have it.

Part two of this epicly-long rant will have to wait until a more fortuitous time. For now, enjoy the video below!

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An Ornithologist's Guide to Life

I've been having trouble reading, writing, and paying attention to anything at all recently. It's been cartoons from childhood and intermittent yoga, along with Almond milk and avoiding all the healthy food we buy at the grocery store. Long story short, I've been in a kind of blue haze; a funk that's an indescribable blend of all the things that are wrong with my life and an attempt to do something about it. I celebrated my birthday with my family, and then my grandmother's birthday, and can't believe how little I've accomplished for my age. This sounds like a complaint-fest, but it gets better, I promise.

After serious emotional downs, I had nothing to do but attempt the things that have made me happy in the past. Over the last day, I've knitted a Boba Fett hat and finished a book of short stories by Anne Hood, the title of which is also the title of this blog post.

Let me begin with my personal opinion on the short story. I think it's a little bit more true to the form of life than novels or poems. A poem describes a moment, a novel describes a lifetime, and a short story describes the condensed essence of a phase in life. There are always exceptions to every rule (including this one, I would hope) but that's the long and short of it. Novels, when in a series, also tend to describe large phases in a character's life--like the short story--but novels in a series always stay in my mind as if they were an entire novel. In a way, they are. I think life is made up of a series of phases, but you never remember every detail. The details are important and add a sense of verisimilitude, but you never remember every moment of every day in the stark shades painted by novels. Short stories are a series of impressions collected over a period of time, and when the details and nuances of prose and thematic elements of a novel fade, every novel turns into a short story whose synopsis can be given in a space of time shorter than waiting for your meal to arrive in a restaurant.

Hood's stories almost invariably take place in or around Providence, Rhode Island. Her protagonists are (with one or two exceptions) women at different points in their lives as they grapple with heartbreak or stagnation and emerge cleansed. Sometimes, the cleansing process only just begins, but Hood's sense of dramatic irony and heart-achingly poignant resonance is unparalleled in my experience. Even when the ending of the story isn't necessarily happy, it's logical, neat (in an emotionally messy way) and realistic.

These stories are stark but gentle, tender but firm, truthful and absolutely haunting. It's impossible to choose a single favorite story, but I very much like "Total Cave Darkness," the very first story in which an alcoholic who's trying to stay dry runs away with a pastor. They escape for weeks, sleeping in cheap motels and enjoying free HBO and each other. Finally, they decide to explore caves together, and the protagonist finds something in the struggle she's been undertaking. "The Language of Sorrow" is about a grandmother who has her grandson thrust upon her unexpectedly after he gets a girl in trouble, and it made me cry. It's all about the people we love, how they sometimes leave us, and how there's no language for the pain it brings. These stories are about relationships, about emotions deeper than language, about mourning, naturalism, and forgiveness.

Highly, highly recommended for anyone with any interest whatsoever in humanity.

Blindness, Jose Saramago

I first picked this book up at one of the liquidation sales Borders gave before it closed every location within driving distance. I was saddened at the loss of the book store in the mall, but being a poor college student, I can't turn my nose up at any cheap texts, no matter the reason for the reduction in their prices.

Blindness was recommended to me by my old manager at the retail clothing store where I worked. The book was recommended to him by his roommate, who is apparently an avid reader. I was skeptical at first, but I decided I needed a more serious read after The Hunger Games, so I decided to give Blindness a whirl.

The story takes place in an unspecified city in an unspecified country at an unspecified time, which can't be too far off from modern times. There is a red traffic light, and there is an overabundance of traffic, as in any big city. The difference here when the traffic light turns to green is that a car at the very front of the line hasn't pitched forward because the driver has gone inexplicably blind.

The blindness spreads virally and infects almost anyone who comes in contact with the initially-blinded man including his wife, ophthalmologist, the man who steals his car, and three other patients who had the misfortune of being in the ophthamologist's waiting room when the first blind man was observed. Oddly enough, the doctor's wife resists the blindness throughout the text, and remains the only person to bear witness to all that follows. The strange thing about this blindness, too, is that it showers the world in a blinding white, which is the opposite of the usual darkness experienced by the blind.

The government, in a well-meaning attempt at order, decides to seclude this first batch of blind people in a disused mental facility, where they can be provided-for at a relatively-low cost and high return. The hospital is monitored by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who attempts to escape or, indeed, comes too close to the walls for comfort. Thus begins the exceedingly hellish portion of the novel.

Honestly, I had a lot of trouble getting through the middle to end of the novel. Saramago spares no horror and reports everything faithfully, including details of disgustingly squishy floors due to lack of plumbers and overflowing toilets, carnage, rape, starvation, sexual deviance, senseless violence, and the oppressive misuse of military force when confronted with a real emergency of pandemic proportions.

Throughout the text, Saramago stays very Naturalistic in his narrative style. Nowhere does he condone or villify the characters, no matter what lengths they go to or how degraded they are. He comments on human nature as a reporter, and allows the reader to come to their own conclusions about what should and should not be seen.

One of the most striking scenes for me occurred near the end of the book, when the doctor's wife stumbles into a church with her husband and the dog of tears (wonderful name!) only to find all the saints with their eyes covered. Someone, prior to being blinded, double knotted the blindfolds over the statues and went over the paintings with two coats of white to insure that God, too, would be blind.

Sight is obviously an allegory for something else, though Saramago doesn't specifically say what that something is. In my opinion, the book is very political, and discusses atrocities humans allow worldwide. Genocide, famine, and unreasonable living conditions abound in the impoverished sections of the globe and people who live in the city just can't be bothered to see.

A good book, but a very difficult one to read through.