I don't want a shitty catchphrase, something meaningful would be nice.
Something insightful and generally applicable that I like the sound of. In these books there was this girl who would say "You know nothing.". It's good because it's generally applicable, but it's also very negative. It wasn't said in a particularly rude way, it was usually more just in a matter of fact manner but still it's not a very nice thing to say and I'm not going to copy a catchphrase.
Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for everybody else, I can't think of anything in any way good.
So here's a hypothetical question; I think a lot of people would lie about what they'd do in this situation:
You're put into a room with a young child and are given a gun with a bullet in it. You have 5 minutes for one person in the room to be dead. You don't know the child, they were taken randomly from some foreign place. Nobody will ever know about what happened in that room; should you kill the child you won't remember doing it. Should you kill yourself the child will never know the sacrifice you made.
What do you do?
Well the easy answer that I'm sure most people would say (at least I hope) is to kill yourself, but in reality you can't know what you would do in those circumstances. Our protected little first world lives are so far from that sort of danger that we really have no idea what it would feel like. I remember in English grinds for the leaving cert the teacher said at one stage,
"Experts say that if a person is tortured badly enough they would wish the torture on their most loved ones instead to spare themselves from the pain. There would be no thought in it other than to stop the torture for that split second".
At the end of the day our natural instinct is self preservation. I'm sure there's people with enough ignorance and confidence to say they would definitely shoot themselves with no "if", "ands" or "buts" about it. Then again I'm quite a eh, literal person, if that's the word I'm looking for. I'm never sure of anything. Over the summer one of the lads I was living with asked me if I was always going to be a vegetarian. He had noted how I am pretty strict about it so he was pretty taken aback when I said, "I really don't know.". In his mind I should be sure about something like that since I clearly feel quite strongly about it, but in my mind (probably from being wrong so many times in school and moreso life in general) I really take nothing for granted and am sure of basically nothing. I'm overly sceptical of what I know and too accepting of new information.
On the veg-head note I've been thinking about that lately a little. I'm starting playing squash again now and I'd like to make a proper go of it. If I notice that I'm not repairing properly after trainings despite eating healthy veggie food I may try fish. I don't think it would come to this since so far I'm feeling quite healthy but let me explain why I chose fish (poor pricks get eaten by many the "vegetarian").
I don't like fish. I don't like how they taste and I don't like how they live. I personally quite like being totally immersed in water, but that's now what I mean when I say I don't like how they live. I mean they eat each other, they eat smaller fish, they don't show any emotions whatsoever and they have minimal intelligence. I'm not trying to justify eating fish, I'm just saying why I would choose them over cows or pigs or even chickens. Chickens come closest of the commonly ate land animals probably because they are rather stupid but at least they don't eat other chickens or other chickens' babies.
Also, and rather importantly, I can kill the fish myself. I can go out and catch a fish, I know where it's coming from and I know how it died. It's important to me to kill the animal myself. If I was to start eating cows again I would need to kill a cow myself. I think it's ignorant not to. It's really really important to fully apprehend where the meat is coming from. That due to your desire for this food, this animal must be killed. Once you have ate a cows worth of meat I think you should kill another and repeat the process until the killing of the animal has no effect on you, then you really are a meat eater. Unfortunately I don't think it's very easy to get the opportunity to kill a cow (that sounds so weird). I also think the standard bolt to the brain method is a bit eh, connectionless? The animal drops dead and it's over. I imagine a lot of the dying process goes by so quickly you yourself may not realise what you have done, but rather that then slitting it's throat and having it die a painful death.
If every time you ate meat you thought, a cow died for this, I'd appreciate that you are aware of the process, but "a cow" is faceless and the death of a cow is meaningless unless you see it yourself.
In short, if you aren't willing to kill the animal yourself for a food you don't need, you're the height of naive by paying for someone else to do it.
That turned out to be a lot more of a veggie rant than I had intended. I don't mean any offence to anybody by the way despite how it may appear, I hold no grudges, especially to people who have thought about it and logically decided to continue to eat meat.
I don't like fish. I don't like how they taste and I don't like how they live. I personally quite like being totally immersed in water, but that's now what I mean when I say I don't like how they live. I mean they eat each other, they eat smaller fish, they don't show any emotions whatsoever and they have minimal intelligence. I'm not trying to justify eating fish, I'm just saying why I would choose them over cows or pigs or even chickens. Chickens come closest of the commonly ate land animals probably because they are rather stupid but at least they don't eat other chickens or other chickens' babies.
Also, and rather importantly, I can kill the fish myself. I can go out and catch a fish, I know where it's coming from and I know how it died. It's important to me to kill the animal myself. If I was to start eating cows again I would need to kill a cow myself. I think it's ignorant not to. It's really really important to fully apprehend where the meat is coming from. That due to your desire for this food, this animal must be killed. Once you have ate a cows worth of meat I think you should kill another and repeat the process until the killing of the animal has no effect on you, then you really are a meat eater. Unfortunately I don't think it's very easy to get the opportunity to kill a cow (that sounds so weird). I also think the standard bolt to the brain method is a bit eh, connectionless? The animal drops dead and it's over. I imagine a lot of the dying process goes by so quickly you yourself may not realise what you have done, but rather that then slitting it's throat and having it die a painful death.
If every time you ate meat you thought, a cow died for this, I'd appreciate that you are aware of the process, but "a cow" is faceless and the death of a cow is meaningless unless you see it yourself.
In short, if you aren't willing to kill the animal yourself for a food you don't need, you're the height of naive by paying for someone else to do it.
That turned out to be a lot more of a veggie rant than I had intended. I don't mean any offence to anybody by the way despite how it may appear, I hold no grudges, especially to people who have thought about it and logically decided to continue to eat meat.
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