Thursday, April 16, 2009

"A Life Connected"



Update: I find the sentiments espoused by the above video genuinely inspiring and worth striving for. I wish I could claim to embody them in their entirety. As Mike Clelland asks in the comments, what do I feed my cats? And aren't I sometimes seen wearing a leather jacket?

(Tip of the hat to The Teleomorph.)

3 comments:

Mike Clelland! said...

Mac - do you eat meat? Is that a hip leather coat in those photos? What do you feed those cute cats?

(I'm eating ice cream as I type this)

just curious...

Mac said...

That's a perfectly fair question. Yep, it's a leather jacket. I suppose I could point out that it was a gift, but since I choose to wear it that makes me complicit. I feed my cats meat-based products because they're cats and presumably could care less about my nutritional preferences.

Actually, I'm not even vegan: I love dairy, although I don't eat a lot of it. I can't resist cheese. About six months ago I even went through a brief spell of sardine addiction.

As much as I wish I could hold myself up as as the paragon of dietary enlightenment, I fall short -- *way* short, by some standards.

Having said that, I think our collective infatuation with meat needs to be phased out for precisely the same reasons presented in the video.

Anonymous said...

In a world driven by capital, the average person (not some multi billionaire) cannot be reproached for choosing the cheapest product. Obviously, most of those products are not gonna be the most environmentally friendly, but there you have it.
Let's stop kidding ourselves.

Even if you wanted to, you could not be perfect. Example: try to completely remove plastic out of your life. (Not the biggest issue, but quite impossible. Just an example.)

"We" are most definitely not doing what the voice in this video is saying we are doing. If only.
It just does not work that way. You think smokers don't know it's unhealthy? It's human nature, fuck the consequences, let alone the rest of the world or generations to come.
If everybody did the right thing: sure, it would be that simple, but then we would be living in some sf utopia, not this shit hole. Get real.

I'm not against not eating meat. It would not bother me in the least. But I'm not going out of my way to avoid it. (I don't cook. I always eat out or takeaway.) But I don't avoid it because it would not make a single difference. Imo, thinking it does make a difference is deluding yourself. Not in this world.

Green issues get adopted by politics when they are forced by economics. They are recycling garbage because it became to expensive, no other reason. (Don't know about you, but here in this European country I live in, I have to separate plastic and cans, paper, glass, rest of the garbage. (there are more categories, but I don't use them) They get picked up separately. I got fined once for mixing the wrong garbage in the wrong bag. Yes, they open bags if you happen to have some Nazi patrolling your neighborhood, I kid you not. And don't put the wrong trash out on the wrong day, you get fined for that too.)

Save the animals? We can't even save ourselves.
Cynical? I say realist.