Jonas Wisser

dailymeh:

Animals are smart, so they deserve the right to live, so we ought to grow meat instead of killing animals for it, or so recommends this Slate piece. And unlike other meat-eaters who feel the need to go by ad hominems and simple dismissals, I don’t think the idea is so stupid. I’m not, nor do I have any plans of becoming a vegetarian, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the point vegetarians make: why do we give rights to humans but not (conscious) animals, except rampant speciesism? Peter Singer is fond of saying that human babies are no more conscious than cows. If that’s the case, why should babies live and cows shouldn’t?

Needless to say, these concerns haven’t transformed me into a treehugging veggie and they don’t keep me awake at night. Yet I still find value in discussing them.

I’m not sure which part of this bothers me more as a non-vegetarian Obie.  I’m a little weirded at the idea of growing meat, but that’s mostly countered by the idea of being able to shut down some really brutal and dangerous forms of farming.

I think I’m actually more surprised to see the words “treehugging veggie” used in an apparently derogatory way.  Because I’m surrounded by such people at Oberlin, I’m used to them being the norm; it’s weird to realize that not everyone else sees it that way.

The longer I stay at Oberlin, the more certain I become that going out into the Real World is going to be a pretty strange experience.