today was lovely, watched movies, played some music, blogged, re-blogged, blog-hopping. tomorrow we shall work to pay for days like today. le sigh.

eating animals

I have never been a huge (cow, pork, veal) meat eater. When my companion chose veal or rib eye steak, I’d prefer fish or chicken. Meat is hard to chew and personally I think it doesn’t taste as good as what most people say. Maybe this taste culture is because how my family eats. Coming from a near beach area in Flores, dad always, always chooses fish over any meat any time. He says fish is more healthy. I am not saying that this kind of habit is more superior. Sometimes I find him weird, because he would eat green bean porridge with rice. Yes, meshed in one plate. And, if the choices are between stewed carrot and fried fish, he’d go for stewed carrot. Ew!

One day, while waiting for my flight home in Changi, I bought two books: Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” and “The East, The West, and Sex: A History of Sexual Encounters” by Richard Bernstein. The first chapter of the latter book is “The Whole world as the White Man's Brothel. This book is more interesting, I thought. Moreover, there are several girl friends in my mind whom I’d like to discuss the book with (cough, sisie, cough...astrid k...cough). I’m used to pending my gratification for greater good, so I read the (literally) green book first.

Turns out, Foer has been messing up with my mind for the past week. The description is so vulgar and comes from different point of views (including from the owners of factory farmers). I eat animals (meat and fish), I’ve read the book, exposed to the facts and reasoning. It is foolish if you don’t change a bit after you know the facts. They say, you can wake a person up from his sleep with loud voice, but you can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. 

During the past week, I talked to different people about eating animals, this is what they said: 

Me : Poor cow

X : It’s legal and excusable by the bible and quran to kill animals for food

Me : ...(Describing how factory farms operate)

X : It’s in America. In Indonesia, we treat animals better and with less chemical, thus we have thinner birds and cows.

Me : As an animal lover and almost self-acclaimed environmentalist, you should read this book

X (who has four pets) : No no no, please...

Me : Before you eat all that turkeys in thanksgiving, maybe you wanna read this

X : No thanks, I enjoy eating meat too much, I don’t want to ruin my Thanksgiving day. 

It is very hard to talk about it. It is easier to talk about feminism or politics to people. Foer says, it requires an elimination of taste memory, then we can constrain ourselves from eating (too much) animals. We defend our pleasure for taste so hard, we close our eyes how painful and cruel the process is for the animals.

Maybe I’m still in euphoric days. But I hope in the future I could care a bit about how things come to my plate. This includes food, clothes, equipments, anything I consume. But, wouldn’t life be hard if you have to think about ALL those things? And once I said, “If you oppose Nike but you’re still smoking near passive smokers, isn’t it contradictive?”