Filled with a lot of self doubt and insecure feelings of being incapable as the weakest link among the Sharksavers core team of volunteers (a stellar and talented bunch with a common love for sharks, no doubt, albeit a bit too task oriented at times), coupled with uncertainties at times about how to progress with The Dorsal Effect, being stuck at stuff like Financial Model which was required for the Social Enterprise Scholarship under Impact Forum 2013, I knew I had to hang on and learn fast. I guess the common reflex when put in an uncomfortable position for me is to shy away and hide but I guess since I made the decision for change, I had to stick it through, even if I screwed things up or sucked at work done a couple of times first.
Thankfully, there are still little glimmers of hope I call the signs in life which the boy constantly laughs at me at for being superstitious like that. But hey, without the signs in life and the unknown, I don’t think it would be easy to plow through life and its meanders, no? The sign at a sucky low for me came in the form of Ai Lin. So Ai Lin is this saint and owner of Pottostamps whom I met at Maad last year through the cute rubber stamps of animals she sold at Maad every month. For some reason, out of the many people I’ve gotten to know through Maad, I engaged Ai Lin’s help with The Dorsal Effect’s logo and eventually new name card for this year as well. Her reply today heartened and touched me as she meticulously pointed out some nuances in the card I may have missed out when I said ok, go ahead with the design, and asked me to double check on those again. She subsequent;y told me to pay her any amount I would like for her design work as half of the amount would be donated to WWF just like her profits made at Maad every month anyway. That took the cake for me, a quiet giver and lover of wildlife I never knew she was. This like minded soul I was drawn to only to realise much later why I was drawn to her like that. It was the wow moment for me indeed.
So yes, I know I am so going to suck at the work I am starting out at in Sharksavers and The Dorsal Effect as I delve into uncharted territories once foreign to a very school teacher me, but I am going to persevere through and make good the supposed good year for the Dogs!
I went for a Vegantopic dinner with Edwin and his girl, Vanessa, recently too and it made me revisit this whole philosophy of food all over again for me. Having been a pescetarian for the last 3-4 years and tried being vegetarian for a couple of months recently, I have always found the transition hard and never did see the possibility of me going completely vegan. The dinner topics brought forth some compelling arguments (short of guilt tripping meat lovers I am sure) against the eating of meat and the classic slaughterhouse video scenes never cease in making me drop tears and swear off meat at the moment in time of viewing. I thought Gary Yourofsky’s passion against the harming of other living things (“the audacity of us!” rings through in his lecture) illuminating, yet the nagging words of a line from a link of the argument for eating meat that the boy shared with me rings through:
“The vegetarian utopia would make us even more dependent than we already are on an industrialized national food chain. That food chain would in turn be even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer, since food would need to travel farther and manure would be in short supply. Indeed, it is doubtful that you can build a more sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. If our concern is for the health of nature–rather than, say, the internal consistency of our moral code or the condition of our souls–then eating animals may sometimes be the most ethical thing to do.”
Do you guys know of any philosophers that make a strong argument for it to be morally permissible for a human to eat meat?
by u/henbowtai in philosophy
The reader was quoting from Michael Pollan whose Omnivore’s Dilemma radicalized the way I look at supermarket meats today.
I agree with Gary Yourofsky that meat and milk, dairy and eggs, are all acquired tastes as a result of the convenience and dehumanizing of meats in the world today, I agree that proteins can be found in beans and enough for us to supplement our diet without meats, much as widely held propaganda in healthcare the world over, would have us believe non-meat proteins are incomplete sources of protein.But perhaps for the sake of the natural balance of things in the world at large, we still need our hardcore vegans and our meat lovers who believe in ethical means of obtaining meat without being greedy and overeating, to ensure sustenance, no?
I am still a little two minded about this and yes I am still pseudo-vegetarian cum pescetarian for now (but of course shark fin soup is a NO NO for me) so please do feel free to comment and share your thoughts with me please?
