When I was younger I used to go fishing as well as hunting for game birds with my dad.
Several relatives and others along the way, found this very disturbing. I remember the gist of one conversation well, from when I was about 12: they ask me, rather petulantly, how I can be so horrible as to shoot birds. Immediate sick feeling in stomach: this conversation will not go well for you.
I point out that they are not vegetarians, whose critique I do take seriously. Do they think that their steaks grow on special shrink-wrapped trees?
But the ducks are so beautiful!
So only pretty things deserve to live?
But they were living such a peaceful life in the wild, and then you shot them! Cows never have good lives to start with, so it isn’t as bad.
!!!!!Whaaa!!??!
But you’re killing them!
And you’re letting someone else kill for you.
Cue moral dumbfounding, followed by “But still!” type interjections.
(Aside: I am now switched to a basically vegetarian diet, with meat allowed occasionally if it is ethically farmed.)
More broadly, I often find conversations with muggles on anything vaguely controversial, to be very frustrating. Once they choose a position on some issue, they seem to stake their whole identity on it. They want to attack the problem from every angle at once, without bothering to come to any conclusions on any particular aspect. They think that if ideas are vaguely associated with each other, then you have to buy both ideas or neither; hence there is always a trend toward “that sounds like something Hitler (or whoever) would approve of.” They always try to up the emotional ante by pretending(?) to be offended if at all possible. No clear conception of what is and isn’t relevant. Their only goal is to win the argument at all costs.
It does make me feel slightly physically ill, sometimes for hours afterward. Anyway, sorry, this was rantier than I meant it to be.
When I was younger I used to go fishing as well as hunting for game birds with my dad. Several relatives and others along the way, found this very disturbing. I remember the gist of one conversation well, from when I was about 12: they ask me, rather petulantly, how I can be so horrible as to shoot birds. Immediate sick feeling in stomach: this conversation will not go well for you.
I point out that they are not vegetarians, whose critique I do take seriously. Do they think that their steaks grow on special shrink-wrapped trees?
So only pretty things deserve to live?
!!!!!Whaaa!!??!
And you’re letting someone else kill for you.
Cue moral dumbfounding, followed by “But still!” type interjections.
(Aside: I am now switched to a basically vegetarian diet, with meat allowed occasionally if it is ethically farmed.)
More broadly, I often find conversations with muggles on anything vaguely controversial, to be very frustrating. Once they choose a position on some issue, they seem to stake their whole identity on it. They want to attack the problem from every angle at once, without bothering to come to any conclusions on any particular aspect. They think that if ideas are vaguely associated with each other, then you have to buy both ideas or neither; hence there is always a trend toward “that sounds like something Hitler (or whoever) would approve of.” They always try to up the emotional ante by pretending(?) to be offended if at all possible. No clear conception of what is and isn’t relevant. Their only goal is to win the argument at all costs.
It does make me feel slightly physically ill, sometimes for hours afterward. Anyway, sorry, this was rantier than I meant it to be.