We
went for a meal at a seafood restaurant today and I must say, it was
a pretty horrific experience (oxymoron much?). My brother heard that
they did lobster sashimi (raw lobster basically) so suggested we
order it. To my complete and utter dismay, the lobster was still
alive. It. Was. Fricking. Alive. ALIVE! It
was such a horrible thing to witness, I couldn't bare to look at it.
It was ridiculous: the lobster was chopped in half with its body
stood up and its insides scooped out and displayed in front of it.
How horrible is that? The eyes and legs were still moving and at one
point, a leg fell off. Right in front of us. I felt like such a
terrible human being, the lobster must have been in pain and to add
insult to injury, was expected to watch people eating its insides!! I
simply can't wrap my mind around how anyone could serve and prepare
that dish, it just seems so... unethical.
This ties in with my life-long debate of if i should eat meat at all? On one hand I absolutely love meat, I don't think I've lived a week in my life without some sort of meat be it poultry, seafood or red meat. I just haven't. On the other hand, I'm eating something that technically was a someone that was killed just to be eaten. Now this isn't something I think about too often because of the massive inner turmoil it brings, but when I do think about it, I get a sort of sinking feeling in my stomach. Am I a bad person if I consume meat? A guy I work with will tell you that it's all down to conditioning. No, not your hair, but rather the way you were raised when you were a child. In my family everyone eats meat. It's deemed weird if you're a vegetarian or if you don't like meat or fish.
Conditioning is the idea that all the messages and signals we receive as we are growing up from our parents, media, peers etc are the basis of how we are as people. This may seem fairly obvious but when you really delve into the theory, it goes much deeper into how it impacts our behavioural patterns. In some cultures, it isn't popular to eat much red meat. I think this is pretty evident in Asian countries, whereas in Western societies seafood can be perceived as a more luxury or special dish. This is an example of how we were conditioned. I guess, as a global community, the majority of us block it out. We don't think about eating meat or damaging the environment around us often because it's what we think we need to do to survive.
But back to my turmoil, what should I do!? Sooo many times I've said to myself that I'll try living a vegetarian lifestyle for a while but it hasn't ever worked. I feel like if I was to try again, I'd be motivated by the lobster encounter today. Seeing an evidently sufferening creature which was dying in front of me has definately brought some clarity, it seems horribly unfair to have to be put through that, even if it is "just a lobster"!
This ties in with my life-long debate of if i should eat meat at all? On one hand I absolutely love meat, I don't think I've lived a week in my life without some sort of meat be it poultry, seafood or red meat. I just haven't. On the other hand, I'm eating something that technically was a someone that was killed just to be eaten. Now this isn't something I think about too often because of the massive inner turmoil it brings, but when I do think about it, I get a sort of sinking feeling in my stomach. Am I a bad person if I consume meat? A guy I work with will tell you that it's all down to conditioning. No, not your hair, but rather the way you were raised when you were a child. In my family everyone eats meat. It's deemed weird if you're a vegetarian or if you don't like meat or fish.
Conditioning is the idea that all the messages and signals we receive as we are growing up from our parents, media, peers etc are the basis of how we are as people. This may seem fairly obvious but when you really delve into the theory, it goes much deeper into how it impacts our behavioural patterns. In some cultures, it isn't popular to eat much red meat. I think this is pretty evident in Asian countries, whereas in Western societies seafood can be perceived as a more luxury or special dish. This is an example of how we were conditioned. I guess, as a global community, the majority of us block it out. We don't think about eating meat or damaging the environment around us often because it's what we think we need to do to survive.
But back to my turmoil, what should I do!? Sooo many times I've said to myself that I'll try living a vegetarian lifestyle for a while but it hasn't ever worked. I feel like if I was to try again, I'd be motivated by the lobster encounter today. Seeing an evidently sufferening creature which was dying in front of me has definately brought some clarity, it seems horribly unfair to have to be put through that, even if it is "just a lobster"!
No comments:
Post a Comment