New Years Day marked the first anniversary of my more intensive foray into vegetarianism. It isn't entirely accurate to call me a vegetarian. I play don't-ask-don't-tell with certain foods, especially in restaurants, with regards to ingredients like chicken broth and gelatin, and I eat fish sometimes, when my other options look bleak. I call
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The fact that I eat fish makes me not quite a vegetarian, but I eat it very rarely, and it's simpler to use the blanket term to describe my diet than to get into the particulars of what I will and won't eat.
There are a lot of different scales that people use to rationalize their eating choices. Some people say fish are okay because in the Catholic Lent system, fish don't count as meat. Some people go through and rate animals on a scale of sentience. I heard the scale once. Pigs are at the top, followed by cows, then chickens, then fish and shellfish. Based on that scale, there's some value in eating as far down on the chain as you can, because those animals aren't as aware of fear or pain as the ones at the top. I'm not sure I buy that.
There's a completely alternative view that my dad posed once, that he said was based on Buddhism. The idea is that if every sentient being has a soul, and all souls are created equal, there's a value in eating in such a way that you cause the fewest souls to be harmed. So eating a steak would be more ethical than eating a half a pound of shrimp, because one cow can feed several people while shedding only one soul. I'm not sure I buy that, either.
I eat fish because I'm not perfect, and because I feel less like I'm denying myself when I allow myself the occasional indulgence. Based on any of the scales I listed up there, I'm doing pretty well overall, but if I weren't lenient enough to allow myself fish or the occasional backslide once in a while, and still forgive myself, I'd likely go back to a complete omni diet. In my mind, this is the best compromise I can come up with.
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