Thirteen years ago today my cousin Trish had her high-school graduation party. How do I remember this? Because thirteen years ago today, I also became a vegetarian.
I was twelve years old at the time, and for a twelve-year-old, those sorts of family parties are always boring affairs. So I brought a book--okay, a stack of books--with me for company
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And I tend to believe that every little bit counts. Rhapsody has a great quote in a comment below yours about how every rock changes the course of a stream. So I think that any little bit of action taken with animals or the earth in mind is commendable. Bobby is a quasi-vegetarian; he's eliminated about half of the meat from his diet, and I'm proud of him, even if his actions don't seem "enough" to some people. But if every person followed his lead, what a big difference this would make!
On the human/animal question, you need my icon. ;) It reminds me of an analogy used about hunting that I rather like. American hunters like to call what they do a "sport."* Saying that pitting a camouflaged human with a gun against an unarmed, non-dangerous deer is a sport is like saying that the New York Yankees facing off against a team of eight-year-old little leaguers is a sport. Nope, both are simply slaughter, and where are the bragging rights in that?
* And in fact, considering the American factory farming system and how cruel that is, I think that people who hunt their own meat commit far less evil than those who buy it neatly packaged at the grocery store. For one, they are not making a choice that requires an animal to suffer over the whole of its life. For another, there is no delusion that what they are eating wasn't once a living creature. But "sport hunting" for trophies and bragging rights, in my opinion, is cruel and inexcusable.
Also, I totally hear you on the pains of giving up seafood. In Maryland, seafood is a huge part of our culture to the extent that, often, when people hear that I'm a vegetarian, the first thing that they'll ask: "You don't eat steamed crabs??" It's truly difficult ... but no, I don't. It's sometimes tempting to start eating seafood that comes from animals without central nervous systems and so not sentient in the way that we are (or cows, chickens, or dogs are), but then that's complex, and there are environmental issues as well, and so I suffer without steamed crabs and don't eat meat at all. :)
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