(no subject)
I meant to post more often in this during winter break, but the presence of my family at all waking hours disrupted my ability to formulate coherent insights and craft them into readable journal entries.
In the space that this paragraph presently occupies, I was going to write a huge screed about the value (or lack thereof) of getting into serious, intellectual/pseudo-intellectual arguments about current events and politics and philosophy with random people at parties (I actually had like three-fourths of a page written already), but (predictably) I changed my mind and now it's gone. Even when I try to form a strong opinion about people forming strong opinions, some niggling part of my mind says "Now hold on a minute, look at it from the other side" and I'm back in the same boring zone of neutrality that I started in. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be an impassioned college-aged champion of some ideology or other.
I considered buying Omnivore's Dilemma at Borders a few days ago, but then I recalled the actions of some of my friends upon finishing the book: E turned total vegetarian, his brother and another one of my friends turned mostly-flora-consuming-but-willing-to-eat-humane-certified-meat-but-only-rarely, and I reconsidered. I already have a rough idea of what (I think) it's about; the fact that most of the meat (and probably most of the produce?) that we consume is produced under inhumane/unnatural conditions. Ethically and possibly physiologically, I feel obligated to read the book, expose myself to the unpleasant truths of the world and thereby embark on a path to becoming a better person. But is that really the kind of revelation I want? Eating meat is one of the most satisfying carnal pleasures (ho ho!) imaginable, and I fear that reading the book would be akin to discovering that every time you orgasm, God literally kills a kitten.
In the space that this paragraph presently occupies, I was going to write a huge screed about the value (or lack thereof) of getting into serious, intellectual/pseudo-intellectual arguments about current events and politics and philosophy with random people at parties (I actually had like three-fourths of a page written already), but (predictably) I changed my mind and now it's gone. Even when I try to form a strong opinion about people forming strong opinions, some niggling part of my mind says "Now hold on a minute, look at it from the other side" and I'm back in the same boring zone of neutrality that I started in. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be an impassioned college-aged champion of some ideology or other.
I considered buying Omnivore's Dilemma at Borders a few days ago, but then I recalled the actions of some of my friends upon finishing the book: E turned total vegetarian, his brother and another one of my friends turned mostly-flora-consuming-but-willing-to-eat-humane-certified-meat-but-only-rarely, and I reconsidered. I already have a rough idea of what (I think) it's about; the fact that most of the meat (and probably most of the produce?) that we consume is produced under inhumane/unnatural conditions. Ethically and possibly physiologically, I feel obligated to read the book, expose myself to the unpleasant truths of the world and thereby embark on a path to becoming a better person. But is that really the kind of revelation I want? Eating meat is one of the most satisfying carnal pleasures (ho ho!) imaginable, and I fear that reading the book would be akin to discovering that every time you orgasm, God literally kills a kitten.