what's more depressing than watching a dolphin dragged behind a truck?

[misledyouth00]

i broke down and wept like a baby.

http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/earthlings.php

only if you watch this and THEN tell me you don't see anything wrong with exploiting animals, will i be able to listen to yr argument.

Comments

[spirulinai]

oh my, but this quote at the start of the movie gave me a serious case of the wobblies:

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.

We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." Henry Betson, The Outermost House

[misledyouth00]

but nobody warned me how SAD it would be!

....i guess i shoulda expected it though, huh? i couldn't even make it to the end, is it at least hopeful?

[spirulinai]

I'm going at it in sections. The magnitude of it is just too much to absorb all at once. So far I've made it to the fishing industry - Most difficult for me to get through so far was the kosher butcher bit.. augh, god. It's wrenching.

I have the sinking feeling they're saving the worst for last - I'm gonna have to work my way up to the "why humans kill for kicks" section. *shudder*

[spirulinai]

also

if it's so unexpectedly powerful for a vegan who knows all this stuff already, i wonder how omnivores take it? i wonder if it would be feasible to find a friend with a dvd burner and just... leave copies of it places.

[misledyouth00]

the ones i have sent it to refuse to watch it! they all say, "i don't want to know."
as i'm sure you have found already, i find that so fucking maddening! if someones being raped and living in all sorts of horrible conditions for example, you wouldn't want to know how you could do the SMALLEST THING and stop it?

[spirulinai]

no kidding! it's such an obvious way for them to feel like they're not being totally insensitive. "i don't want to know" comes off as "i don't want to witness such cruelty" but is so obviously "i prefer to stay apathetic, because caring takes more energy than i am willing to commit to."

i wouldn't have such a huge problem with the typical omnis if they would just OWN UP SOMETIMES FOR FUCK SAKE.

that's kind of why i want to leave the dvd places where it'll get picked up.. somebody grabs it, sees the cover, and gives it a shot.
well, maybe. :P

[misledyouth00]

i have had this same argument with boyfriend as well as my room mate before.
in the end (after carefully and thoroughly and rationally going over again and again points) i finally just yelled at them both, "NO. I WILL KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU STOP TRYING TO PRESENT YR POINTS AS FACTS WHEN I HAVE - AT MY DISPOSAL AND I WILL SHOW/HAVE SHOWN YOU ALREADY - FACTS, ACTUAL FACTS FROM 'NON-BIASED' (my room mate insisted he would 'only' read facts from 'non-biased,' sources, meaning not a whole pro-vegan website. and then he never did.)SOURCES. AND I WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO UNTIL YOU JUST ACCEPT TO YRSELF AND ADMIT TO ME WHAT YR ENTIRE ARGUMENT COMES DOWN TO. AND THAT IS for the sake of convience and personal preference, you just don't care. plain and simple. don't try to pretend it's something more than that."
and for some reason, that makes people very very angry.