Diana.nu

When I was in grade school, people made fun of my frizzy hair. I didn’t care that I had frizzy hair. I wasn’t even aware that there was something significant about my hair. But apparently there was, and I got made fun of, and I started caring.

Sometimes I get made fun of now for my opinions. It’s a different kind of upsetting, but it reminds me of grade school. It’s like the further away you are from neutral on anything, the more likely it is you’ll end up a joke. Take a step in any direction, even an unimportant direction, and someone will find you weird and therefore, hilarious.

Now that I think about it, it’s kind of sad for the people who make fun of others. If you’re close enough to neutral to feel safe making fun of others, you are probably boring. Boring. God. How do these people live with themselves?

Then there’s the whole issue of bringing up something no one cares about. Imagine if someone next to you brought up that some kid’s shoes were ugly. The kid doesn’t care. Why the hell does the person next to you care? Tell them to find something else to worry about. There are problems all over the world. Tell them to pick a random place and start worrying about whatever is going on there. Or tell them to worry about themselves. They’re probably boring. Tell them to work on their personality. Most of all, regarding the kid’s shoes, tell them to get over it already.

I came home from school yesterday, thinking about terrorist suspects (we’re discussing 1984), to watch a cop show. I started paying attention in time to hear a police officer talk about catching drug dealers. She was smiling from ear to ear, ecstatic about planning this for months, “getting lucky” once, and BAM! Catching them!

I wonder what she was thinking at that moment. It feels like it would be safe to bet that she wasn’t thinking about improving society. It was a really smug happiness. Like she had won a game. That kind of happiness doesn’t come from helping people. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi wouldn’t have bragged into a camera like that.

Same with the people who catch terrorist suspects. I know they’re not thinking, “All right, yes! We caught him! We’re going to restore all the good things this person is trying to ruin—democracy, human rights, justice! Yes!” because apparently, they’re torturing these people.

Who was the philosopher that said we do everything because there’s something in it for us? And even when there’s nothing concrete in it for us, we do it because it’ll make us feel good about ourselves?

Well, I don’t know. What do people think when they do a good deed? It makes me feel like a bad person to admit, but last time someone came to me for advice on going vegetarian, I wasn’t thinking, “Yay! We’re saving animals!” At least, that wasn’t the first thing I thought.

How much of the world is doing good things for the “I win!” feeling?

Most of the times I find myself in an argument with a meat-eater, it’s not really one conversation between two people. It’s more like two parallel conversations in that one will never cross or even touch upon the other. I think the reason for that is most of the meat-eaters I know ironically care more about food than I do.

Yes, I’m angry about animal cruelty, but if I found out a food item I liked was causing harm in some way, I’d just stop eating it. Meanwhile, some of the meat-eaters I know keep telling me they just wish they could go vegetarian (not even shooting for all-out vegan), but they just can’t.

On top of that, I see food, in the end, as a neutral part of my life. Sometimes people ask me if what I eat even gets me full, and I’m baffled. Who eats to get full? I’ll admit that I sometimes eat more than necessary, but I thought we all normally ate when we were hungry and stopped when we were satisfied. I mean, it’s food. You put it in your mouth, chew it, swallow it, and you’re fine for another 2-3 hours. There’s no step in that process in which an animal is required to die.

So, the conversations being parallel would make sense. We are on different planes of thought. (Two sentences, two geometry terms!) Most of the meat-eaters I know are pissed off that vegans like me don’t respect their choice to eat meat, and vegans like me are pissed off that some meat-eaters are indignant over something as simple as food. Interesting.