Diana.nu

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.

I’m trying not to turn this into a “My English class is a disgrace” blog, but it is a disgrace.

We played some kind of game about survival. It was supposed to bring out the things we assume under the arguments we claim. In the book, eleven people were described. Their positives, their negatives, their hobbies. Only seven could live.

The premise was that an environmental catastrophe had taken place, leaving only those people, but just enough to sustain only seven of them.

The professor wrote down the tally on who chose whom. Most people chose a fit man who was in last year of medical school to live. No one but my group chose the prostitute to live, but most chose her three month old baby to live. Many chose another woman, but changed their minds when they figured out what “part of Zero Earth Population” meant, because that’s just crazy.

The reasoning behind choosing the medical student was that we need to repopulate. How blatantly egotistical can you get? Humans are not #1, dummies. I don’t think they took even one second to examine what was coming out of their mouths.

There’s only enough to sustain seven people, and they wanted to bring children into that. Why? Why is it so important to repopulate? (They passed up an older doctor with actual experience for the medical student just because it’s so important to repopulate.)

Like humans are useful to anything in the world besides themselves. The environmental catastrophe could have been our doing. Why would you repopulate at that point? It would be better to just let the planet heal itself.

Oh, and the prostitute. No one chose her, despite the fact that they would leave a baby without his mother, but there were plenty of idiots hollering things about prostitutes.

NO, SHE HAS AIDS.

SHE CAN BE THE ENTERTAINMENT!

SHE CAN BE THE HOT NURSE.

WE COULD SLIP ROOFIES IN HER DRINK.

…Right? They don’t think before talking. Right, huh?

Prostitutes aren’t dirty, low (but hot!) woman who have nothing on their minds but pleasing whoever comes their way. She obviously had a child, and I forgot what they were, but it listed her hobbies and interests. And that fucking ridiculous concept that a prostitute can’t be raped. Fuck my entire class.

Anyway, ~the moral~ of the story. I learned that despite it being an advanced class, the people were not guaranteed to be intelligent enough to examine the shit they say.

I expect that there is no guaranteed location where the concentration of common sense is high. Or low, for that matter. Idiots and geniuses exist everywhere.