Just looking at the way I enjoy handwritten things more than typed, and ponytails more than buns, and homemade food more than restaurants. The idea that jeans are preferred over slacks isn't because they are more comfortable, but because they establish a common ground with people, and don't make you think more or less of a person because they are just jeans. I like backpacks over briefcases, generic over brand name (and thrift store over both of those). I'm just a casual person. I don't think I belong in the professional world. I hate the idea of having to dress up because it's protocol. I will dress up if I want to, or if I feel like it, but if someone tells me to, then I will refuse to (in my mind), and sometimes vocally, but because they said something, I'm more than likely to change my clothes. But is it right? Should we look appropriate as to get others to approve of us? Why is it so important?
Other things I have been working through: We watched an Animal Rights video, called Meet Your Meat and it was about factory farming. I feel like it's fine to drink milk and lay eggs. But watching this movie made me realize that unless you can call the place where your milk and eggs come from a farm, and see cows with walking space, it is very possible that the products that come from the cows and chickens could be miserable, debeaked, branded, featherless, pumped-with-hormones lives. It frustrates me to no end that this commercial industry allows this for profit.
These are all the things that were going through my head while I watched this movie. I watched it twice in a row because Colman has two class periods in a row that he is doing Animal Rights with.
Welcome to the slaughterhouse.
Where pain is present
And death covers our hands.
When being conscious is a blessing and a curse
Where having the strength to walk prolongs and also speeds up the walk to death.
Welcome to pain.
Where branding your skin is fine because you can't talk.
Where ignoring the infections in your body is because we are going to kill you anyway.
Where we pump you full of hormones so you can't walk because bigger is better and we don't care if your legs break.
Welcome to blood.
Steps, footprints, buckets covered in it.
Crying out in pain with life dripping out to the floor.
Welcome to emotional agony.
Where babies can't go to their mothers
Where ears and beaks are cut off and castration occurs
And you seize with pain
Because there is no sense--it costs less just to cut it off.
Welcome to desensitized hearts. We don't know what they fell. We aren't there.
But someone's killing them.
Someone's slitting their throats while they are still kicking.
And we are eating them.
It's in our society to care for cute things. Cats and dogs---people wouldn't accept millions of dollars if another person was hungry and wanted to eat their pet because they are so important to them. But cows are ok. Pigs are ok. We have Dolphin-Safe tunafish. Because dolphins are cuter than tuna. or more intelligent. But we kill pigs, and pigs are some of the smartest animals. They go insane from being in the factory farms. We identify with animals that we know, but those that are on our plates don't count. Ghandi converted to veganism in London, after seeing what people do to animals in their factory farms. Albert Schweitzer called our eating the meat but not knowing where it was from "unconscious cruelty". I was talking about this idea later on in the day, and Doug said that if he had to kill all the food that he was going to eat, he would be a vegetarian. Henry David Thoreau lived in the woods, and when asked why he wouldn't hunt the deer in the woods, he replied, "I won't shoot the deer until the deer shoot back. Then it will be a fair fight." Thomas Edison said, "Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal od all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." Edison also perfected the electric chair, because he didn't think that killing people by beheading them or hanging them was humane enough.
From there, I headed to Wilson, where we are working on the Death Penalty, and looking at diffrerent cases where they family of the murder victim wanted the murderer to live rather than die. They were talking about the rule that people 18 and younger were not allowed to be sentenced to death. But Colam challenged the class--what's the difference between being 17 and 364 days and 18 and one day? Not much. So does age matter?
What is right?
Is it what is normal to society?
Is it what the government rules as law?
Is the answer "that's just the way it is"?
Is change "corruption"?
Is corruption bad, then?
People don'r recognize that the unpopular path is the better path.
To make a difference,
You are likely to be prejudiced
Discriminated against
Or Killed
For what you believe.
I'm struggling with these rules laid out for me. Why does it have to be this way? Why do we have to drive on the right side of the road and get a receipt at the register? Why do people not trust enough that I won't drink if I don't have a black X on my hand? Where has this society gone?
Another hard class period was the next day. Colman brought in Josh Steiber, who was a conscious objector, and he told us his story. His own blog talks about what he did after he returned from Iraq. The important things that he talked about that hit me hard were the harsh realities of the military.
He had the entire class stand up by asking them to stand if they cared about their family and friends, and then said that they would do repeat after him if they still felt that way, but to stop if they didn't agree.
"I went down to the market
Where the women shop
I pulled out my machete
And I began to chop.
I went down to the park
Where all the children play
I pulled out my machine gun,
And I began to spray."
He said that this was a song that they would sing as they ran or marched somewhere.
Josh grew up in DC area, and was in middle school when 9/11 happened, and saw the pentagon afterward. He wanted to make a difference and help the U.S. He wanted to help stop the war in Iraq, so he signed up after he graduated from high school.
He told us that they were all brought into a room and a video of middle eastern people getting shot and bombed, and they turned on rock music and by the end of the video, all the guys were singing and chanting, and getting into it. They used targets of the stereotypical middle eastern men for shooting
He became a conscientious objector when he returned after his leave, and when he came back to America on an honorable discharge, he decided to walk and bike across the country to spread what he was feeling.
I can't really tell his story as well as he can.
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