This originally appeared on my political blog at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2021/02/sloppy-thinking.html.
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One of the news articles I've read this morning is on meat consumption, or carnism, and how many people have decoupled the sanitised presentation on supermarket shelves from what is involved in getting it there. My adoptive mother grew up on a cattle property, so she knew - and hated the killing; a very few people I have known have raised an animal, almost as a pet, before killing it for consumption - they knew (and several of the kids turned off eating meat as a result); I've always, including as a kid, seen fish struggling at the end of a line when they're caught, gasping for air and in pain, and thought "How can people not see that pain?"
There's a lack of empathy, or a lack of observation, in all that that is concerning.
As an example of another meat-related concern, the utterly idiotic claim I grew up with that "the flavour of the meat is all in the fat".
Crap.
I've eaten meat with the fat trimmed off it, or with the fat rendered out of it, and bits of fat when - as a kid - others were raving about the fat, and the experience (a) nearly made me throw up, (b) confirmed that meat flavour does not reside in fat, and (c) showed those making such claims to be idiots.
What they meant to say was that, in their opinion (not others), the flavour of the meat or the experience of being carnist was enhanced by the fat, but they went to an inaccurate extremist presentation: "the flavour of the meat is all in the fat".
This a problem for several reasons:
- It perpetuates the climate damaging, ethically questionable practice of consuming meat; and
- It gets people into a habit of mindless compliance with social conventions, rather than clear thinking and communication.
That latter point is also important: this is where, for instance, people get into the habit of saying "we are inclusive/acting on the climate/something else that is meant to sound good or mollify critics" rather than determining the true situation (which may be along the lines of "we are inclusive for that difference we have personal experience of or can tolerate or don't need to grow as humans in order to accommodate but keep X away from us / we're addressing climate change and sustainability issues in head office but our fundamental activities are wrecking the planet / we're doing a spin [marketing] exercise so we can share warm fuzzies in the board room), taking responsibility and acting on the matter.
Don't like how, for instance, Scott is running the nation (including being disrespectful by being overly familiar with rape victims)?
To quite an extent, it started when he was a kid, with the sloppy thinking around around the family barbecues.