One more time, but with feeling!



I listen with microphones and a 20 pound mini puma from thighs to ear adding his loud purrs to the music.

Holding a cat is like holding a sophisticated amoeba. It's like holding a piece of our roots; remembering the animals that to a large extent we still are. This one acts as if he's got siamese in him. But I bred him because his dad was so smart. (Yes, I know the proper vegan stance on breeding but among other things (don't entirely agree with it) I wasn't vegan back then.) I picked out his dad from a litter because he sat there looking so intelligent. It is an ability we have from an evolutionary standpoint to be able to see to some extent what people are and this cat looked so smart. And most certainly one can (or at least I can) look at an animal and tell about how smart they are. I guess (apparently) not everyone is as good at this. I love to do it. Seeing and contemplating the intelligence in the eyes of animals gives me a strange thrill. Why? (The mystery? Love of intelligence. Love of our animal roots, etc.)

This one (Loki) is so talkative and loving. Loki loves his cat tv (bird feeders) and tries to talk to the birds just like his dad did. He loves hard and then leaves you alone.

I love how he and his mom and sister remind me of our distant roots. But I hate that they're carnivores. Vegan cat food just isn't perfected yet. As of now cats do need meat to survive.

I've chased chickens around a coop to be slaughtered. They know to run. I remember clearly looking a caught chicken in the eyes. It was afraid. That's enough to know. Cows and pigs much more so than chickens. They have personalities. They feel pain.

I think about what I'm doing when I eat. The less you think, the less you exist. I ate meat for 30 years ridiculously thinking it was necessary for good health and that whole time I felt a little disgusted with myself. I know full well what it is to be a meat eater. It's about not thinking. The key to it is to be oblivious, to be stupid, to simply have a big blank spot where your understanding would be. And that blank spot is more disgusting and revolting than the corpses touching your lips. When I realized I didn't need to eat meat or boob juice or chicken periods I was so happy. There was no, "Gee, this might be hard, better make it a gradual process." The process was instant and permanent. (Well except for a bit of boob juice here and there in chocolate etc as being 'pure' would be a pain in the ass where I live.)

It is still the most happiest thing in my life. I don't have to kill anyone (well OK bugs here and there incidentally, etc) in order to continue living myself. How wonderful. How awful when I thought otherwise. I literally had the anguish as in the Anne Rice vampire books.

But still I must turn a piece of my mind off too; as I don't know a single vegan in my real world. So focusing on just how empty people's minds are would just be torturous; especially when they see me, when they see that not only do I not look like I'm about to keel over but that I most likely could kick their ass with one arm tied behind my back. Like politics, it is ultimately beyond the pale.

In politics you can be shocked and morally outraged over and over and over again and eventually, what are you accomplishing?

What makes a Chomsky continue on?

Morals are ultimately utilitarian/consequentialist in nature. IMO they are self interest with some degree of long term forethought. We attempt to predict the future. We attempt to foresee the consequences and on that basis we decide the most moral action. But then of course it's impossible to actually predict the future. The biggest problem of all is knowing how much future there will be. Furthermore actually calculating the most moral action could be very complex from day to day so although the basis of our moral codes are consequentialist, in our day to day living we end up following what looks more like an absolute code.

And with respect to this absolute code, when we 'do the right thing' we can then feel pride with ourselves for having done so. We can feel good about ourselves. We can feel that we've played the game well.

Someone like Chomsky must feel such pride in himself. And so he just keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again. Not much has actually been accomplished but as he sees it, there's not much else he can do.

If I were prominent as political gadfly like Chomsky perhaps I'd do the same. But some of these other people with their little leftist blogs which I skim here and there. It's harder to see what keeps them going. What keeps them so shocked and all. At some point I would think they ought to stray back to consequentialism... instead of being 'deontologial'. All that being shocked isn't changing anything. People keep on treating each other with the same indifference as they do to animals.

Keeping it deontoligical I guess you can continue to feel pride for 'doing the right thing'. Step out to the bigger consequentialist picture and the only reason left I can think of is just feeling pride about being erudite and knowledgeable.

Neither does much for me. But although I'm curious why they bother and don't do so myself and thus (obviously) think it wrong (but not closemindedly), I'm still glad someone is. Personally talking about imperialism in whatever it's guise has become beyond the pale to me though, for the most part.

Beyond the pale in the sense of being a moral outrage overload I suppose. I prefer to be morally outraged about things that aren't so obvious. Because with being less obvious you can at least entertain the hope that people just haven't yet understood it, and once they do, then instead of the indifference they've shown with veganism and politics (veganism just straight up indifference for the vast majority and for politics, too indifferent to ever go beyond the TV and other media owned by the billionaires to hear a different point of view) then maybe (not!) they'd actually change.