Tuesday, October 1, 2019

The Problem With Incel Ideology


The move towards authoritative government regimes in the early 21st century is a godsend to sub-communities that were once in danger of being marginalized. These sub-communities are dangerous, for sure, as they exist solely for the purpose of expressing power over other people, though ‘people’ may be stretching definitions a bit since these sub-communities undoubtedly view non-members as less than human. Such is the case with the Incel community, a white-male dominated group hellbent on securing unfettered access to any woman of their choosing.


To say Incels (involuntary celibates) are misogynist is an understatement. They have very particular notions of how the relationship between men and women should be based on the supposed fact that men are superior to women. This is allegedly evidenced by the domination of men over women throughout history. But their ideology is a little more nuanced than that: They despise the idea of ‘whores,’ women who have had too many sex partners/experience or are sex-workers. Young and preferably virgin women must make themselves attractive so as to make themselves worthy of an Incel’s attention. After all, women are shallow, cruel creatures who only give their attention to the most attractive men and therefore must be punished for this behavior. Incels blame the changes in Western culture that have granted women rights and allowed them to pick their own sexual partners, inevitably leading to women picking more attractive men.

Incels are typically described – by themselves – as physically unattractive and this is their major obstacle to securing sex. Since this isn’t their own fault however, they should still be allowed to secure sex by any other means. It is their belief that it is their biological right to have sex at will with the chosen object of their desire, despite any examination of the idea that their biology is what made them ‘unattractive’ in the first place. Incel ideology quickly falls apart upon even the most cursory of examinations.

For instance, Incels are adverse to the idea of being chivalrous (‘white-knighting’) which they see as a façade in order to obtain a woman’s attention. Of course, holding a door for someone – anyone – is just the polite thing to do. Instead, Incels are more likely to go out of their way to dress better or make money, presumably because these are the only things women are attracted to which again makes women unworthy of being so much as equal to a man. As I said, subhuman. By logical extension of the Incel ideology, a man who makes less money than a woman is unworthy of being with her. But the fact that the woman is even allowed to make more money when for centuries this has basically been forbidden is what roils Incels. They can’t stand the idea of a level playing field and people getting by on their merits. To be fair, much lip service is given to the value of meritocracies but very few people dare practice it. This is due largely in part to the laziness of human beings who’d much rather be given what they want than work for it. Laughably, the alt-right despises such ideas from the alt-left, like free college tuition, despite benefiting from their own ‘hand-outs’ for so long, such as unfettered access to women. Again, in being hypocrites, Incels are in good company at least.

The overriding principle of Incel ideology is that women are inferior to men, citing pretty much all of history in which men have physically dominated women. This raises the question that if by some quirk of evolutionary fate women became stronger than men, men should then be subjugated? If we continue this line of reasoning, no one should be upset if we’re hiking in the woods and we get mauled by a bear because the bear is physically superior? But this rarely happens. Mankind has subjugated the animal kingdom through brains, not brawn, so it seems difficult to justify the general physical prowess of men over women as the reason women should be classified as less than human. This, especially given more and more evidence that many women are just as or even more physically capable than men in many instances. (I would rather enjoy watching the average Incel compete against any female American Ninja Warrior.) If women have come to their current state of being able to choose their own sexual partners through cunning, then Incels should be doubly kicking themselves for having never seen it coming. Leave it to blinded-by-frustration-and-rage Incels to not understand that the current state of women in the West is due to, among other things, the long-reach of a precious few Renaissance philosophers who happened to mostly be white. I’m sure white Incels would label them as race traitors.

Fortunately, few Incels have the strength of their convictions to go about casually raping women who refuse them or, as they’ve done in recent years, go on shooting sprees. Unfortunately, they also don’t have the strength to get out from behind their gaming computers and phones to learn skills that might make them a valuable member of society and therefore more attractive. To reiterate, though, Incels are lazy and simply want what they want handed to them on a silver platter, having done nothing to earn their station – which is a large part of what has placed them in their predicament. If an Incel isn’t intelligent enough to see this, what makes them think they’re worthy of being allowed to have their genes spread?

Solutions have been proposed to combat Incel ideology and these solutions mostly revolve around ways to avoid alienating members of society so that they are not prone to radicalization. My proposals are more practical; there’s masturbation for one. No, it’s not quite the same but at least no one gets hurt and one can fantasize however brutally to their heart’s content. They can take masturbation further by purchasing one of the many high-end sex dolls that are currently one the market, such as RealDoll ™. Yes, the dolls are only that, but one can do with them as they please and they will stay young and beautiful forever. Or, Incels can swallow the pill they would like to women to take and stop refusing to do the things that make themselves more physically attractive. If that demand is placed on women, there is no objective reason it should not be placed on a man. (Incels see this demand they place on women as the right of the ‘superior’ sex but as I’ve easily shown, this idea is nonsense.)

As I’ve alluded to earlier this is less about sex than it is about power, where the powerless simple want power placed in their hands by virtue of some arbitrary fact/accident of birth. (Again, despite that accident of birth contributing to their undesired state.) While I certainly understand the burden of feeling powerless, the solution is not to rush headlong in the exact opposite direction. The solution, in this case, is not to utilize violence as a means to an end because this means that violence is okay as a means to any end. Surely an Incel would be opposed to being sodomized by a physically superior gay man. But that is perfectly okay given the particulars of their ideology. When one is forced to think about the consequences of their ideology, it is only then the flaws of that ideology became apparent.

Monday, July 15, 2019

How to Defeat Trump


It’s looking more and more like Donald Trump is going to win the next U.S. presidential election. Why? Mainly because the economy is doing well and that issue is the biggest issue of all. People are content as long as they are able to buy stuff. It doesn’t matter if income disparity is growing at an ever increasing rate or if tax cuts for the rich burden the middle class as long as people have enough money to buy stuff. After all, being an American means being a consumer, so the economy has to do well enough for people to at least have a job. (Or at least a better job than the ones they’re not willing to do which these same people accuse illegal immigrants of taking away. SMH.) If the economy is okay, the sitting president gets elected. That’s all there is to it.

Trump has added benefits, too, as far as his base is concerned. He appeals to evangelicals (despite every evidence to the contrary of being one himself) and white supremacists who still don’t know that white people didn’t invent agriculture, mathematics, clocks, or even the gunpowder and bombs they love so much. Jesus, not even their religion – Christianity – was invented by white people.

That being said, it looks like it’s going to be hard for Trump to lose to any one of the Democratic contenders, especially when all of the contenders’ platforms revolve around immigration. While the situation at the southern U.S. border is terrible, no amount of suffering by illegal immigrants is going to override the economy’s health. (Making any social issue the focus of their campaign is going to get the Democratic nominee defeated.) So not only do the Democrats need to shift their focus away from immigration – sorry, I know it’s really tough –  they need to target the only demographic Trump may not be able to secure: Independent voters. And the only way to sway those independent voters who may have voted for Trump in the previous election is to make Trump look like an ass in debates. Trump already always looks like an ass when he goes off-script but realize that most of the time he’s under control due to the pandering of sycophants such as when he’s talking with Fox News (which is always). While many of us already know Trump’s incapable of making logical rash decisions and sound judgments, this needs to be witnessed on a national stage by the casual independent voter. Independent voters need to be able to say to themselves, “Wow, this guy’s a maniac. And not in a good way.” Get Trump going off-script in debates and the Democratic contender will at least stand a chance.

Democrats, heed my following points well. You risk ignoring me at the country’s peril. The stakes are too high to lose again. Bite the bullet, take the low road for once, and do what needs to be done. Defeat Trump in the debates by following the suggestions I’ve laid out before you:

·        1-The one rule to rule them all (do it immediately and do not let up): Get under Trump’s skin – challenge his vanity, for example, by alleging that Trump wouldn’t have won the election without Russia’s help. Bring up Russian interference and all the people around him that have faced criminal charges. (So much for appointing the ‘best people’ who either leave because they were incompetent or have faced criminal charges. Heck, go so far as to imply Trump has partied with underage teenagers with Jeffery Epstein. The Trump administration can’t vet anyone properly, it seems. Of course, Trump never needs to because he is a great judge of character.) Bring up Russia and the Mueller Report a lot. Point out that Hillary won the popular election. Trump hates that. It doesn’t even matter if what you say about him is true – we live in a post-fact world anyway – say his golf swing sucks. The thing is, once Trump gets flustered, he wings it, and we all know how well that turns out.

·       2-In case you didn’t just hear me, keep bringing up Russia and how Putin is an enemy, not a friend. Ask Trump about election security since he has no plan whatsoever.

·       3-Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s really important that Trump faces a woman for the presidency. Trump has been very successful at challenging every man’s but Putin’s masculinity, so if the Democrats put up Biden or, God forbid, Bernie the Dems will need to get nasty and talk about what Stormy Daniels said about his genitalia. I know that’s wishful thinking but it’s the only defense. Again, it would fluster Trump. He’ll already be annoyed to be facing a woman.

·       4-Bring up all the times Trump has ignored the Constitution – challenge Trump’s knowledge on the Constitution since he has none.

·       5-Trump’s foreign policy has been a disaster and we all know why he wants desperately to be friends with Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia – hotels. Make it known that the Democratic contender will rebuild confidence with our traditional allies and fight terrorism against journalists with sanctions. Accuse Trump of being played for a fool by North Korea.

·       6-The Trump administration’s environmental record is another (literal) disaster to harp on. A central issue of the Democratic nominee’s platform should be combatting climate change and cleaning up the environment. Bring facts about how environmental disaster is impacting areas Trump voters live in. This will have Trump frothing at the mouth about global warming being a hoax. Ask him which oil company told him that.

·       7-Ask Trump where his health care plan is after saying the GOP would become the party of healthcare. Healthcare should be another central issue for the Democratic nominee. And sorry, the Democratic nominee will need to back off of saying free healthcare for illegal immigrants. That annoys even me and I’m pretty liberal on most social issues. If you’re not going to take care of Americans first, you’ll lose the election in a landslide.

·       8-If Trump says he’s doing well and the economy proves it, bring up the tariffs and the farmer bailouts. This is how you’re going to combat accusations of socialism, which Trump is going to do often. Ask Trump if he even knows what socialism is. For that matter, ask him if he knows what fascism is and how it relates to how private companies like Twitter and Facebook do their business. He won’t know how to answer. Watch him talk out of his ass.

·       9-Take Trump to task for all his vacations at taxpayer expense, which Trump accused Obama of doing. Ask Trump why it is okay for him and why it wasn’t for Obama. Point out his never ending hypocrisy; if Obama was such an ineffectual president why has Trump spent so much time rolling back so many of Obama’s implemented policies?

·       10-Like Trump’s associates who face criminal charges, accuse Trump of pandering to ‘good people’ like racist white supremacists and fringe evangelicals who are curbing women’s rights. Attack Trump for attacking the four congresswomen who are supposed to ‘go back where they came from’ even though three of the four were born Americans. Bring up Trump’s racism which has now been fully realized. When Trump mention immigrants, outline the horrible things Trump’s base is doing. Statistically, you’re more likely to be shot by a white male than an immigrant and everyone knows it.

·       11-Bring up Trump’s nepotism and how he overruled the FBI to give his family members clearances. Ask him what makes his family more qualified for certain positions rather than people with actual qualifications.

·       12-Accuse Fox News of being state run TV and all their instances of fake news. Bring up Trump attacking journalists just because they’re not kind to him. Call Trump a snowflake who is so easily offended that he shouldn’t be running the country.

·       13-If for some reason Trump should talk about the Democratic nominee’s personal relationships, they’ll need to get nasty and talk about Donald’s affairs and how the women he sleeps with aren’t exactly the brightest. Sucks to have to insult the First Lady, but remember that she’s an immigrant and us Americans don’t like immigrants.

·       14-Bring up his taxes and investigations. Ask him what he’s hiding; if he’s not guilty of any wrongdoing, he should release his taxes.

·       15-Address his tax cut for the rich and the future consequences. For once, do some fearmongering. Except it’s not fearmongering. As always, it’s going to come down on the middle class and they make up the majority of voters.

·       You may have to go way off topic to point these things out and Trump might even recognize you’re off topic (doubt it) but it’s the same as trying to get Trump to stay on topic. The chances of Trump staying on topic are about the same as him staying on top of the same woman.

It’s going to be a longshot for the Democrats to pull off a presidential victory in the next election unless they get ballsy. You can’t fight insanity with sanity. You will lose every time. Are your principles really worth four more years of a complete shit-show? Please, Democrats, please grow a spine just this once. Asking for more than one-half of the United States.

On Not Having Children


A friend of mine recently complained, again, about someone remarking on her and her husband’s decision not to have children. It wasn’t a kind remark which makes me wonder what business is it of anyone’s what people do with their lives. Oh, that’s right, Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And that’s just one of the reasons my wife and I have similarly decided not to have children.

People don’t ask me if I have children very often; it’s almost as if they know better. When people do ask if I have children and I say ‘no’ it seems I’m let off the hook because I’m a man. Judging by how often they talk about it, though, women are under much more pressure to have children as if it were some sacred duty. With the planet’s population approaching nine billion, I call bullshit. There are many reasons not to have children, the least of being overpopulation, which I’ll address shortly. Here are some other reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea to have children:

-       1-I refuse to bring children into a world that is in the midst of social and political upheaval. True, this has always been the case historically. But it will continue to be true. Authoritative regimes are on the rise around the world. Even in the U.S. the evangelical right continues to labor to turn women back into property. Why would I risk bringing a daughter into a world where too many men don’t understand that raping a woman or a little girl is immoral on every account? Why would I risk a child’s safety in a world where they can be assaulted just for being different from their peers? It must be a nightmare to care for a child’s safety in today’s world.

-        2-I refuse to bring a child into an increasingly poisonous environment. Countries like China and Indonesia think almost nothing of trashing their environment. In the U.S. the GOP is practically going out of their way to destroy the environment. The oceans are full of plastic waste. And no one is doing anything about climate change. It’s practically child abuse to make a newborn face the future environment now.

-        3-Back to overpopulation. Frankly, children annoy me, as does anyone under the age of 18. There are too many people everywhere as it is and we don’t value life as much as we should because of it. The world population is approaching nine billion – I don’t think there’s any danger in humans going extinct. Unfortunately. There are too many people and it shows both in overcrowding and pollution. There’s practically nowhere you can go anymore to enjoy by yourself or not find trash there. Well, unless you’re rich, of course.

-        4-On a more personal note, I have things I want to do; I enjoy my free time. When people say this is selfish they’re saying I have an obligation to have children. Says who, society? The dictates of society are for the weak and the easily controlled. And wanting kids is just as selfish, so why is the kettle calling the pot black?

-        5-Children are blackholes of money. I already work hard enough for myself and my wife for us to enjoy what we have. I don’t want to work endless hours a week because my kids have to be fed, have to have health care, and get a decent education. I want to be able to go on vacation without it being a hassle or to be more kind, without it being a challenge.

-        6-Oh, but it’s different when it’s your child, Breeders argue. So, what, I got my genes into the next generation? Big whoop. There’s no evidence that my genes/my child will be any better than I am. Oh, but I can give them a better life than I had? No, I can’t, because the rest of you are fucking the place up. And I would expect my child to grow up working as hard as I have. I would have no intentions of coddling my child and giving them everything they ever wanted because they wouldn’t stop misbehaving or crying. (Oh, but we can’t spank anymore because liberals.) Any fool without contraception can have a child. I’m content to leave it to the people who really want them and not say anything if those people will leave us non-breeders alone.

-        7-Breeders seem to value the idea that having a child forces you to love someone unconditionally. I don’t believe in unconditional love; it’s a ridiculous concept. If my wife and I had the next Hitler, I’d try to kill the child myself. Isn’t a love for humanity more important than anyone’s desire for their own crying sack of projected neuroses? If you think there’s nothing your child could do to make you surrender your love for them, I’d say your potential to be a danger to the human race is high.

-        8-Pregnancy usually changes a mother’s body for the worse. It doesn’t have to, of course, but 99% of women who get pregnant never get their old body back which for us men was probably one of the top reasons we wanted to have sex with our partners in the first place. I like my wife’s body the way it is. So does she. (Though of course we both have to face aging. But why screw things up ahead of schedule?)

In my opinion, most people aren’t sound enough on any number of accounts to be having children. There should be some kind of a test or license to have babies, but, oh, we can’t say that because that would be fascist. We’re just not allowed to say who should or should not have children even though it’s clear many people are unqualified or aren’t in a position to care properly for them. But what do I know? I don’t have children. And that’s how I sleep at night.

Monday, June 25, 2018

PHILOSOPHY: DEADER THAN EVER

Be wary of certainty; one’s degree of inaccuracy is often inversely proportional to their insistence of accuracy. – Theory Parker

I find myself needing to leave social media. The question is not why; it’s a waste of time if you don’t have an undying need for people to like you. If there’s any question about leaving social media, it would be why not? What do any of us get out of social media? Yes, there’s the dopamine boost we get from people ‘liking’ something we post – that undying need again – but this simply amounts to one of the many drugs we could all do without. Among its other uses, social media is used to announce the ongoings of our businesses, which really is just 21st century panhandling. (Worst among this trend is GoFundMe, in which everyone begs for money because somehow their situation is unique and deserving of the rest of us throwing our money at it. On a rare occasion, special circumstances do arise or an actually useful invention come along, but spare me your need to raise money for your classroom.) Perhaps social media gives us a chance to congregate with other like minds, albeit in the most superficial way because really, who has time for an entire phone call, an entire conversation? I know I don’t because I’m too busy working, working all the time, with people, and when I’m done with that I don’t want to deal with more people. This is not to say I don’t like my family and friends; I’m just exhausted. And I’m more exhausted by what I see on the internet. We look at posts from family and friends and it’s never too long before something – some kind of train wreck often political in nature – catches our eye. Noooooo, I often say to myself of some headline before being forced by curiosity, amazement, or (usually) disgust to delve deeper. This cannot be the world we are living in. It just can’t.

The internet is without question one of the worst things to ever happen to mankind. Yes, it has allowed us to connect on an unprecedented level with people far and wide. And yes, it has allowed us access to an unprecedented amount of information. Both of these things is what has kept the world from turning away from the insanity it has always known, instead using the internet to strengthen beliefs and tribal ties. Instead of using the access to information to study different cultures and perhaps change archaic ways of thinking, people dove headfirst into the concrete pool of confirmation bias to strengthen their ties to whatever community it is they consider themselves a part of. The internet gave people access to others of like mind and hence we have been given a world that instead of getting any better* has given new rise to authoritative governments around the globe. Militant Islam would not have nearly as many members as they do now if not for the internet. Vladmir Putin controls the internet and all other media in Russia to keep himself in power. China and North Korea likewise control what can be accessed through the internet. And you simply cannot go on the internet in America without catching a glimpse of the alt-right and the regressive left frothing at you and each other. Even if you somehow avoid that, there is sure to be someone who has something nasty to say about something no matter how innocuous the post.

Given an unfettered path to confirming one’s bias,’ philosophy became roadkill along the way. The last thing you’ll ever read on the internet is someone beginning their post with, “I may be wrong, but…” There is simply no reflection of thought, no self-analysis of ideas or one’s beliefs. Social media has become nothing more than a game of saying how right one thinks they are about whatever bullshit they want to believe. And surely if one uses ALL CAPS to say it, it becomes all the more true. There is simply no reasoning with anyone who uses the internet on a regular basis. Try to think of the last time you actually changed someone’s mind – difficult isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve done it myself since 2010 when I showed a college freshman the data on CFC’s and how it affected the ozone layer, thus convincing him that human activity can have an effect on the environment. This was a rare and exceptional case perhaps because the young man’s mind was open to new ideas. But this is not the case for most people of any age. Entrenched belief is difficult to dislodge because people hate to be wrong; most people see being wrong as a defect instead of a virtue, something to learn from.

Philosopher’s themselves are also to blame for the death of philosophy. Physicist Stephen Hawking declared that philosophy was dead back in 2011, making note that today’s philosophers have not kept up with or have failed to take into account the data emerging from the sciences. And why would they when most philosophers’ views can be ‘confirmed’ by others of similar thinking on the internet? You can search the ‘pros’ of communism with at-the-ready counter-arguments against its detractors within seconds, nevermind any lack of objectivity. Unfortunately philosophers are people, too, and like most people are typically not above confirmation bias. Despite real-world evidence that communism simply doesn’t work in practice, many young idealists still think it can. (Ah, ah, ah –Like every other attempt at communism, China is only communist on paper.)

The failure of philosophers to ‘keep up’ combined with the effect the internet has had on people has given Americans a country hijacked by the regressive left and the alt-reich. You read these people’s comment’s on the internet every day, whose typical comment is usually rife with some false assertion and/or unblinking hypocrisy. False assertions are one thing – we don’t typically have time to fact-check everything – but the hypocrisy is breathtaking. For example, Putin and Russia were basically enemies during President Obama’s tenure but because Trump is friends with Putin, Russia was somehow never our enemy after Trump’s election. Or take Sarah Huckabee Sander’s attack on a business owner for booting her out of a restaurant while agreeing that a bakery had the right to refuse gay people service. But the regressive left is no prize either, who can’t see its own policy of denying anyone with a difference of opinion to speak at college campuses as fascist. You also cannot bring up the atrocities of any other race throughout history as only white people have committed crimes against humanity. Anyone who dares think is either dead or is dying in the middle.

All of this is why I’m a misanthrope. We can’t have discussions anymore, as if we ever could. For fuck sake, female scientists have had a historically rough time being taken seriously even though data should speak for itself. If scientists can’t be rational, what hope is there for everyone else? There is no hope. We’ll die by our own hand having never learned from the Roman Empire even though their collapse was well-documented. And if any philosopher hasn’t given up yet, they will eventually be hunted down and murdered by whichever side ultimately wins the culture war. That is what authoritative regimes do, after all. The U.S. is dealing with two right now that are engaged in an ideological war that will ironical kill nothing but ideas.

Depends on their PR person.


Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Thoughts on Being Vegetarian


Vegetarianism has been on the rise for some time now, finally taking root in my own household. I am participating, so to speak, but it’s not that I find arguments for this eating lifestyle particularly compelling; I don’t. No, I participate mostly for the sake of supporting those who are enamored by the idea and because I don’t want to make my own dinner all the time. But why aren’t I completely compelled by the arguments for vegetarianism alone? Let’s examine the typical vegetarian’s arguments for abandoning meat in their diet.

To begin with, it’s fair to say that your garden-variety vegetarian finds the idea of farming animals for food repugnant. I can certainly understand this as I am generally against cruelty to any animal that isn’t human. Packing animals in close corners, feeding them something we wouldn’t eat ourselves, pumping them full of hormones, snatching calves from their mothers, wood-chipping chicks if they’re the wrong sex; well, it’s enough to leave a bad taste in any humane person’s mouth. While those of us who occasionally fall off the vegetarian food wagon hope against hope our chicken piccata roamed around happily clueless before being snatched from its bliss like a child in Indonesia, we really know better, and to know better – to know what’s really going on and be okay with it – kinda makes a person an asshole. And we’ve got enough assholes, truth be told.

Fortunately, I don’t find meat all that tasty, or at least not so tasty I couldn’t live without it. After my own father died of a massive heart attack given his meat-saturated diet (though there was the smoking and some drinking, too), I’ve never thought of meat as something I just had to have. And knowing an animal suffered for my culinary enjoyment kind of makes me nauseous when I think about it. Others disagree and their argument is often something like, “Then they (animals) shouldn’t be so damn tasty.” Yes, but if we suddenly discovered how tasty people were, would that suddenly make it okay to eat them? Sometimes this leads to the follow-up argument that God gave human beings dominion over animals (which somehow got translated into “Be shitty to animals”) so it’s all good; the Boss said so. I’m not convinced. It seems like people treat animals the way they’d like to treat other human beings ‘cept that those pesky societal norms stave off their more primitive desires. I’d say thank goodness if treating each other with some dignity weren’t becoming abnormal.

But I digress; I offer my own counter argument to vegetarians here: That eating a plant is equally or even potentially worse than eating an animal. Vegetarians seem content to take life so long as it does not possess a nervous system like most animals do. The reasoning is that if some lifeform is sufficiently close enough to being human, it is cruel to kill and eat that thing. But this is a completely arbitrary distinction. If you’ll notice, many vegetarians are content to include fish in their diet, citing that fish are sufficiently unlike human beings to warrant eating them. Having seen many a fish hooked and pulled out of the water, I’m reasonably sure they feel as much pain as any land animal. So the argument becomes, “I think X is like me (or worse, X is cute), therefore I will not eat it. Y however…” There is no solid delineation for what is sufficiently like a human being to warrant sparing its life and not eating that thing. Who gets to be the authority on such a matter? Arbitrary reasoning is not objective, so the ‘moral’ choice a person makes to become a vegetarian and how far they take it is based solely on subjective reasoning.

It is likewise subjective to assume that plants do not feel pain or suffer from what we do to them. We know that all lifeforms react to the environment around them and what we can pain are sensations the nervous system sends to our brain to tell us harm is taking place. It is therefore reasonable to assume that tearing or uprooting a plant adversely affects a plant and that they don’t somehow sense this. Granted, plants do not have a nervous system like mammals and other animals do, but certainly plants possess a mechanism to react to harm in much the same way they obviously react to positive conditions like sunlight. For all we know, uprooting a plant may make it feel something entirely worse than pain. We don’t know. In not knowing, we should err on the side of caution, not continue on our merry way and say, “Whoops, sorry, we were wrong about you” if we find out plants do feel pain. Then again, that is the tract the United States took in regards to its era of slavery so I guess there is precedent for behaving/eating the way we do.

Ideally then, we really shouldn’t eat anything that may potentially feel pain in our efforts to eat it, if we’re on a quest to claim some moral high ground. Fruits and nuts appear okay to eat then seeing how they are the attempt of plants to procreate and not ‘alive’ in and of themselves or cannot grow unless they’re given the proper circumstances or conditions. In the end, the so-called moral argument given by vegetarians is utterly lost on me; it rings as hollow as a gourd.

This aside, I do believe there are some good arguments to be made in favor of a vegetarian diet. First and foremost is the environmental argument. While a majority of human beings seem to care very little about how poisonous they make their own immediate environment…well, that’s just it. Look, the Romans didn’t know they were poisoning themselves with lead and this was a contributing factor to the fall of their empire. We don’t have that excuse anymore. We know what we’re doing to the environment and the vast majority of us still don’t care. We don’t care that the environment sometimes – maybe often – contributes to cancer yet people ‘race for a cure’ instead of doing the obvious, cleaning up a toxic environment. (I might also mention that people who constantly consume meat have higher rates of cancer than vegetarians.) I know full well that cancer is a horrible, devastating disease but there are steps we can take to minimize our risk to succumbing to it, and taking care of the environment should be chief among those steps. And this is to say nothing of the methane – a particularly nasty greenhouse gas – that is released into the atmosphere due to cattle farming. Shoot, sorry; I forgot rising temperatures aren’t mankind’s fault. (You know mankind can’t take the blame for anything it does to itself.)

As alluded to a few moments ago, there is also much evidence that a vegetarian or meat-restricted diet is healthier and this is a good reason to choose this dietary avenue. This is not to say that being a vegetarian doesn’t take planning, it does. Much of the protein (and to a much lesser degree vitamins, minerals and fats) we get easily from animal products are not readily found in plants, meaning a vegetarian must eat a broader range of plants to meet their essential nutrient needs. Given the downside of consuming so much meat, both for the environment and our health, taking the time to do a little planning couldn’t hurt. Facebook and Twitter will still be there after the ten minutes you’re gone doing some research.

There is sufficiently proper reasons to be a vegetarian but let’s not pretend that the ‘moral’ argument is one of them. Getting into an ‘conversation’ with a carnivore and bringing that argument up is only going to make said carnivore run out to the store and buy a cow’s worth of ground meat. Of course, hard core carnivores don’t care about being healthy either, so perhaps the point is moo-t. Vegetarians; do what’s right for yourself and let time win the battle for you. While you console the meat-eater in your family as they lay dying of cancer, you can say, “I told ya so.”