[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]CLUNK wrote:
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
Hitler was a vegetarian, so this explains a lot.
(Yes, joking.)[/quote]
Godwin’s Law
[/quote]
Except in this case, accurate. Hitler WAS a vegetarian. He was also nice to dogs.
But, yes, completely irrelevant. Just fun to gig Brickhead with it, as I knew he was also Jewish.
FWIW, in undergrad I worked in the Maseeh Hall (? can’t remember), which was the kosher food cafeteria at MIT because I had zero money (and unlike the idiot students of today, declined to go into debt for my education). Most of the meals were vegetarian, simply because kosher meat is expensive.
This attracted lots of other students who were just vegetarian and not necessarily Jewish.
Anyway, a lot them were really nice, and a lot were assholes who talked down to me because they assumed I was a “mere” cafeteria worker (or they talked down because I was poor and not afraid to work with my hands).
Standing in the service line also gave me a fair amount of time to watch people. I further observed the same people about campus (they generally didn’t recognize me without my hairnet and apron).
Anyway, a fair plurality of vegetarians are hyper-sensitive to animals, but really nasty to humans. Probably slightly more than the general population.
I would have thought it to be the opposite (and it sometimes is).
I developed a theory that they are attempting to compensate for being assholes to humans by being overly kind to animals.
(That, or people are just crappy to people in food service, and I mainly had a sample of vegetarians.)[/quote]
About moral decision making. So many people see their environmentalism or their veganism as a moral and ethical choice, and maybe it is. Remember that study about people who bought organic foods thinking they were more ethical than other people? They were also more judgmental as I recall. There were headlines with something about how shopping at Wholefoods can make you a jerk.
Maybe your environmentalism causes you to buy a Prius, bring your own bags to the market, and put solar panels on your house. Fine. You may, or may not feel superior to the people who aren’t doing these things. It’s especially true for things that we tend to attach a lot of emotion to. There’s always the lean, muscular guy who is looking at the fatty next door, ordering pizza again… I guess we all have to be aware of these things. Humans are strange. We’re sometimes motivated by a desire to signal to the other people that we are “in the club.” My dog is a rescue… That kind of thing.
BTW, the thankless, menial jobs in our youth build character. I want my kids to know that they are not “too good” to do any job. I cared for disabled adults when I was in college, changing diapers, the whole thing.
Brick - You know I like ya. I’m not assuming you have some strange motives or will turn into a jerk, or some Portlandia character. Jewbacca’s post just made me think about some of this. Sometimes I try to be introspective about why I do the things I do.