Our systemic obligation of candor obliges us, uncomfortably, to make the following confession of signature hypocrisy, possibly attaining the empirical level of shameful and abhorrent cognitive dissonance. To acquire some measure of relevant expiation, we have ventured, albeit, painfully, to make this honest, written confession. But, first, we feel the contextual need to offer some clarifying and explanatory personal observations.
Over the decades, we have been avid promoters of animal rights. In addition to our consistent ownership and nurturance of no less than two cats, we have eternally experienced feelings of love and respect for the animal world. We have admired and relished the sight of woodland fauna seen at our Kingston, New York residence, deer, bears, foxes, birds, squirrels, and rabbits; indeed, all of the observable woodland creatures. We have also been on two African safaris where we were privileged to encounter and greatly admire many exotic members of the planet’s animal kingdom.
Our outrage and aversion to demonstrated animal cruelty, such as is shown in televised programs of ASPCA, seeking financial support for animals suffering from cruel and negligent treatment, causes feelings of horror and heartfelt empathy. In this context, we confess to an emotional inability to bear the imagined horror and murderous cruelty daily existing at the nightmarish animal slaughterhouses.
Relevantly, we are opponents of gun ownership, given the empirical fact that guns have the sole and limited utility of killing or maiming. We have also been ardently and moral opponents of Capital Punishment, which we perceive as atavistic State murder.
There is no possible scenario in which we could acceptably engage in the insensitive “sport” of hunting, even in the explanatory search for food; the empirical sight of warm-blooded animals in bloody distress is morally abhorrent and not emotionally acceptable to us.
Despite the previous statements of empathic and sensitive abhorrence of the participatory or visual homicide of the planet’s warm-blooded animals, we have experienced various levels of personal guilt when the popular subject of cuisine is discussed with a confirmed vegetarian; an event from which, if socially possible, we aesthetically refrain.
Concluding with our thematic admission of contextual hypocrisy, our exercise of the abominable sin is performed by our subjective morally convenient, and tactical perception that the serving of beef, chicken, or other protein, accompanying our meal is simply, “dinner” rather than a portion of a killed and cooked animal. This admittedly sinful and hypocritical observation is morally and philosophically false but is a rather utilitarian sin.
-p.
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