Isn’t it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we’re doing what we’re doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?
I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.
Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.
Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can.
We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don’t care if we’re lying. I am a bad person. I don’t care. I don’t care what you are.
I wasn’t trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn’t matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in.
You do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter,” I told her, and she said, “Then I would never utter another word again.” “You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.” “Then I would never do anything again.
