When you quit drinking, drugs, cigarettes, or any dirty habit that has a national/scornful campaign against it, there is often roaring applause.
Fair enough.
I've quit (daily) cigarettes, excess liquor and all drugs. I don't think meat is in the same category, but for several reasons - like chronic meat-based food poisoning - I decided to quit meat; I did this many years ago. No real regrets, save for the fact(s) that I imagine myself to be a "foodie" and in my heart of hearts, I want to go to Momofuko and eat the famed pork belly steamed biscuit buns - I know the veggie ramen would not do David Chang any justice - and in a past life, yeah, I did love to get my filet mignon o-n.
My practical vegetarianism has morphed into ethical pescatarianism (no lobster, no unsustainable species of fish) to honest vegetarianism. It's been a rocky road. Did I mention that vegetarianism is an obnoxious road, too?
As stated, I was a carnivore - a deluxe one: filet mignon? It doesn't get any more pretentious or decadent - well, save for fois gras, or lobster...
Speaking of lobster, I have had it twice in a month period - and - I have devoured it in a mass-market, mediocre-but-magnificent chain restaurant. Huh? Ethical pescatarian? Honest vegetarian?
You see, for me, the sea has been a reservoir of satiety for my ingrained meat-loving, carnivore instincts. Wild salmon, spicy tuna rolls, and copious amounts of shrimp have kept me hypocritical and comfortable in my little "veggie" world of ethics. But, this seafood-binging world has sort of posed a big problem in the current world, the one that has just been marred with a major gulf oil spill catastrophe - a catastrophe that we cannot bear to look upon and yet, take our eyes away from: the pelicans...blinking...covered in oil...
Dying.
Because we need oil and more importantly, money, we have taken a big bite out of one of the major hands that feeds our mouths, The Sea. The Sea and The Sea's food chain are fucked. Why don't we eat a few more vegetables and what-have-yous and leave the critters of the sea to the remaining critters of the sea? I mean, yeah, we're omnivores, so why not make the right choice?
We all go about our business in some curious ways. When the answer to stop eating fish, etc. came to me clearly, I did what any sensible person (who loves seafood) would do: I binged on all of the things that I loved and have fallen out of love with: one last fling with seafood, et al. I have been having a one-last-round, month-long, Death Row Dinner with the maritime world. This is it. Lobster, which I never cared to eat, spicy tuna and shrimp, shrimp, shrimp: I have eaten and eaten because I will not be eating any of it, anymore. I cannot enjoy it in the given circumstances; I may not be able to enjoy it in a few years even if I really still want to - once the species are gone, they're gone.
My bon voyage month, the month of June, is now over, and my month of last tastes, over, and my time eating things from our sea, for now, over. Of course, I'm keeping things open-ended and vague, as any mandate can quickly become something the opposite of what it should be, but it's just not practical or ethical or right to contribute to the global gang-bang rape of the sea at this time, or really, at any time. It, the choice to eat only what is sustainable and ethical and truly vegetarian, just sort of hit me - as "it" hit me to not eat cows or pigs or chickens or what-have-yous about ten years ago..."it" will pose some difficulties, I am certain. Conviction, unlike (and yet, like) commitment, is not about compromise.
When you hear a food ethicist talk about food, you often hear, "I don't eat anything with a face", which often has a few rips in the seams if one decides to look closely: "Don't you have a leather sofa?" (I do, long story.) "Didn't you just order a lobster sandwich?" (Why yes, and yes, another long story.) If you don't believe in a divine creator, fine, but there is this strange and interesting regularity among all of us who inhabit this planet: faces are pretty much the same, everywhere. Be it a doe-eyed cow grazing in a serene pasture, or a pesky bat, or an oil-slicked pelican, or a 600-lbs. tuna in the Atlantic. I know, I know, there is a thing called The Food Chain, but the great chain is broken; it's missing some important and big links, connectors. As it has been pieced back together in these years and decades of our ingenuity and greed, it is undeniably shorter than ever. It's getting harder to stitch back up, again and yet, again. No, the oil spill and vegetarianism are none of the same and on paper, have nothing to do with
one another, however, greed remains to be the biggest link. Huh.Greenberg's NY Time Magazine article, Tuna's End:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27Tuna-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals:
http://www.eatinganimals.com
