Mark Morford: In Defense of PETA's Total Stupidity

[villager]

<snip>

So, you flip it over. You toss it around. You examine all angles, including the one that notes how PETA and self-righteous groups of its ilk -- hardcore vegetarian, vegans, raw foodies, animal moralists, et al -- how you can sort of burst their bubble in a split second simply by, well, by pointing at their lunch.

You can inform them about their lovely organic salad, about how the various threshers and mechanical lettuce-picking machinery over at the organic farm casually kill countless rodents and insects and birds every week as they move through the fields, not to mention the animals that were run over on the highway during delivery. In short, no matter what you eat, some animal, somewhere, has suffered and died for your meal.

Not fair? Sorry, totally fair.

You try to parse and balance it all. Maybe you realize, the point here is not to become so extreme in your reverence that you become utterly frozen, paralyzed by the knowledge that no matter what you do, you are going to kill some other living thing -- or rather, many, many of them -- simply by walking around, breathing, existing.

The point is not to become like ancient Jain monks, famous for such extreme reverence for all life that they would literally sweep the ground in front of them as they walked, in order to avoid harming even the smallest insect with their footfalls. Totally ridiculous, you think.

Except, of course, that it's not. It's also terribly beautiful. Luminous. Aiming toward something like purity, enlightenment, higher consciousness, even as it reveals, by contrast and sharp relief, just how violent and destructive life is, quite literally every step of the way.

And so maybe, as you go about your PETA-mocking day, you try to understand that the idea is to minimize harm and impact, to tread a bit more lightly, to see where you fall on the grand spectrum.

Over there, at the far end, is PETA and its ilk, severe to the point of silliness and total impracticality and eye-rolling give-me-a-freaking-break. On the other end ... well, I don't know what, exactly. Some sort of bloated, trophy-hunting imbecile who kills endangered exotic animals on a private game reserve for sport and whose ex-wife has her puppy killed so she can make a belt out if it.

It is the ever-present question we like to bury and try to ignore. Where do you fall along the continuum? How much consciousness do you have at any given moment of the impact you have? What is your true intent? Do you crush the damnable fly? Do you shrug and scoff and move on? Do you offer thanks? Do you dare see through it all?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/06/24/notes062409.DTL&nl=fix

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I crush the flies, ticks, and mosquitoes, but still take the grasshoppers and moths outside.

[Warpy]

4. I throw the roaches and spiders in the bathtub outside

Spiders are useful creatures and roaches splatter unattractively, especially the inch long suckers we see out here in the desert.

I just wish PETA would concentrate on things like the brutality of factory farming animals for meat. They could be a very useful organization if they picked their fights a little more carefully.

[Xipe Totec]

2. What's PETA's position on Swine Flu?

those poor viri dying by the brazillions, and all they want to do is to live inside your body.

Poor things....

[tridim]

3. I put PETA on ignore a long time ago.

I believe in the ethical treatment of animals too, but I don't make a point to be a dick about it every waking moment of the day.

[lindisfarne]

5. Antibiotics kill bacteria, PETA. I'm all for treating animals well. But PETA is hypocritical.

It's been documented that their own groups have euthanized animals (and in at least one documented case I saw, thrown the bodies into the trash).

They are so out of touch. They completely alienate the public in so many ways - just recently, the outcry about the fly. I'm sorry, PETA, but I'm not going to stop killing mosquitos that are biting me.

I think they actually make it harder for more mainstream animal rescue operations to succeed. Plus, if they want to make a difference, draw more attention to the way factory farm-raised animals are treated. That's really the scandal that needs attention.

Encourage people to cut back on meat consumption and buy certified humane and/or locally if possible from farmers who you know won't mistreat the animals. PETA will never take this route - any animal killing is wrong, in their eyes - so they achieve less in the way of reducing animal suffering by their insistence on PURITY.

If every American simply cut back 25% on their meat consumption, a huge amount of suffering would stop. That would achieve more than PETA has achieved in its entire history.