| If you don't mind me going on a soapbox here for a minute, I want to highlight something that I suspect is hurting your cause and not helping it: > In short—many people are dumber than the very animals they say “have no conscience.” There's a phenomenon that I've observed over the last 20 years that seems to primarily effect progressive causes: an alienating sense of moral and intellectual superiority over the people who do not yet believe in your cause. That statement that you made there is going to do two things: - Resonate with the people who already believe that eating meat is the epitome of evil and all that is wrong with the world - Cause people who don't yet believe that to go "wow, those vegetarians are assholes." And... it won't be the first time they've had that thought :) That being said, the question that has perpetually eluded me with vegetarianism is: what is a good way to promote it? If you do truly believe that people are dumb, but you still want them to start eating an animal-free diet, what's the tack for getting there? My suspicion is that one aspect of a positive approach is to just start cooking and sharing amazingly good animal-free meals. For people who are vegetarian for moral-superiority reasons, it's easy to justify sacrificing on amazing food because, well, morality; for your Uncle Joe, though, all you're telling him is "you can't have bacon on your burger, you can't even have the burger, but here's a soy-based alternative that's not nearly as good but is _moral_". I have had incredible vegetarian dishes, particularly from Middle Eastern restaurants. They are decidedly not the dishes that vegetarians bring to backyard barbecues. > they’ve never worked in a slaughter house nor spent time with the animals For the record, I am not a vegetarian but I do try to bias my cooking towards more sustainable ingredients. We buy our meat exclusively from local farms (which I realize is both unscalable and a privilege). I have not worked in a slaughterhouse, but I have raised and slaughtered cows and chickens with my own hands. Mostly I'm not a vegetarian because I'm not good enough at consistently cooking food that tastes nearly as good as beef or pork and I have not yet found the right combination of vegetarian dishes that doesn't leave me with a lack of energy after eating them for a week. |