Local Amorality
It's strawberry season in Florida already. Which is pretty great--yesterday I bought two pounds of locally grown strawberries for only $2.49; and with the price of produce going through the fucking roof, that's a deal. Which immediately reminded me of Jack's recent post about the inevitable failure of making the world a better place through eating, since my delicious and cheap strawberries, although definitely local, are not organic, and were almost certainly picked by underpaid migrant farm workers. But I, believe it or not, actually have a hard time being cynical about it; seems like if there are these three criteria (local, organic, ethical), getting at least one of them checked off is better than none (I do not, at this point, by fruit shipped from South America (I quit doing that back in Portland when Trader Joe's, in motherfucking apple country USA, switched to selling South American apples, since they got a better price on them). Though, of course, it may be the case that "local" is the least moral of the three issues.
I've had a preamble to a blog post around for a while now (and wouldn't you believe it, I'm only finally unleashing it as not-a-preamble) which focused on the fact that I've never tried to convince anyone else to be a vegetarian. I try to be explicitly non-evangelical about it. I mean, I set a good example, and you're all terrible people for not following it, but I'm not going to preach about it. Which is too bad, since all these theories/ideas about changing food politics bring up the fact that the best thing any individual can do is quit eating meat, if not entirely, then most of the time. Which is easy to do, and pig-headed to ignore. I don't know about you, but I don't look forward to being deported to massive dome-cities clustered around the few patches of arable land that will remain in Earth's polar regions once shit is totally fucked in another 50 years. Meat is bad. WTF.
So maybe I should switch back to being cynical, since otherwise I'm obviously just angry. And I should really think of something to cook with all these strawberries, since I should keep getting 'em while the getting's good. And think of some third way, which is neither cynical nor angry, and maybe actually successfully recruits some vegetarians.
I've had a preamble to a blog post around for a while now (and wouldn't you believe it, I'm only finally unleashing it as not-a-preamble) which focused on the fact that I've never tried to convince anyone else to be a vegetarian. I try to be explicitly non-evangelical about it. I mean, I set a good example, and you're all terrible people for not following it, but I'm not going to preach about it. Which is too bad, since all these theories/ideas about changing food politics bring up the fact that the best thing any individual can do is quit eating meat, if not entirely, then most of the time. Which is easy to do, and pig-headed to ignore. I don't know about you, but I don't look forward to being deported to massive dome-cities clustered around the few patches of arable land that will remain in Earth's polar regions once shit is totally fucked in another 50 years. Meat is bad. WTF.
So maybe I should switch back to being cynical, since otherwise I'm obviously just angry. And I should really think of something to cook with all these strawberries, since I should keep getting 'em while the getting's good. And think of some third way, which is neither cynical nor angry, and maybe actually successfully recruits some vegetarians.
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