{"id":712,"date":"2018-12-31T23:50:47","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T23:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=712"},"modified":"2018-12-31T23:50:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T23:50:47","slug":"1-on-peta-ads-and-2-on-dispensing-vegan-burritos-to-the-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/31\/1-on-peta-ads-and-2-on-dispensing-vegan-burritos-to-the-homeless\/","title":{"rendered":"(1) On PETA Ads and (2) On Dispensing Vegan Burritos to the Homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cheap sensationalist dimension of PETA — as in some of its perverse<\/a> pubic<\/a> ads about fur — is obviously pathological. <\/p>\n

The trouble is that mass movements and causes of any kind — good and bad — also tend to attract the lunatic tail of the Bell Curve. And some in PETA seem to think that any kind of attention is good attention. <\/p>\n

And of course, as in all charities, there is a split between good works and fund-raising. <\/p>\n

It’s so hard to say whether on balance PETA does more harm or good. <\/p>\n

I appreciate the way they monitor and call attention to abuse (sometimes terribly graphically — but I’m beginning to think that that might be necessary, with most of the planet unaware of the horrors, or in denial). <\/p>\n

I don’t know if the petitions and campaigns end up reducing suffering. I sign. I’m informed about the appalling scope and scale of the abominations. I hope. And I’m trying to find a non-token way I can help. <\/p>\n

\n

The distribution of vegan burritos to the homeless in Montreal is good: It helps people. It also proves that vegans don’t care only about nonhuman animals. <\/p>\n

But just about everyone is in favor of helping people (whether or not they actually do it). And most people are not contributing to harming people, or in favor of it. <\/p>\n

Not so for animals. Most people are contributing to harming them, and most are not opposed to — or even aware of — the unimaginable scale of that harm. <\/p>\n

So I think animals need help even more than homeless people do. And of course there are incomparably more of them, purpose bred, industrial-scale, for exploitation. <\/p>\n

(And I deplore the way urban homeless people acquire animals to share their fate (or sometimes just their life-style choice) and soften people for a handout. I’ve even seen them sitting on St. Denis in the cold holding on to shivering kittens or cats they’ve co-opted for that purpose, very much the way the Romany use their own babies for begging; similar practices in India. We protest to the use of the babies; no such chorus for the animals. — No, the ones that need help the most, and most urgently, are animals. While we continue to countenance the treatment of animals as property we will never treat people properly either<\/i>.)<\/p>\n

(And if we used the arable part of the planet to grow food to feed people instead of to feed it to animals that we purpose breed, brutalize and butcher to feed ourselves, there would be more food to feed more people. And a far more humane attitude toward both human and nonhuman animals.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cheap sensationalist dimension of PETA — as in some of its perverse pubic ads about fur — is obviously pathological. The trouble is that mass movements and causes of any kind — good and bad — also tend to attract the lunatic tail of the Bell Curve. And some in PETA seem to think … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “(1) On PETA Ads and (2) On Dispensing Vegan Burritos to the Homeless”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}