1020:
They say that if farms and slaughter houses had glass walls
no one would eat meat. But perhaps
that’s not quite true, for the animal-eater doesn’t need to come within sight, sound
or smell of these places. We can bathe
in the belief that we are kind people who are not very well informed and can’t
therefore be held to account if we buy product from these places. If we did know what was going on, and yet
still chose to financially support them, we’d surely regard ourselves as cold
hearted, and none of us want to see ourselves that way.
While each person has worked out the best way to avoid the
shame of it all, they’ve been helped along by mass acceptance and a whole
string of euphemisms which refer to the animal death camps as ‘farms’ and
‘processing plants’ or as ‘efficient and humane facilities which give the
public the best in food provision’. It
all fits nicely into a benign picture that the customer wants to believe
in.
It comes at a price though. The truth has to be suspended so the customer
can continue enjoying wearing fashionable shoes or visiting zoos or enjoying
the finest cuisine. By way of some nifty
mental gymnastics, each person comes to learn how to navigate past the truth. But at a cost. There has to be a ban on free speech, for it’s
far too uncomfortable to be faced with the truth; one simply has to downgrade the
issues and avoid those people who want to talk about it.
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