Vanity and Pleasure

1945:

We’re more likely to go for attractive or hard-wearing shoes than consider the ethics of leather. We’ll maybe eat non-animal foods for health reasons but not rule out wearing the skins of animals, because a shoe will not adversely affect our health.

         

Even with health itself, we may consider that the eating of junk food is okay because, especially when we’re young, health isn’t an issue. Later we put on weight. But even then, we only tinker with foods. Cut out the ones which fatten us, which is far from good health practice and a lot to do with vanity.

         

Whatever commodity we consider essential to our lifestyle, whether we are young or old, we try to squeeze what we can from what’s available. We spend big, risk debt, ignore warnings and mainly consider our own interests. We want to live for the moment. Above all we try NOT to become like those sad people (usually older people) who don’t live life or seem to have any real fun at all.

         

A young person’s instinct will be to paint their life with brush strokes from a brightly coloured palette. And to make it all look more exciting than it is, it’s best not to think about things too deeply, so as not to undermine self confidence. At a certain age, young people, who’ve been controlled throughout their childhoods, are suddenly free to experience every possible stimulating experience. And why not? “We only live once, so live life while you can”. That is, until the shutters come down and we are forced to change (usually in later years) by which time we’ve lost all the fun of life and become the victims of our own vanity. And in all that time we’ve maybe never considered the animals whose lives have been sacrificed to make our own colourful life possible.