I’m definitely a hypocrite about a few things. Not sure why I’m writing about this now, though I have been thinking about it for a while. Maybe because I both believe in some things being “right”/“wrong” or “good”/“bad” and at the same time am too weak (or something) to choose the right path. I guess these are some thoughts on that.
So, maybe there’s two things I’ll talk about for now.
- Plastic. Sometimes I go to places like zero-waste stores and get reusable items, but at the same time I’ll get boba served in a single-use cup.
- Vegetarianism. I was vegetarian for a year in college. I’m not now. However, I still believe vegetarianism is morally correct.
Plastic
The amount of trash we create with single-use plastics is harmful and often unnecessary. Plastic grocery bags, styrofoam cups, plastic straws, and plastic to-go containers all become landfill or end up in the ocean. The problem is plastic basically doesn’t break down and can have harmful effects on the ecosystem and (I’m told) our health.
I have a reusable titanium straw in my backpack, which saves me from having to accept a plastic straw from a vendor. Now, the weird part: I will often use this reusable straw when I get boba in non-reusable cups. The bobarista (or whatever you call them) look weird at me sometimes when I say, “Oh no thanks, I don’t need a straw”. Like, okay, I’m not throwing away a plastic straw but I’m still throwing away something much bigger. That turtle won’t choke on my straw but’ll get suffocated on my cup instead. Good for me. I’m such a saint.
I think what I worry about is the enabling effect of the straw to cause me to do more damage than if I didn’t have it in the first place. Sometimes this is called the SnackWell Effect (see Wikipedia article) in reference to a low-calorie cookie, where dieters eating them can consume more calories than they would otherwise. The problem is that my feelings of how much good I’m doing are disproportionate to how much good I’m actually doing. Also, the guilt I feel about using a plastic cup is disproportionately offset by the reusable straw.
I do try to avoid boba in plastic cups. I’ll usually go to Plentea, which serves them in reusable glass bottles. I kind of wish that it was more culturally acceptable to give them your own reusable bottle for them to serve it in. Maybe I need to toughen up and just repeatedly ask for it.
Vegetarianism
I was vegetarian one year in college. I don’t remember if it was the end of my freshman year or during my sophomore year, but basically it was after taking a course on underground music where I learned about punk culture, straight edge, and people in Fugazi being vegan or whatever.
I remember thinking, “Yeah, animal suffering for meat is unnecessary. Their suffering and death is real, and I’m basically only eating meat for pleasure. As a moral autonomous being, I have the ability to choose and thus I should choose to inflict less suffering.” I wasn’t vegan, though, as I still ate eggs, dairy, and honey. I did this for more than a full year, and I think the reason I stopped was something along the lines of “Cats are obligate carnivores. It’s possible that I don’t fully understand the needs of my body with respect to meat.”
The weird thing is, I still think vegetarianism is the correct moral choice, even though I don’t practice it myself. Most people that quit vegetarianism I think rationalize or reason and believe that vegetarianism is not… I dunno… “right” or “morally superior” or whatever. I think people that quit think “Oh, I was wrong about vegetarianism, I don’t believe it any more. So it’s okay that I eat meat. I’m not a bad person.” For myself I think “Vegetarianism is probably still correct, and I’m weak-willed or something because my actions are not inline with my beliefs. I’m kind of a bad person.”
How do I rationalize it to myself? The trick is I don’t. I think the problem is I procrastinate on my morals: Instead of trying to reason through my beliefs, I instead notice conflict and unease so I decide to shut down thinking about it. I know the murder and pain of animals—sentient beings just like you or I—is wrong, but whenever I start thinking about it now I just stop. And then when I think about how I stop thinking about it, I stop thinking about it. In “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) I think C.S. Peirce would refer to this as “method of tenacity”: basically just brute-forcing a belief.
What’s the resolution here? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll reduce meat consumption, maybe I’ll be vegetarian again. But, right now, I’m just not thinking about it. I know that’s bad. So I’m gonna stop thinking about that too, now.