Taking Shape

With hardly a moment to spare, we've finally settled on a topic for the paper. The question central to the topic is: "Is a Vegetarian Lifestyle the Right Way to Live?" I'm going to approach the topic as an argument in itself, divided into three portions. First will be a lifestyle/preference portion. Next the debate will move to the ethics of the way our livestock is treated before it meets its end. And finally the debate will focus on the health considerations which should be considered between the meat and vegetarian diets. Both sides of the argument, meat-eater and vegetarian, will be represented. As a way to initiate and maintain the flow of the argument, at least for the lifestyle and preference portion, I'll present a claim from one side or the other which is reasonably out-of-order, but are still readily accepted by people who want to be validated in their choice in dietary content--without doing much thinking about the reasons for their choices.

For example, and this isn't necessarily one that will wind up on the paper, is the way that meat products are advertised as symbols that demonstrate gender strength. Picture your run-of-the-mill, dumb, burger chain commercial for some hypothetical product like the "gargantuan burger" a six-patty, mayo slathered, bacon laden, jalapeno detonation, with an ounce of extreme potato chips under the top bun.

Of course, a burger this caliber could only appeal to the manliest of manly men; so naturally the model they hire to take an ever-so-dramatic, slow-motion bite of this monstrosity has to be a six-foot-four, blond guy, with a three-inch-beard and a huge neck exploding forth from the collar of a tattered old football jersey. As if eating a greasy mass of processed meat, cheese, bread and toppings is suddenly the equivalent of climbing to the summit of some alpine mountain, to spend a year by oneself hurling boulders down the slope and reading a well-worn book of viking poetry.

My point is, a lot of the nonsense that is shown in advertisements carry over into the culture in real-life, and there are quite a few people who really think that some of these ridiculous notions, which were only meant to sell fast food, speak some truth about who they choose to be as individuals. Even on the smallest level, any acceptance of this, should be countered with some reasoning. On the other hand, if it's manly to eat copious amounts of meat, it's obviously not an exercise of free will and a product of rational thought for a man to choose a vegetarian diet, but merely a case of a boy who used to like wearing his mommy's shoes. That kind of thing.

I probably wont spend a lot of time giving play to these kinds of misconceptions, I don't want to spend hours at a time spinning my tires in the mud because I mistakenly felt the right approach was to attempt the socratic method on myself and my sources. I'm just playing with ideas to find out what will work. The next post will be about some of the sources I've found.