You asked yesterday evening as we, bathed in the mellow sunset light, stood around the grill with the sizzling pork chops: why should we care if the earth can't support all the people who do live and will come to live on it, so that, despite all we do, famine and mass death ensues? Since we're all doomed anyway, why not go all in for oneself?
Sometimes I think these kinds of incendiary questions are your (irritating) way of warming up our coming together, but really, there was warmth enough in the fact that you were here to have dinner with us on this golden evening. We didn't have to put lighter fluid on the conversation as we had on the coals.
Yet, you devil's advocate, the question has been seriously posed by some people, and will be again, so I should prepare my response. After all, the 7 billion+ are an abstraction compared to the immediacy of this here with you now, smelling the meat and feeling more and more hungry: what principles make the fate of the multitude as a compelling as my short term prospects of tasty repast.
One of the good reasons for having a robust life philosophy or framework of values is that it can provide cogent arguments for not doing what we'd rather, or doing what we'd rather not. Thought-through and settled on before the test, principles help us broaden our perspective to consider, not just this moment but all we've learned and been persuaded of. So I said, 'Because friendship, hospitality and exploration are primal values, rooted in the from before-the-beginning passion of God-in-love for the Beloved (in whom we all participate), more fundamental even than our lives, even in those 'every-man-for-himself' scenarios moral theorists love to posit,' or something to that effect.
Brave talk, of course, and easy to make as we skewered the hot chops and put them on the plate for transfer to the table. 'This is something,' I said, 'that we're going to have to do less of, if we want to make sure everyone can be fed: eat meat.'
'How is that going to happen?' you asked, and the conversation shifted to what each of us had read recently about farming and farming policy and politics in general. As the dinner progressed and the sun went down, you threw fewer bombs, but I thank you for that first which was so contrarian---it made me think, and commit myself to public speech (if only between you and me.)
How well I do at living my principles is what I'm tested on daily. Perhaps the first is hope that hope can be equitably shared among all mankind, and the second that sacrifice, if required, is worth it if we encounter one another in the process.
When, in the gloaming, after blueberry pie and banana ice cream, I took you to the T, you remarked, 'You seemed less radical, more mellow this evening.' Maybe so, just so long as my convictions stay on call and able to balk or boot me when needed.
Brave talk, of course, and easy to make as we skewered the hot chops and put them on the plate for transfer to the table. 'This is something,' I said, 'that we're going to have to do less of, if we want to make sure everyone can be fed: eat meat.'
'How is that going to happen?' you asked, and the conversation shifted to what each of us had read recently about farming and farming policy and politics in general. As the dinner progressed and the sun went down, you threw fewer bombs, but I thank you for that first which was so contrarian---it made me think, and commit myself to public speech (if only between you and me.)
How well I do at living my principles is what I'm tested on daily. Perhaps the first is hope that hope can be equitably shared among all mankind, and the second that sacrifice, if required, is worth it if we encounter one another in the process.
When, in the gloaming, after blueberry pie and banana ice cream, I took you to the T, you remarked, 'You seemed less radical, more mellow this evening.' Maybe so, just so long as my convictions stay on call and able to balk or boot me when needed.
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