What Hank has to say

I'm not a huge YouTube person; however, I do regularly watch a video blog done by a couple of brothers who are very thoughtful and interesting people.  In a video here, one of the two brothers spends most of the video talking about what it means to be a good person and how he can't consider himself to be one.  I think that he really hits on the complexity of our lives and how it affects our ability to be good or see ourselves as good.

If you haven't watched the video, you should.  Go watch it!

Now that you've watched it, you'll know that the example that he used was eating meat.  He makes the claim that choosing to eat the meat that is most commonly produced it in our country (there are exceptions like grass-fed beef from a small farm) means that you are making a choice to be "a bad person."  I think that it is bold of him to make things so clearly black-and-white.  I think that it is, or at least should be, difficult to argue with most of what he says though.  If you look at our meat industry, you find that animals are horribly mistreated, workers are paid poorly and are given unnecessarily dangerous conditions, energy and water is inefficiently used to produce the meat, and, to top it off, if we didn't eat so high on the food chain we could produce way more food for people who need it.

What you eat is certainly a personal choice, but as Hank does in his video, I encourage you to think about what you eat and learn about where what you eat comes from.  What Matthew and I have done is cut our meat consumption to about half a pound of meat each per month.  We buy our meat from the co-op because they choose meat sources that treat animals and people ethically.  Like Hank, we also find that in social situations it is sometimes necessary to eat meat out of respect and consideration of others.  I do feel better knowing that I am choosing my food based on my ethics and values because I try to live out every aspect of my life this way.

So, there you go!  More to think about!  Please leave comments if you have thoughts or questions!