Zones of Ethical Coherence
The discussion was quite engaging when we noticed that only few students were participating in it, besides the teacher. Some just stood up and went away carrying their things. Silvia said it's always like that. It's always a minority that enjoys thinking... She said that the other day she saw from her window a woman cleaning the sidewalk with a hose. She went nuts, raging with anger over the fact that the woman didn't care about such a waste of water.
- Did you talk to her? We asked.- No! What could I say? She has no perception of reality, and any attempt on my behalf to educate her would have been a waste of my time... Either she just wouldn't get it, or she would be offended, or still, she would feel so bad that she'd want to respond only to save face...
Then I started talking about zones of ethical coherence... How we choose things to be coherent in and neglect others that we're not prepared to make a change yet. For example: Silvia is very conscious about saving water, which is great. But she thinks that that's the way, the best way, or the only way to do it...
Well, What made me go back to being a vegetarian (and I say that because I consider that I'm almost 100% there) was information. Just getting informed did that. And the reasons were much of a social, economic and ecological nature.
You see, in the matter of water (and I'll write again to explain the rest) according to the UNESCO report in the World Water Forum, it takes 15 thousand liters of water to produce 1KG of meat. That means every time you eat a steak, you're justifying around 1500 to 3000 liters of water invested in cattle. Question: What uses up more water - washing the sidewalk or eating a steak? Silvia looked at me and said: I feel like that woman washing the sidewalk...
To eat or not a steak is not the problem. I'ts the industry. It's the ideology. It's the brainwash. And forgive my French, but... I HATE BEING MANIPULATED BY PEOPLE THAT HAVE NO F**KING REGARD AS TO WHAT IS THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE OF THEIR CHOICES - as long as their interests are met...
I might not save the planet by not eating meat, but I feel better not contributing in this way. I think it is the individual options we make that generate the collective positions we sustain. So there... Just to make it clear, I like meat and my mouth waters every time I feel the smell of a barbecue, because it's hard to erase my cultural programming overnight. But it's not so bad.
80% of our planet is water, of which 70% is salt water, and out of the 30% left there are 27% frozen in the arctic poles... so all we have are the remaining 3% that are spread among the rivers and aquifers. The projections say that at the rate we consume water today, there is water only for maybe another 50 years...




