misanthropy

I have felt so demoralized lately. Reeducating myself about the way humans use animals drains so much out of me--especially because I have experienced some of these texts before and have yet to solve the problems they present. It feels like stasis in an area that so obviously cries for change. Also reading de la Casa's account of the Spanish in the new world... actually, that text and what Singer presents as going on in animal factories (need we even call them farms anymore?) are pretty similar. The early Spanish conquerors didn't really consider the natives they bludgeoned to be people, just like we don't consider animals to be people, just as we don't consider gays fully human (don't humans have a right to marry--and isn't this a country of free religious choice? so why are gays subjected to Christian biases?), just as black Africans dying of AIDS aren't really people. Oh, fuck. And then someone in one of my history classes made some crack about the buying and selling of government offices in imperial Spain, and the Supreme Court ruling last week, and I laughed and then immediately felt nauseous.

Last night I kept bursting into tears. I drank some wine and listened to my cats purr and felt a little better, but today I could hardly get up. This has happened before. The more I learn, the more likely I am to start periodically losing my mind. I really regret looking at the world so critically; I'm so tired of being outraged! And I can hardly keep myself fair. It's not just that meat itself is so hard for me, but that not eating meat is not enough. There is so much guilt. Buying a ball of sock wool is wrong. Everything I consume may in some way harm another being--a person taken advantage of, an animal wounded or slaughtered. Even my favorite fucking candy has pig gelatin in it. It is so hard, it is so exhausting, to feel so helpless when there is so much bad in the world.

I'm trying really hard not to hate people. I've been trying not to blame my anger on the fact that we are inconsistently ruthless in our violence towards each other and towards Others and instead accept that periods of this rage and sadness might be par for the course when one works in advocacy.