The Boy on Top
Dammit, Boy, my keyboard got hit by dribble again.
Mind you, we had particularly nice barbecued steak ourselves on Sunday.
I'm quite happy to be an omnivorous part of the food chain too. I am just as much an animal as a dog or a cow and eat what comes naturally to me, though my responsibility, in a way theirs' isn't, is to buy meat well reared. I am happy to moulder away being eaten by maggots afterwards (unless there's a more dramatic end in store of course) and so choose to be buried and not cremated, which I think spoils the circle.
I have always intended to be buried, but hadn't thought of it that way. Quite right too, the circle should continue. TB
My favorite lunch as a kid would be a roast beef sandwich made with fresh sliced RB from the Italian deli, fresh baked rolls from the same, mayo, topped with a sliced tomato with salt. mmmmmmmm.
FYI, not all vegetarians do it for the animals. I agree that careful husbandry is an essential part of (cue angelic music) the "circle of life". The problem is, it takes so much more energy ( the the form of grain/beans/etc, for example) to raise one pound of meat, that would be much better expended to use that same amount of grain to feed many people, for a season.
Also, the manner in which most meat animals are raised is just flabbergasting: pumped with hormones, fed sickly slaughtered brethreen (when they are clearly herbivores-- I just don't want that junk (chemicals) in me (even from "organic" or "cage-free" animals). And the environmental destruction by enormous herds of cattle is just unbelievable.
I'm in a curmudgeonly mood, obviously, so I will also say that the disgusting amount of chemicals used in preparing a body for burial (and the years and years of pill-popping most of us will have to do to stay alive by the end of our lives), makes our bodies toxic dumps waiting to happen at death. Yuck.
Sorry, should have used the plural on arguments. I do understand the environmental one, and its the one thing that makes me think twice, but neither is it entirely true. Cattle and sheep are best raised on poor land that can't be used for agriculture (at least not without lots of chemicals). Chickens can be raised in and around vegtable cropping. Pigs can quite happily be fed food waste. Animal husbandry can actually be enivornmnetally positive, though I agree it is mostly not.
You can actually now get an "organic" funeral. Be preparred to be interred without a toxic brew in your dead veins. However, the funeral has to happen fast... TB
Cremation works just as well. Bits of you go up the chimney and come down again in the rain and end up on the land or in the ocean; other bits of you get put in a tacky urn and will only not get recycled to the extent that someone decides to keep you on the mantlepiece instead.
Burial may well be greener in terms of the energy used, but I suspect it depnds on the site of the burial.
My, an argument I didn't expect! I think a little research and a future post is in order... TB
And I'm in a curmudgeonly mood too, so I will just add that everything we eat is "chemicals" and our bodies are entirely made of chemicals. Pretty much anything is toxic in some dose, and many chemicals we ingest are converted by our bodies into other chemicals anyhow.
Quite right. I don't do "organic" to be "chemical free", but for the husbandry and environmental issues. TB
everything we eat is "chemicals" and our bodies are entirely made of chemicals
Sorry I wasn't clear. What I don't like is the idea of consuming rBGH-laced foods, and finding formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol in my streams and water-ways because of the decomposing bodies in the cemetery.
If we had "pure" dead bodies composting in the cemetery, that would be fine. But we are living longer thanks to modern medicine ( = a variety of pills treating different aches and pains whose active ingredients may be stored in our body fat until we are put in the ground).
Yes, everything we eat is a chemical. Heck, if that reasoning makes someone want to slug down some ammonia as an aperitif, more power to them.
On the specific "natural cycle" point, I can't see any reason why cremation isn't just as good.
On the "which is more green" point, it depends on whether your local crematorium is a nice modern one with very low emissions, and whether your burial is a "green" one in a area which is being set aside as a nature reserve and arranged by an undertaker who will avoid embalming you.
I think. Difficult to find sites which aren't on one side or the other.
Leaving your body to medical science is a good alternative.
It's not as customary to be embalmed in Britain as in some countries. An open coffin at funerals is not the custom. I am peculiar enough to actively want to be eaten, albeit by worms as I'm a wuss at heart, and I want to be buried in a wicker coffin that will decompose quicker than a wooden one.
The 'energy consumed by animals' argument is all well and good, but I really don't think it tells all the story. After all, a couple of weeks ago there was a report pointing out that taking exercise is environmentally unfriendly, as it encourages one to eat more to replace the calories used. Obviously a reductio ad absurbum, but not the only one, just in an unusual direction.
I don't understand the logic of someone who is vegetarian and not vegan.
Bloody hell!! eat a bacon butty and shut the fuck up the lot of yer.
cows eat grass we eat cows. I know which I prefer bein'....
I like being eaten too but perhaps we'd better not go there.....
Yup, too much info... though I agree. TB
I never knew bacon butties came from cows.
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