Response to "What Can Change the Culture?"

I agree with Sierra that the main focus of changing culture, in regards to meat eating or anything else, has to be education.  I think that it should be more outwardly broadcasted what sorts of cruelty animals face when being slaughtered or raised to slaughter, but not in such a way that meat eaters are antagonized beyond the point of being reasonable.  Education needs to come from sources other than PETA and in more effective ways.  However, I think there are other ways that could help promote vegetarianism as well, such as presenting it in a way that doesn't seem so radical or inclusive, and also by creating more publicly available vegetarian options and better tasting meat substitutes.

Original Post: http://siearrasviewsnhn.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-can-change-culture.html

Vegetarianism

I'm a vegetarian.  I have been for four years, and have wanted to be for longer.  Freshman year of high school, we moved out to farmlands, and I couldn't eat a hamburger with cows mooing in my back yard.  So I'm a vegetarian.  My boyfriend is not.

It's never been a problem for us though.  He doesn't force his beliefs (or bacon) down my throat and I don't force mine (or tofu) down his.  At first he didn't even believe I was a vegetarian, because I don't criticize him/anyone else for eating meat.  Sure, I'll ask what kind of "dead animal" something is, rather than what kind of meat, but that's mostly just how I talk and not actually a great moral judgement on his nutritional choices.  I do personally think that killing animals, even for food, is wrong but I also understand that not everyone feels that way and that for a lot of people eating vegetarian (especially healthily) isn't an option.  I think it's one of the battles we have to fight through education, while still kind of giving people leeway to do their own things. I don't think it's something that can be resolved through criticizing either side, which I think is what happens a lot when something like this comes into discussion.  We have to learn to talk morals without pulling the morally superior card or nothing will get accomplished.

Response to Nature vs. Nurture.

I agree that nature probably has a greater effect than nurture just because there are so many traits that you can't cause by nurture.  But I still find the studies that suggest nurture has to effect surprising.  Can something so complex be influenced by one or the other?

Response to post at http://jennaoconnorr.blogspot.com/2013/03/nature-vs-nurture.html

Nature versus Nurture

I think nature versus nurture is so controversial because, as humans, we really don't like to be told what to do.  We don't like to think that we're helpless, that every thing we do is controlled by some unchangeable force, that who we are has already been decided and we don't have a choice in the matter.  That's why 'both' is sometimes the most easily accepted answer.  We don't want to think that who we are is decided by how our parents treat/raise us- we want to be able to be different from that, change from that- but we don't want to think that these little things we're made up with but can't see have the end all be all decision on who we are either.