Why I became a vegetarian

On December 23rd of 2023 I decided to become a vegetarian, to eliminate my consumption of eggs, milk, and honey, and to limit my dairy consumption as much as I, in practice, could; for the past four years I was a pescetarian(meaning that I ate fish but not other types of animal). I made the decision to go vegetarian for both my health and for the welfare of marine life. Here I will explain my rationale for doing so in relation to my interest in nature and entomology, and I will also consider why it is socially acceptable to consume animal products in the first place.

If you do not know me, then I am a lover of insects; entomology is the primary trait of my personality, and the one subject that I am genuinely, permanently passionate about. I appreciate insects both scientifically and empathetically; to see a fly struggle in a body of water is, to me at least, heart-rending. As a middle-schooler(which was not too long ago — I am fifteen now) I once had to use the bathroom, yet when I went to do so there was a geometer moth perched in the doorway, rendering closing the door without crushing it impossible; instead of killing it or even shooing it out I held my urine for an hour or so until the moth had flown out of the doorway. In my backyard there is a large swimming pool into which such creatures as bees, flies, and ladybirds are apt to fall and get stuck; I will stop my daily walks purely to save them.

Until recent months I had rarely considered why I expressed so much empathy toward insects but so little toward the fishes I formerly felt so content consuming as though they had never been creatures with souls. It is to me obvious that insects do not wish to be crushed or doused with pesticides, so why should I be able to enjoy sardines knowing that they had been taken from their natural home — the ocean — just so they could end up on my plate? I once tolerated eating shrimp(which are crustaceans) despite the fact that they are more similar to insects than they are different; both shrimp and insects belong to the phylum Arthropoda, though they diverge taxonomically at the subphylum rank. I adore spiders, isopods(which are also crustaceans), and scorpions, which are all non-insect arthropods. Part-by-part, they are all rather similar; they all have exoskeletons, eyes, legs, and nervous systems(albeit simple ones). Thus, it is inconsistent that I would eat one but love the rest.

I may compare this to the fact that, in the Western world, people have no issue eating pigs, cows, or chickens, but are appalled at the concept of eating dogs, cats, or their fellow men and women. They are all mammals, and mammals are, once considered to be sums of their parts, all more similar than different. I could extend this to animals as a whole; insects, fishes, mammals, and birds all have eyes, nervous systems, survival instincts, mouthparts with which they feed themselves, the knowledge of whether they are at this moment hungry, thirsty, or injured, reproductive organs with which they propagate their species, and the drive to find a mate and reproduce.

Whether through the air or through the water, all animals breathe the same oxygen. Their outer appearance, whether they audibly scream or not, how intelligent they seem to be by anthropocentric standards, the type of body parts they have in order to be able to move, and what humans decided they were made for are wholly irrelevant in determining their inherent worth as animals. All animals have the same goals — to (1) live and to (2) carry on their species.

Humans, as a group, value other animals only when they can be exploited in some way; we keep pets to make us happy, artificially inseminate cows to produce milk for us, hunt innocent wildlife so that we have trophies to bring home, ride horses so that they can take us places, breed chickens and turkeys so that they can be slaughtered for our meat, allow honeybees to outcompete native pollinators so that we have honey, and remove fish, crabs, lobsters, and shrimp from the seas so that their remains can feed us. The majority of people will kill cockroaches, wasps, flies, moths, spiders, scorpions, rats, and mice simply because (1) they think them inconveniences, even if they can be easily relocated and pose no real threat, and (2) they see no benefit from exploiting them.

This mindset is why it is socially acceptable to consume animal products; people can simply believe that animals are, in being slaughtered for meat or in having their milk taken from them, fulfilling their duties placed upon them by people; this is further reinforced by the fact that livestock are bred specifically to produce products for humans. One will be called strange for having a pet cow and a monster for cooking and eating a dog; this is because the former involves keeping what society has deemed livestock, destined to be turned into meat, as a pet, and the latter involves slaughtering and consuming an animal people have been conditioned to cherish and feel empathy for; in more abstract terms, certain types of animals have different "roles" assigned to them by humans.

My rationale for eliminating honey from my diet has less to do with welfare and more to do with conservation. For those unaware, most beekeepers use bees of the species Apis mellifera(European honey bee) to produce honey; these bees are not native to North America, but to Europe, Asia, and Africa, and are considered invasive in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Apis mellifera consume from plants nectar that native pollinators also require; compete with native fauna for nesting locations; and pollinate nonnative plants that native pollinators neglect, and that will divert resources from native plants. To purchase honey is to support beekeepers in continuing to propagate nonnative bees that harm native pollinators.

Animals are not ours to be exploited. The love that people have for some animals despite the coldness they have toward others is morally inconsistent. Mammals — and animals on a larger scale— are more similar to each other than they are different. If people as a whole were more open to evaluating their consumption of animal products in relation to their beliefs regarding animals, then fewer people would be eating meat.

Recipe for apple oatmeal

Had this for breakfast yesterday.

Ingredients:

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1 cup oat milk

1 apple

3 tbsp peanut flour

Directions:

Put oats into bowl.

Cut apple into chunks. Place in same bowl as oats.

Put oat milk into pot, uncovered. Boil on high.

When oat milk comes to a boil, set it to medium heat and pour contents of bowl into pot. Add peanut flour. Peanut flour may be omitted in case of allergy.

Stir until oats have absorbed most of the oat milk. Serve.

Serves 1

610 kcal per serving

Went to the library book sale

Yesterday(2024/01/20) I went to the Norman F. Feldheym Library in San Bernardino — there was a book sale occurring there — and bought seventeen books, whose titles follow:

1. California's Wilderness Areas: The Complete Guide by George Wuerthner

2. The Audubon Society Nature Guides: Pacific Coast by Bayard H. McConnaughey and Evelyn McConnaughey

3. The Beachcomber's Guide to Seashore Life of California by J. Duane Sept

4. Fire, Faults, and Floods: A Road & Trail Guide Exploring the Origins of the Columbia River Basin by Marge and Ted Mueller

5. Day Hiker's Guide to Southern California by John McKinney

6. A Guidebook to the Southern Sierra Nevada and Exploring California Byways IV by Russ Leadabrand

7. Community Policing: Contemporary Readings by Geoffrey P. Albert and Alex R. Piquero

8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

9. Wonderful Town, which is a collection of stories from The New Yorker

10. Language of Computer Publishing by Dr Donald J. Brenner

11. The Power of Public Ideas by Robert B. Reich

12. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

13. Stoic Studies by A. A. Long

14. The Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles

15. Mind and Cosmos by Robert G. Colodny et al.

16. The Odyssey of KP2 by Terrie M. Williams

A drawing: Psychedelic grasshopper

I created this drawing — which I have titled "Psychedelic grasshopper" — last night for a school art project, but I loved it so much that I may as well post it here. Ink used for outlines and everything that is not the shading within the grasshopper. The reference photograph for the grasshopper can be found here; the grass is wholly a product of my imagination.

Dream 2024/01/10: An infestation

 This early morning I dreamt a dream that has left my skin crawling even after awakening.

Firstly I began noticing strange insects — large brown antlike ones and small yellow roachlike ones that I could not identify, along with a few moths — all over the walls of my bedroom. The blankets on my bed appeared to have invisible(for the time being) creatures crawling erratically underneath them. Because you and I become very irrational in our dreams, I thought nothing of the growing infestation; in fact, I went to the library, got a library card, and read digitised books and online articles at the computer.

When I came home, the infestation could not have been worse; my bed, every blanket on which now shivered and twitched constantly, now was populated by what appeared to be mushy, greatly deformed miniature rubber duckies, many of which had holes in place of faces. These duckies were not the ones wriggling about the blankets, though; looking closer I remarked unplaceable insects squirming about in the bed as well.

I allowed it to continue without saying a word to my mother; soon the populations of all the aforementioned creatures increased exponentially, as well as the deformities in the rubber duckies. There was constant movement of my blankets and pillows that made me question whether my bedding had a life of its own now. That was until two or three days later; I checked my books and found my dictionary having had a huge bite-shaped chunk — I say that because I could tell that there were too many and too perfectly rounded teeth for it to originate from a mammal — taken out of it. 

I went to the kitchen and told my mother, who quipped "So you really just wanted to see insects, huh?". When I led her to my room to show her, the situation had deteriorated even further; the blankets were now also teeming with little mice. I checked my phone and searched what termites looked like, because "termites" were throughout the dream the foremost thought in my head. Instead of what termites actually looked like, I was shown a cute crambid snout moth with white, brown, and red wings.

At that moment I awoke. Even writing all this made me squirm with disconcertment.

The beginning

Hello. This is Syrphid Society, my blog. The official blog for Insectopedia is at insectopedian.blogspot.com. Here I will make posts about my findings regarding insects, my insect-related tangents, and miscellaneous thoughts. There I will exclusively post information and updates regarding Insectopedia.