Food plays a vital role in every single person on Earth's life. It is the one constant among all people, and thus is often being examined. In a world with so many options of what to eat, people are afraid they could be eating the wrong thing. Worried that their food could be bad for them, the environment, farmers, or animals people turn to dietary recommendations. One of the biggest healthy eating “ideologies” is the one of vegetarianism, and the smaller, but growing, sect of veganism. Vegetarianism dictates one should eat no meat, veganism though dictates that one should eat no animal products at all. These two dietary plans differ in their severity towards restricting the intake of animal products, but not in the reasons to follow these restrictions; which often involve appeals that focus on the environment, health and animal rights. While often coming from a good place, the diets of vegans and vegetarians actually turn them into hypocritical people who live under a dictatorial and destructive ideology.

Saving the environment is one of the greatest appeals that persons opposed to the consumption of animal products have in their arsenals. This appeal consists a string of “facts” meant to shame meat eaters into ceasing to consume meat, such as “a staggering 51 percent or more of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture” (PETA) The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) instead says that this number is 14.5%, and could be reduced by 30% while sustaining the current meat supply. (The Guardian) The difference in these studies is simple, the one that claims 51% adds numerous things to CO2 emissions that are erroneous, like the claim that ⅓ of animal  emissions can be from animals breathing. This is an outrageous difference, yet even organizations such as the PETA, a major proponent at the forefront of the argument for the vegan or vegetarian diets, use faulty statistics. Data so incorrect that to proclaim it as fact is to not understand it or to willfully spread disinformation. In reality, vegan and vegetarian diets don’t actually really reduce a carbon footprint at all. Since to sustain such a diet a variety of foods is necessary to avoid malnutrition, foods that must be flown in from across the world. In the end, the footprint balances out to those who eat meat anyway. (CNN) Plus there is not only the effect on the globe, but on the long term good for humanity. If the United States became vegan it could support 735 million people, while if the restrictions were to be made less extreme and the U.S. was to be vegetarian it could support 807 million people. In fact, it was found in the same study that diets consisting of 20-40% meat were actually significantly more sustainable than any diet that was meat free. (NOVA)

Eat healthy. The ideology of dietary restrictions consistently insists that their diets can be tied to numerous health benefits. The PETA says “all our dietary needs, even as infants and children, are best supplied by a meatless diet.” This statement is not altogether false, but this system of eating is not altogether as safe as it would suggest. Such as a case in Georgia where two parents received life sentences after starving their baby to death on a “vegan diet”, (Daily Mail) or another case in Italy where a 14 month old baby was found to be malnourished and weighing the same as a baby that was 3 months old after being fed a vegan diet. (Washington Post) These two cases are examples of issues with veganism, that the diet itself is naturally lacking several nutrients extremely important to human development normally found in meat. Italy is in the process of passing a law that would institute a four year penalty on parents who enforce a vegan diet on their kids, after three other such cases involving malnourished children under vegan diets. (BBC) It is often easy to tie a host of health benefits to a vegetarian diet, as a study in Austria found that they have lower BMI’s. (Medical University of Graz) The PETA spouts numerous facts claiming those who eat vegan or vegetarian diets are less likely to have heart attacks or cancer. This forgets to factor in that people who follow these diets are also less likely to smoke, consume tobacco, and are wealthier something the study from Austria did do. Vegetarians were found to suffer more from anxiety or depression, chronic diseases and a 50% increase in heart attacks and cancer. This is then portrayed as the “healthy” diet.

Animal rights rest on the crux of vegan or vegetarian arguments. People don’t want to hurt animals, and they see the industry that creates animal products as being abusive. If someone has a guilty conscience about eating meat then they can become vegetarian, or even go vegan. What can’t be done though is guilt those who would like to eat meat into following a diet that is less sustainable, needs supplements to make up for lost vitamins, has the same carbon footprint as eating meat, and can hurt one’s children. The sort of behavior by organizations like the PETA and the vegans and vegetarians who support it is akin to a cult, they ignore facts and dogmatically push their arguments. They ignore that their diets meant to be champions of healthy and the ecosystem go against everything they claim to believe in, and instead insist on lying about the subject. It pushes veganism and vegetarianism on people, dietary restrictions than can actually force people to sacrifice something that can be a large part of their lives and happiness, meat eating. For now though, the structure that pushes veganism and vegetarianism is harsh and hypocritical, often having to use downright lies or bad science to support their ideas. Vegans and vegetarians use propaganda, and they share company in history with fellow infamous vegetarian Adolf Hitler who too used system wide deceit and denial of reality to push his ideology.

Why this is my best possible 2fer: 

For me 2fers were at first just assignments, but the longer I did them they became easier and I decided that I did my best work when I was having fun. My first 2fer was about human attention span, it was an interesting enough topic but I just couldn't really get interested. What I was writing about was too factual and too easily agreeable. As time has gone on, I have tried to make my 2fers more outrageous and to prove ideas that can be difficult to approach or prove. I decided to make this 2fer the climax of that, to prove a point that had little to no evidence in actuality to back it up and to prove it with a relation of events and data. This is my best possible 2fer because I made it fun and made a claim that seemed ludicrous relevant and believable by the end of the paper. 

Works Cited:

1. "Going Vegan Isn’t the Most Sustainable Option for Humanity." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 16 Aug. 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/going-vegan-isnt-actually-th/

2. "Italy proposal to jail vegans who impose diet on children." BBC News. BBC, 10 Aug. 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37034619

3. Thompson, Paul. "Vegan couple will serve life sentences for starving baby to death on a diet of soy milk and apple juice." Daily Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 13 Sept. 2011. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036671/Vegan-couple-serve-life-sentences-starving-baby-death-extreme-diet.html

4. "Factory Farming: Misery for Animals." PETA. PETA, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/

5. "Disadvantages of Being a Vegetarian." HealthGuidance.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11183/1/Disadvantages-of-Being-a-Vegetarian.html

6. Martindale, Wayne. "Is a vegetarian diet better for the planet?" CNN. Cable News Network, 06 Feb. 2017. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/06/health/vegetarian-diet-conversation/

7. Dye, Lee. "Researcher: Vegetarian Diet Kills Animals Too." ABC News. ABC News Network, 01 May 1970. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97836&page=1

8. "Meat and the Environment." PETA. PETA, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-environment/

9. Bryce, Emma. "Do the UN's new numbers for livestock emissions kill the argument for vegetarianism?" The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 27 Sept. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/world-on-a-plate/2013/sep/27/environment-food-ipcc-emissions-greenhouse-gas-livestock-vegetarian-meat

10. "Vegan Diets: Healthy and Humane." PETA. PETA, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/animals-used-food-factsheets/vegan-diets-healthy-humane/

11. Buckert, Nathalie T., Johanna Muckenhuber, Franziska Großscha¨dl, E´va Ra´ Sky, and Wolfgang Freidl. "Nutrition and Health – The Association between Eating Behavior and Various Health Parameters: A Matched Sample Study." Journals. Medical University of Graz, 7 Feb. 2014. Web.

Baptista & Chasen: The Taming of a Child

The Taming of the Shrew, Harold & Maude

“The Taming of the Shrew” presents a vision of romance in 16th century aristocracy, complete with the copious parental power afforded in these situations. Baptista is the widowed father of two daughters, the oldest of which is unruly or “shrewd” and the play’s plot centers around his plan to marry her off. “Harold & Maude” is a movie from almost four hundred years later, 1971. In it Harold’s widowed mother Mrs. Chasen tries to marry him off to a young cast of suitors she has selected, who are all in one way or another scared off by his eccentric behaviour.

While Baptista’s issue is his curst daughter Katherine, Mrs. Chasen’s issue is a quiet emotionally disturbed son. Baptista’s problem with Katherine is that she will be difficult to marry off given her personality. He hopes to find someone to marry her before she is too old, her personality could ruin her and his family's reputation with it. Mrs. Chasen seeks to use a marriage to fix Harold’s behavioural issues, which include staging elaborate fake suicides in an attempt to elicit a reaction from his mother. She sees this as a way to have Harold grow up. Both parents seek to find their child a partner who will solve what they see as issues with them. While these two texts present situations 400 years apart, with swapped gender roles, and different issues for the respective parents they both show that parents are given a role in society to find the “best match” for their children. Society dictates to parents that this “best match” is the one that gives them control over their children, and solves “behavioural issues”.

Early into Harold & Maude Mrs. Chasen instructs Harold that he must grow up. That he has lived an idyllic, soft childhood and it is time he became an adult. Mrs. Chasen’s solution to Harold’s behaviour is simple, she tells him that it is high time that he get married in order for him to mature, to straighten him out. In The Taming of the Shrew Baptista never expressly states that he wants to fix her personality with marriage, but this is an expression of the times in a way. Baptista’s primary and only concern with his daughter is getting her married, but once he has married her off to Petruchio and she comes back to him obedient he is overjoyed. It was his hope that marriage would make Katherine obedient, and we see this in his happiness at having this hope fulfilled. This quote comes from Act 5, Scene 2, Lines 124-128, right after has Petruchio won a wager involving who has the most obedient wife.

“The wager thou hast won, and I will add

Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns,

Another dowry to another daughter,

For she is changed as she had never been.”

Baptista is thrilled over this newfound submissiveness in his previously disagreeable daughter. Petruchio has successfully turned Katherine around, and made her into the daughter Baptista wanted to have. Just as Mrs. Chasen hoped to do with Harold, take his bad behaviour and fix it with a good marriage. Both of these parental figures used marriage as a sort of boot camp or training to mold their children into the people they wanted them to be, that would be easier to deal with. In fact, when Mrs. Chasen is struggling to find someone who will take Harold and his numerous eccentricities she orders him to join the military instead. Literally a boot camp meant to teach obedience, stamp out strange eccentricities, and make someone into a “man”. This is an equivalence of two things that should be very different, a union between two people and training for war. In both situations though the parents hope to use these institutions to “straighten out” their children.

After Mrs. Chasen orders Harold to begin searching for a marriage, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She brings Harold a survey that will create his profile for a primitive version of an online dating website. Through the whole scene Harold doesn’t say one word, but his mother still successfully fills out the survey. Filling in her own opinion or life situation for many questions, often judgmentally.

This is nothing compared to the amount of power Baptista has, where he can actually choose both his daughters’ future husbands. This means that he treats the entire marriage process as if he was a merchant, his primary concern not being someone to make his daughters “grow up” but whoever can offer the most amount of wealth. Illustrated here in Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 362-364

“Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both

That can assure my daughter greatest dower

Shall have my Bianca’s love”

Mrs. Chasen and Baptista both hold power over their children, as most all parents do. They both use this power in attempts to control their child’s potential future spouse, Baptista being far more successful in his attempt. This attempt at control drives to the heart of what parental interference in relationships is trying to attempt. They seek obedience from their children as they had always had it before, and both look for what they want from their children’s suitors. They don’t look for what they think their children will like, but what they have decided they find desirable in a suitor. Baptista looks for money and Mrs. Chasen fills out the survey to her own liking, nowhere do their children’s desires enter into this equation. They see marriage as a path to compliance from their children, but for it to have the desired effect they must be certain the medicine is right. They set about searching for a suitor the same way one would locate the right boarding school for their unruly child.

These two pieces have completely different underlying themes and morals, but behind their main plots lies a commonality in the role of the parent in young love. Mrs. Chasen and Baptista are both in a situation where they have less control over their children as they grow up. So they both gravitate to find their child the “best match”, in a last bid to keep control and solve worrying issues of disobedience or perceived immaturity in their children. Over time though parents have lost power in choosing the next stage in their child’s life, as evidenced by Harold & Maude. No longer can they pick the suitor they most like regardless of their child’s wishes, the most they can do is attempt to influence their child’s choice. Demand their child get married, so they can find possible options that match their hopes for their child’s future. Mrs. Chasen’s failure shows that parents have lost so much of the power they used to hold, but that doesn’t stop them from still trying to control the future in a journey to find “the best match” and someone who will “straighten” their child out.

To my apparent acquaintances,*1

I am not like any of you. I am not rich, I care about my work, and I try my hardest not to be judgemental.*2 While I know you all view public school as some sort of awful place where education and freedom die, I hope you all realize that when you get to college with all the money your parents have, you all know nothing.*3

You all have known each other for years. This was my first year at this homeschool co op because this was the first year my family could afford to send me. For people who all profess themselves as being “accepting weirdos” it's amazing to me how little you wanted someone different from yourselves present. For people who have realized the importance of social justice through the wonders of social media, it’s interesting to look around the room and be the only one who isn’t rich or white. I don’t think that you were racist, or necessarily even classist, you just didn’t want someone there who wasn’t exactly like the rest of you. My sin was my lack of a smartphone, my dislike of consumerism and my disdain for social media. For daring to cause any kind of debate or actual learning in a room filled with one dimensional conversations, if any at all.*4

I am sitting across a table from Ned’s Mom.*5 The previous week the group had been talking about government, and Ned had been talking about how his favorite government was “Anarchy government”. Given that anarchy's definition is “absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual” I had asked Ned if he knew what anarchy was, before explaining this. Ned’s Mom is explaining to me how my actions had “hurt” Ned and the “community” by so rudely correcting what he had been saying. I am timid and she is an authority figure, so I back down and apologize. This is all happening a week after I made the comment, because I can only afford to go to the homeschool co-op once a week, not the other days available. Obviously in the intervening time they met about the horrible thing I had said, and this “radical unschooling” parent had decided to cover up her son’s lack of knowledge by having a stern talking to with someone ¼ her age over a comment made and already forgotten.*6

The co op, while also being a social area where teenagers could sit in rooms together and use their phones, is also meant to serve as a learning space. They would teach “classes”, one per semester. One of the classes was a “film class” We all would sit in a room, watch a movie, and then talk about it, any of you remember that thrilling class? The film class had a horribly random feel, no distinct curriculum or direction, and a complete lack of focus.*7 The discussion after the movies would often come down to heaping praise upon the parts everybody had liked or finding ways that movies from 50 years ago were sexist or awful. Now if I ever tried to say something negative about a well liked movie, or defend a movie that was being hated on, the entire group would turn on me in an instant. Not in a scholarly fashion, but in one where I was the clear enemy and where voices would be raised. This would often culminate in even the present adults, meant to stimulate insightful debate would attack a 14 year old for disliking a movie.*8 This would go so far as to accuse me of potentially being sexist for disliking a rom-com that had a strong female lead.

You all didn’t like me. That much was obvious, but I didn’t want it to be. There was about a dozen of you. About a dozen people who lived in houses nearly double the size of mine, were only children, and had pools in their backyard. My parents didn’t have the time to come to the co-op to hang out with the kids and make sure they didn’t do anything too crazy, like ever get off their phones. That was because my Dad had to work almost everyday to pay the bills, and my Mom had to actually teach my brothers. Meaning the other parents didn’t exactly love mine, and I could feel the animosity when they came up. When I came in every morning, nobody would really say hello, and none of you seemed to particularly want to talk with me. My family couldn’t afford to get me a smartphone, and when you all found out, you laughed. Most mornings I would spend simply sitting in the middle of an overheated room, waiting for the class to start, in which case you all would be forced to interact with me.

There were board games in the room and nearly every morning I would try to get you all to play them with me. The parents there supervising were meant to make sure it was a stimulating environment and that the kids did something like play, so in the first few weeks you all let the games be played. Issues quickly began to arise, immediately strategy games began to quickly die off as often the same person would win them. That person incidentally being me. After a few weeks though, nearly all game playing was stopped and the time spent in the trailer simply degenerated into nothing until a “class” was taught. Why was this allowed to degenerate so? Because these parents meant to foster a learning environment couldn’t handle seeing their kids lose a board game, nor could the kids handle losing. They would pout or refuse to play at the age of 14 their parents would choose to cancel all game playing at all. Just as they would shut out anything that disagreed with them or the kids there, even if that something was another kid. A kid whose only crimes were that he couldn’t afford to be there until now and was different. I am glad I didn’t change for all of you though. For now, I have left and I can see that any change to be like you would simply have been a change for the worse.*9

From,

That Weird Kid

Footnotes:

1. Oh god, what a cringy way to start.

2. I say this. Then I directly go on to be horribly judgemental and hypocritical. Ah, sweet irony.

3. Oh. I am oozing with an non judgemental tone here. Literally right after I made my brilliant point about me being ever so fair.

4. To elaborate on this point, the average hangout in this group was disgustingly boring. The room would be filled with numerous bodies so unmoving one might think they were recently dead, with their glazed eyes, slouched countenances, and still twitching thumbs.  They were not cadavers though, but living breathing children draining the life out of their bodies and directly into their iphones. For a child who didn’t even like texting, these were some of the most boring times in my life.

5. Ned was another kid who went to the co-op. He was a massive nerd and never bothered with schoolwork as far as I could tell. Although there I go being judgemental again!

6. Ugh. Even now I can’t believe this adult’s immaturity, at least I can excuse mine to age! Given that she was, by my estimates, in her late 40’s to mid 50’s she hardly has such an excuse.

7. Looking back on it now, this curriculum was not so “random” as I thought. But simply a collection of our “teacher’s” favorite movies. Ah, what a learning experience.

8. Well I guess in retrospect since it was one of her favorite movies though, it makes sense she would so vehemently defend them huh? To the point of saying that I obviously just didn’t have any idea what makes movies good, and probably just saw trashy cheap movies before then. (This in response to me saying I thought the movies musical portions were a bit forced and I didn’t think the boyfriend in the movie was “dreamy”)

9. So yeah, it was a cheesy and pretentious little ending for a letter with the same qualities. With the added bonus of being horribly judgemental to top it all off. Still there in a message in all this that’s good, albeit cliche. I was an outsider, and instead of changing who I was or just shutting up I stood up for myself (even though I didn’t stick to my guns with the whole “Ned’s Mom Situation). I had to realize what was and wasn’t important to me, and since this time I have found what is important to me in things like books and film, in pursuing knowledge. They made me realize that fitting in does not necessarily mean one is happy, and that I could be far happier by just doing what I wanted to do. Which is even cheesier than anything I wrote in the letter, so sue me.

Serial killers are some of the most depraved criminals to ever exist, and their killings used to be sensationalized across the country. One would be hard pressed to find a household that had never heard the names Ted Bundy or Charles Manson both of whom are serial killers from the 1970’s. Since then, it seems that the number of Serial killers has dwindled dramatically. Has American law enforcement conquered these reprehensible human beings through advances in technology? No, in fact, the seeming dying out of the serial killer has nothing to do with the advancements in law enforcement, and all to do with the environment they are surrounded in. The serial killers of the 70’s and 80’s were products of the unstable atmosphere in America around that time, and the country is primed to see a huge increase in serial killings in the near future.

Over the last few decades, America has definitely had one thing going for it; serial killers have been declining. James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northwestern University, says that America has seen a serious decrease in serial killings in the last couple of decades. Before the 1960’s there were almost none, then they took off, 19 in the 1960’s, followed by 119 in the 70’s and 200 in the 80’s. In the 1990’s America still saw approximately 141 cases, but then in the 2000’s this number has shrunk to 61. In a sense, the 70’s and the 80’s was the “Golden Age of Serial Killers”,  James Alan Fox thinks that this shrink may have something to do with terrorism being the new serial killer of American interest (Slate). That serial killers don’t get covered in the news anymore, because Americans just aren’t interested in them, yet a lack of interest could hardly explain the number of serial killers themselves falling so sharply. Besides, a lack of interest hardly in serial killers hardly seems to be a problem among Americans, just look at what they are watching on television, Dexter, True Detective, Hannibal. Serial Killers still captivate the American mind. Violence is still sensationalized by American news outlets, terrorism has received rampant coverage for the last decade. So it might seem possible that the terrorism of the 2000’s has taken the fear and place in society that serial killings occupied before. Terrorists themselves not technically being serial killers either, under the FBI’s definition which is that “a serial killer is a person who murders three or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break (a "cooling off period") between them.” (FBI) Yet terrorism is not a new phenomena, in fact there was rampant terrorism during the “Golden Age of Serial Killers”. In the 70’s there were actually hundreds of terrorist attacks throughout the country, bombings, shooting, and hijacks, while in the years since 9/11 there have only been about 2 dozen. (CNN) So it’s not interest that has dwindled, but serial killers themselves, along with surprisingly enough domestic terrorists.

The 60’s were not a calm time in American history, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of both Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, and the sexual revolution. The country went crazy in these years, and it caught up with us, in a big way, in the form of hundreds of serial killers and domestic terrorists. This wasn’t simply a matter of coincidence either, the atmosphere of a society can have a direct effect on the manifestations of an unstable mind. An article in the New Yorker references this occurrence “Grandiose schizophrenics from largely Christian countries often claim to be prophets or gods, but sufferers in Pakistan, a Muslim country, rarely do. In Shanghai, paranoid people report being pricked by poisoned needles; in Taipei, they are possessed by spirits.” (Marantz). The mind manifests delusion from its own environment, in fact this same article from the New Yorker is about a new kind of paranoid delusion; the Truman Show Effect. It’s an occurrence where a person believes they are part of a vast secret reality TV show, and are followed constantly by hidden cameras. Society manifests its events onto people, and this quickly begins to explain just how the 60’s had the impact it did on the country. The subsequent decade’s 119 serial killers were a result of the violent atmosphere of the previous decade, their crimes the result of the delusional manifestations of a country gone crazy.

A parallel can be drawn with the 2000’s. The United States in the last 8 years has bombed Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria, that’s 7 countries in total. (CNN) America is currently going through one of the most politically divisive presidential cycles of all time, with Trump’s infamous race baiting and Hillary Clinton’s blatant corruption scandals. Race relations are deteriorating and as of August 26, 38 police officers had been killed in the line of duty, 58% more than last year, which in of itself is a manifestation of societal problems in the form of violence. (CNN)  The country is once again going through a time of great strife and the repercussions of this are going to be wide reaching, and if history shows anything, violent.

It might be difficult to see the connection between domestic violence and America attacking people in 7 countries across oceans, until one looks at one very telling trend. While serial killings and depraved murders might be on the decline in America in the 2000’s, one kind of violence has been on the rise: Mass shootings. According to a study by the FBI using their definition of an active shooter incident “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area” there have been 160 such incidents between 2000 and 2013 with a marked trend of increase. The first 7 years showing a rate of 6.4 incidents annually, the next 7 showing a rate of 16.4 annually. War is murder sanctioned by the government, and it is becoming apparent that this violence can not just stay overseas as  had been hoped. While mass shooters are not serial killers, they are a manifestation of a country that is quickly becoming more and more violent. In fact, mass shooters are not only products of larger societal ills in America, but add to the unstable atmosphere becoming prevalent through the country. As the number of mass shooters increases, it’s not unlike a pot slowly rolling to a boil, bringing the country closer and closer to the rebirth of the serial killer.