I was pressured into going hunting a few times with my dad growing up, and I ended up killing a few deer. It's something I'm not proud of, one among many things I came to regret later in life.

I used to think "If you can't or won't kill it personally, then you shouldn't eat it" was an argument in support of hunting. Now I think of it as an argument in support of vegetarianism. Funny how perspective changes everything...

What's also funny is how as a society we say things like "kids who kill bugs grow up to be psychopaths," yet we totally normalize hunting as a sport. Why is that? For that matter, why don't we say "anyone who eats animal flesh is a psychopath?"

As if being five steps removed from the suffering and death somehow abstracts the cruelty so that one can indulge in the pleasure of what is produced by it without bearing any moral culpability in the processes by which that meat arrived on one's plate?

Why is it only the forms of cruelty that society doesn't accept as cultural pastimes that are considered taboo? I should rephrase. Why does society accept some forms of cruelty and not others?