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When did you first gain consciousness? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I became conscious while walking through LAX airport holding my moms hand as we approached a strange smiling man with an afro and handle bar mustache (turns out it was my father)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

My earliest memory is coincidentally the same time I became vegetarian.

I was about 4, we just got a new puppy. I was eating a hot dog outside, it was late spring or maybe summer and my family was grilling in the backyard. I look at my dog, I look at my hot dog (knowing it was beef, not an actual dog), I look back at my dog, back at the hot dog, and I remember distinctly thinking this:

I’m not going to eat my dog so why would I eat a cow? Why are cows ok to eat but dogs aren’t? That’s it I’m not eating this ever again. Or any animal.

And in that moment I not only became a vegetarian but an anarchist as well, realizing that hierarchy is a bullshit concept at the ripe old age of 4. I was a weird fucking kid. Both parents ate meat, and my family tried to force me to eat animals for a number of years until they gave up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

My OHs mum had a conversation with her mum in a butcher at roughly the same age. Must have been interesting to say this would have been about 1953 in northern England…in a pit village. I wouldn’t call it particularly progressive now.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's such a fantastic and meaningful memory, I'm honestly jealous lmao

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Aww thanks. What’s really cool is I get to tell the story pretty often. When people find out I’m vegetarian (I don’t advertise it but it comes up when ordering food or being offered food) they often question me about it - oh how long have you been vegetarian? - and I get to tell the story about how I’ve been a fucking anarchist since I was 4. When people find out my parents weren’t vegetarians too they lose their minds that a 4 year old could understand morals and ethics…