It’s so easy to stand over here and say, this is how it should be. I sit in my room, laptop literally on my lap with my legs akimbo, writing letters to Iceland and Denmark and Japan and marine parks and aquatic centres, all with the hope and the desire that they’ll read my letter and say, holy fuck she’s right! This IS how it should be. We need to stop killing all the fishes and the dolphins and the whales and putting them in tanks and keeping polar bears in hot places and drilling for oil (seriously, what happens to your car if it has no oil in it? Why would it be any different with the damn planet?) indiscriminately and setting canadian scientists on fire (or books, whichever) and just generally being douchebags.

Because I’m over here and I am judging you. I am judging you knowing that there are things I could be doing that are better and cleaner and saner and proactive and helpful and I am not doing them.

I am a judgemental asshole. I find fault with what you are doing, I’m going to tell you all about it (I’ve got the prime minister of Japan on speed email) and I’m going to hope that you, instead of taking offense at my indig-fucking-nation, would have the decency to say, there’s more to it than what you know. And then tell me about it. Tell me all about what I need to know about wanktress little pop tarts needing to wear a full length goddamn fur coat to perform at a concert, more so than the 50 goddamn fuzzy beasts that once had lives and hope and cute little eyes. Tell me about the Japanese people needing to hold on to a tradition archaic and useless and dangerous! to feed people meat they wouldn’t necessarily want if the government would stop lying to them about how much mercury it contains. Tell me about tap water that you can set on fire! Because we’re just too damned wrapped up in being addicted to petrol to consider trying something different.

Tell me what the benefit is to these things so I can understand why we have such a hard time owning the fact that we can be so cruel, so inhumane, so shortsighted, so goddamn blind to what seems to me the black and white of right and wrong. And I am a person who does not believe there is a whole lot of black and white in right and wrong. That’s a post for another day though.
I know how hard it is to admit you’re doing, have done, will do something wrong. There are a million ways to justify it. Every one of them is probably a lie. If there needs to be a justification, it suggests that something needs to be proven true. Which suggests there is a possibility that it is not. Truth is a luscious thing to dance with, to manipulate. We do it all the time, we do it every day. I forgot my shopping bags. I could ask for a box, but that means someone has to go into the back and get a box and now I’m holding up the line because everyone in line behind me has somewhere so important they need to be, I’ll just get plastic. Besides, I need garbage bags for the smaller receptacles around the house. Never mind the fact that I have about a billion bags already that I’ll take in for recycling some day. See what I did there. A tiny tiny thing. Yet, I’ve created a need for more plastic bags to be created. I’ve just served an industry that contributes to the death and suffering of creatures all over the fucking place because I could justify, I’m just one person.

That’s how it works. That’s how we get to continue passing blame, shirking responsibility, refusing to accept that the fault is ours. I haven’t done anything wrong. If anything I’m a victim of circumstance. Fuck that. You’re an asshole. Know how I know? Because I’ve been one too. I will be again, have no fear of that. But I’m doing my goddamn best to acknowledge my part in all this.

So sure, I understand there’s more than one side to the story. I understand that there might be more to it than my, in most cases, super uninformed brain has a clue about, much less any right to judge. But if you’re being an asshole and hurting things and someone says, hey asshole, why are you hurting those things? Is the proper response really, what are you talking about? I haven’t hurt anything! It was already like that! Your perspective is totally fucked and you’re just projecting your asshole judgements on to me and you couldn’t possibily understand because you have no insight into my culture/tradition/feelings/frustrations/desire to wear fur/love of oil/hatred of science/whatever.

Methnks thou doth protest too much. If you can’t stop being an asshole, just admit that you are one from time to time, we all have our moments. Get over yourself.