Identity

Is the crisis, can’t you see?

I’ll leave that there for the time being. Right now, there are so many questions. So few answers.

Yesterday, quite by chance (I forget exactly how I got there), I was confronted by an image accompanied by a statement from a proud parent. Here’s the image, albeit with the girl’s face cropped out to avoid any issues of privacy and whatnot.

Now, if you are being presented with this for the first time, (and you probably all fall into that category unless you happen to have followed my Internet browsing yesterday, which would be just a little bit weird), what do you see? What do you think the proud parent would have been so keen to publicise, here? What is going on in this moment which merits a Tweet? Indeed, so many questions you could be asking, nay, should be asking.

Dare I go on? Oddly, I’d largely forgotten about it by the time I eventually hit the sack, yesterday, but I woke after a night full of really bizarre and troubling, if not downright scary, dreams, and this was on my mind. I figure I need to work it through by making some notes and asking some questions.

Let me be clear. I am curious. I am not making any judgements. I cannot judge because I don’t understand. Hence, the questions. Genuinely, I want to make sense of what is happening. If I can’t do that, at least I may have some of the answers, but I ain’t holding my breath.

Back to the photograph. I recognise mushrooms and baked (haricot?) beans; I recognise plastics; I recognise processed stuff (or rather, I recognise that it is stuff that has been processed, not what it is). I suspect you may also be familiar with mushrooms, beans, plastics and processed foods.

So, what exactly was the father so proud to show to the world?

Okay, enough suspense. He wanted the Twittersphere to know that his daughter was enjoying her vegan lunch, subtitled with the fact that she is just one vegan in a school of 1,000 pupils. I have no problem with this. Call it a choice, call it her identity, call it what you will. It’s a free country (sort of). The dad is proud of his young daughter’s lifestyle choice, and that’s his prerogative, I guess (not least since he claims to be a nutritionist, so he must know what he’s doing, right?).

But, here I can’t help but return to the detail of the image. Look at the food. Mushrooms and beans (albeit beans which themselves have been processed, canned and transported some considerable distance) are the only recognisable natural foodstuffs. I fully admit that I don’t understand the vegan philosophy (and hence partially the reason for this post), but how does the philosophy fit with this smorgasbord of processing? I’m trying not to make light of it, but back in the summer I learnt that oat milk is a thing. I also learnt that oat milk is brought into the UK from Sweden. Just think about that for a moment. I’ve thought about it much more than is healthy, probably. Making milk from oats, for a start. Do oats even produce milk? Then, the costs (financial, ecological) of shipping it across the North Sea, never mind the cost of processing said oats to create said milk. So, what of the costs (ecological, financial) of producing all this processed food? I see plastic containers and packets; I see some kind of spread (margarine?); I see drink which is apparently both dayglow green and blue. What is that? It hasn’t been taken from the soil and placed in a cup, has it?

The problem is that is runs wider and deeper than this, doesn’t it? Imagine the cost to the world’s resources of all this processing, transporting, marketing and selling vegan(-friendly) products. I would understand if vegans only bought fresh, locally produced, fruit and vegetables. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Take a silly(?) example: each time a lorry transports a few thousand gallons of oat milk down the M1 to your local Sainsbury’s distribution hub, how many thousands of insects are wiped from the face of the planet, and then wiped from the front of Eddie Stobart’s cabs? There is a cost to everything. How about when vegans visit non-vegan friends and relatives and proceed to consume additional energy to prepare their own meals, when a day or two eating their hosts’ food would surely not make a difference in the overall scheme of things? Would it?

In spite of what I noted earlier, I guess I am in danger of sounding judgmental. This is not my intention. I am simply trying to ascertain at which point it becomes acceptable/unacceptable to question these kind of choices? This brings me back, rather brilliantly, if I do say so myself, to where I began. The opening line to this rather fabulous record:

Here are the lyrics in full:

Identity
Is the crisis
Can’t you see?
Identity identity
When you look in the mirror
Do you see yourself?
Do you see yourself
On the TV screen?
Do you see yourself
In the magazine?
When you see yourself
Does it make you scream?
When you look in the mirror
Do you smash it quick?
Do you take the glass
And slash your wrists?
Did you do it for fame
Did you do it in a fit?
Did you do it before
You read about it?

Hardly on a par with Coleridge or Wordsworth, of course, but these lines speak to me like few others. Mostly, it is the final question. How much do we do of our own volition, and how much because we are somehow persuaded, coerced, conned, bullied, fooled, misinformed, encouraged? Would we really do all this stuff if we lived in a bubble, a vacuum, a cave, far from the influence of others? I somehow doubt it.

To be fair, I probably wouldn’t shave my legs if I hadn’t read about it in so many books about cycle racing, but the point stands. I am worried that so much of what we are confronted with today is simply a raft of identity politics, constructed, manufactured and (often) driven by dark forces (often) growing rich on the gullible. I hope that the public at large will be encouraged to ask more questions, perhaps as a result of reading this. Ms Poly Styrene would have been proud of me. And you, whatever your persuasion. Right?