Why Would Someone Raise Pigeons

Why Would Someone Raise Pigeons

"Why would someone raise pigeons?"

That's what I asked myself when I first encountered the hobby. Now, after talking to many pigeon fanciers, I think I have an answer. It's not that people are weird. It's that we live in a world where it is increasingly hard to do things ourselves. You can't grow your own food; you can't make your own clothes; you can't even install your own software. If you want to be self-sufficient, you have to turn to a hobby like pigeon raising.

It's not just that people who raise pigeons are living off the grid of mass production. They are also living off another grid: the grid of information technology. Like pigeon racers of old, they use technology to help them do things that would otherwise be impossible, but they don't let it take over their lives. If they did, they might as well be working in a factory or a cubicle somewhere. The point is to stay outside of all that, and still be able to do something productive with your hands and feet and eyes and ears and brain.

I've been reading about the ethics of eating meat, and the one question that keeps coming up is: Why would someone raise pigeons?

The reason this question comes up is that most people who advocate ethical meat-eating do so from a position of privilege. They grew up in the suburbs. They never had to hunt for their food. The worst job they ever had was scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins when they were 16. Now they live in Berkeley, where the only wild animals are squirrels and raccoons. All of a sudden they become fascinated with living off the land, and their idea of it is killing Bambi.