Re: You Can't Be A Vegetarian

I read this post entitled “you can't be a vegetarian”, and felt compelled to respond. This post has very flawed reasoning, and flawed assumptions, and a basic misunderstanding about what vegetarianism is, and an overall hostility toward vegetarians.

The basic thesis is this: vegetarianism is an irrational, emotional mass-hysteria. Due to the interconnected nature of the food chain, the many uses of animal products, and the notion that a plant can possibly feel pain, it is arrogant for someone to claim to be vegetarian. Furthermore, moral arguments for vegetarianism are invalidated by the fact that in certain locations on earth (austrailia) the loss of sentient life is greater in some measure when plowing land for farming instead of allowing cattle to graze on the natural vegetation.

A point-by-point refutation of this article would be pretty tedious, and I suspect limited in value. I gathered from the comments that the actual intent of the article was to “stir the pot” in a sense... piss off the vegetarians, get the meat-eaters to high-five one another, enjoy a perceived intellectual superiority over vegetarians... standard tribalistic bullshit. Apparently the author plans to do more like this - in all likelihood sloppily researched, hastily thrown together, lazily reasoned - to stir the pot and get upvotes and to get money. This is what really pisses me off about the post, as it represents so much of what is wrong with our main-stream media: disingenuous, manipulative yet profitable bullshit. Bill O'Reilly is a shining example of this, with all the hate he spews to appeal to and/or provoke certain demographics, reinforcing people's ignorant preconceptions and ideologies... He spews out so much bullshit so constantly there'd be no way to keep up with constant point-by-point refutations. I just hope the power of Steemit allows more reasoned, level-headed discussion to bubble to the top to help counteract the toxic effect of tribalistic groupthink...

Anyway, my intent in this response is not to participate in shit-slinging... Rather, I would like provide some real information and perspective to help counteract the ignorance that seems to fuel this kind of “anti-vegetarian” hate. I don't intend to try and convert people, to try and make non-vegetarians feel bad, or tell people they shouldn't eat meat. Rather, I'd like to explain from my perspective what vegetarianism is, and why I choose it.

First of all, a vegetarian is someone who chooses not to consume meat. A vegan is someone who chooses not to consume animal products, which includes dairy, eggs, leather. Different people have different reasons for choosing veganism/vegetarianism. Some choose it for the health benefits and nothing else. Some choose it for religious reasons. Some choose it out of concern for animal welfare, some out of concern for the the impact on on the global ecosystem. Some simply out of habit, or perhaps to be accepted within a group of friends. I've heard of some teenagers doing it to be rebellious against their parents. There are some people who are “mostly vegetarian” or “mostly vegan”, perhaps less concerned with purity of a particular status, or are transitioning.

Any combination/permutation of these reasons/situations may be any given individual's reason for falling under the umbrella “vegetarian”. Different people have different levels of passion about the underlying beliefs and reasoning. So you can't really generalize about vegetarians (for example, assess the intelligence or morality of someone based on whether they claim the label). And, equally importantly, no one vegetarian can speak for all others. It's not a religion or a club, it's a label for a particular lifestyle choice.

Personally, my primary reason for choosing veganism is out of moral obligation, and is an aspect of my own personal spirituality. There is tremendous suffering occurring constantly at factory farms, on a scale that boggles the mind. Billions upon billions of creatures condemned to a life of misery, pumped up on hormones and antibiotics, abused by frustrated workers, crammed into tiny cages. At hatcheries, live baby chicks go by on conveyor belts and males are tossed either directly into a grinder or into a plastic bag to be suffocated. It's horror movie grade mass killing. And let's not even mention the human beings working in these places, and the trauma and PTSD from being exposed to those horrors on a daily basis.

These creatures we are killing are not that different from us. Their ability to experience suffering is not really up for debate; the similarities between their nervous systems and ours, the DNA we share, similarities in brain structure, in behaviors, reaction to joy and pain... all indicate that they are close kin to us. Yet we humans inflict awful things on these creatures. Consuming the products that come from that system of exploitation means I am directly participating in and benefiting from that suffering.

You can make the argument that one person opting out isn't going to change the system. And since meat tastes so good, why bother? Well, here's why I brought up spirituality earlier. There's kind of an underlying belief one would need to hold to be able to use that justification for eating meat. That is: my actions don't matter. That is a toxic core belief to have, and I choose to resist it, and choose to believe that my actions do matter. Some hard-core secularists/atheists/skeptics might criticize the notion of choosing a belief (one can't rightfully hold a belief w/out scientific evidence!) - however I think it is a fallacy to expect that all of one's beliefs can be scientifically proven... (yeah, that statement warrants a bit more discussion... maybe in another article.)

Anyway, because I hold the belief that my actions do matter, and also hold the belief that what animals experience in factory farming is a horrifying atrocity, I need some way to reconcile those beliefs in order to achieve some semblance of sanity. Maybe I could get out of it by believing that free will is just an illusion, and therefore I should just ride the neurological impulses that mechanically propel me through my life. However that doesn't work for me... the reality of free-will is one of those beliefs that I can't choose not to hold. To me it is self-evident. (I happen to think the illusion isn't free will, the illusion is the certainty with which we think we understand the physical world... but again, that's a whole nother discussion).

So, that pretty much leaves me with one option: to opt out. I can avoid having to justify my participating in what I see as atrocities by doing what is reasonably within my power to not benefit from them. Of course, honestly identifying what is “reasonably within my power” can be quite a struggle... however, passing on certain foods and products is the least I can do, and turns out is actually a small price to pay for even a small amount some inner peace. (and the health benefits of a plant-based diet are just icing on the cake) Also worth noting: the whole “meat is delicious” feeling goes away. After some time associating it with the misery and torture from which it comes, it's not hard to look at a steak and be pretty much as disgusted by the sight as if it were a barbecued human forearm. (Not to be disgusting, but imagine how similar a rack of barbecued pork ribs on a plate would look to a rack of barbecued human child ribs... you can “yeah but” all day long, but the two are pretty much physiologically identical.)

Anyway, There is my perspective on the subject. I want to emphasize that I speak for myself. Perhaps there are aspects of my reasoning that some other vegetarians would agree with, and yet other aspects that other vegetarians would disagree with. Likewise, certain non-vegetarians would agree with certain aspects and disagree with others. That's how human beings work – we've all got ideological lenses through which we see and interpret the world around us. Those lenses are built from experiences, observation, reasoning, core beliefs, community, and vary widely from individual to individual. We have strong compulsions to draw lines between groups of people: establishing "in" groups and "out" groups: Us vs. the "stupid christians", us vs. the "stupid liberals", us vs. the "illegals", us vs. the "stupid vegetarians"... it's all the same stupid tribalistic bullshit. I believe we can evolve past it, and that the first step is to see those in the "out" group as fellow human beings and not simply labels.