How the omnivore is thinking

739:

I used to think as an omnivore thinks, even when I came to understand the cruelty involved in animal farming and animal killing. However strong the argument might have been it would never have persuaded me to act so differently to everyone else. As a young adult and as a child I had always been trying to fit in, not to stand out as being different. Having food in common with others is a great leveller, and not so difficult either when the society we live in makes it so easy to be ‘not fully informed’ - I had always consumed animal-based foods and confections, not just to satisfy my hunger but also for pleasure.

            It was only when I started to find out about the provenance of certain foods that I began to question the ethics of those foods. Suddenly there was a problem facing me: certain foods were a huge source of satisfaction for me, so to give up my favourite foods for the sake of animals was problematic. I had to ask myself if I was I a compassionate person. Surely, if I’d wanted to test my compassion I’d have shown it first towards my fellow humans. I reckoned that there were enough humans to empathise with. I’d have argued that my compassion couldn’t be expected to extend to animals, not the ones we eat anyway. But does this argument stand up? later I found that it didn’t. It challenged my willingness to participate in ‘normal behaviour’, condoning the sort of routine cruelty practised on farm animals.

            As a life-long meat eater, my problem was a reluctance to admit that I might have been wrong all along, about my food habits. It would have meant too much loss of face and consequently, also, too big a step-down in lifestyle. I’d been eating the same sorts of foods all my life and to do without animal products altogether would take a lot of un-doing. And if I tried to undo so much, I mightn’t be able to keep it up for the rest of my life.

            But wrestling with these problems at the time, as a young person, I could see there was at least some chance to change - I was less set in my ways. I was less troubled by guilt since I’d had fewer years of making my own independent food choices. Until recently, my food had been provided by my elders, and now, the act of rebelling against the habits of the older generation felt appropriate. A radical diet-change was a badge for independently striking out. And once I had decided to become vegan, I remember it felt quite natural to accuse my elders of being ‘asleep’ on the job. I felt the need to atone for what I’d done (and on their behalf for what they’d done and were still doing). I wanted to ‘set up camp’ on the other side of the river. It made me see that by becoming a herbivore I could do my bit to spare animals. Omnivore-thinking began to fade.