Being Loyal To My Own Interests

1986:

Why are the ‘right’ so very right? People’s sense of right and wrong is determined by the culture they’re born into and maybe it changes very little until one actively takes time to examine values afresh, as vegans have done by looking at animal exploitation and the unhealthiness of animal-derived food. But whether we have or haven’t re-examined ‘right’, we nevertheless have a sense of what is fundamentally wrong and, in theory, try to avoid it. But the trouble is that vegans and omnivores are poles apart, concerning this particular ‘wrong’.

Vegans have thought it through one way and omnivores another way. Or perhaps, for them, there’s been a deliberate avoidance of thinking. Do they lack imagination when it comes to the suffering of animals? Is it that they stop themselves using their thinking faculty to shield themselves from an awful truth?

When I found myself challenged by a new way of looking at animals I immediately thought of all the ramifications. It would touch food and touch on everyday habits and pleasures, enough to want to shutdown that ‘line of thinking’ and scramble for justification (which, as everyone knows, doesn’t have to be too logical, since everyone else is justifying similarly).

If no one can afford to think things through too carefully, the majority ends up with different values to vegans. And that needn’t matter much because, as yet, there are few vegans to make significant complaint. It’s in the omnivores’ interest to continually reinforce the majority view, for fear of the minority (vegan) view gaining ground.

         

Most people try to make what they think is ‘right’ to be Right. They can’t afford to do what is wrong, because anyone deliberately doing wrong will suffer from attempting to go against their ‘better’ instincts, by not trying hard enough to rise above their own knuckle-dragging, primitive impulses. And yet they do cut ethical corners and know they do. Maybe they do it out of convenience and for an easy life. And the Devil take the hindmost.

         

I’d say that vegan principle teaches us to act with restraint. We try to avoid the easy way out as well as the downright ‘evil’ way, and try to have the courage to do the right thing. We don’t intend to ever benefit from animal misery.

         

So, for example, when I’m tempted to play my music loudly late at night, if I restrain myself because people are sleeping next door, that would be the ‘right’ thing to do. If, on the other hand, I say, “to hell with the neighbours”, that wouldn’t be right. When I know it’s wrong and yet do it all the same, I’m refusing to forgo my pleasure. That attitude is just plain ‘primitive’.

         

Humans have learnt to put self-benefit above the welfare of non-humans, exploiting animals who can’t fight back. And that might extend to exploiting the environment for personal gain, with the reasoning being that if I don’t exploit the situation someone else will, stealing my opportunity.

         

I suppose that’s the central attitude that needs changing, so that empathy kick in before we can spot self-advantage in not caring-about-others.