They’re mere animals

633:

“I’m omnivore. Why change?” Why fix something that ‘ain’t broke’? Why fiddle with habits if we’re quite happy with the habits we have? Maybe there’s a small but nagging worry that something’s not quite right, and perhaps we suspect something IS broke. Even worse, maybe we don’t care enough because we’ve already given up on the human race. It doesn’t occur to people that, to fix all this, we might simply need to become vegan.

When we reach for that favourite item on the supermarket shelf we take it on trust, that it is chemically safe, that’s it’s legal to buy it and that it’s an ethical item. But are we really that fussy? This is the moment of truth, of decision-making, and if in this one moment we hear a voice inside us telling us to “stop”, then what’s really happening at that moment? We know that once we’ve grabbed it and dropped it in our basket we’ve already as good as consumed it, so we have to decide there and then whether we will reach for it or not. If we decide NOT to, then we’re starting to think like a vegan - at that point, where we’re considering a boycott (of meat or eggs or whatever), if we hesitate, if we give it a second thought, it’s likely we’re not ready to make such weighty choices; if we decide to boycott any item on ethical grounds then we are at the cross roads of an important decision. This is when we might decide to do without, or find a replacement, or to try something new. It’s a very personal matter, since we can’t discuss it with anyone, unless they too have considered boycotting foods on ethical grounds.

If we try to discuss this matter with someone who HASN’T faced such a choice then everything we are about to discuss with them is fraught with complication. For a start, we open up a comparison - the intelligence behind our decision showing up their lack of intelligence. Once we compare our  vegan thinking with their omnivore thinking it immediately becomes an ego battle. It’s as if we are suggesting that my brain is better than yours, ‘me better than you’, me more compassionate than you. It’s a dangerous game to play - we’re likely to be offending people, making personal comparisons and evoking defensive and self-protecting position-taking.

If we start to think that we are advanced people, by virtue of our being more empathetic, then that will contrast with their being primitive and insensitive. That’s not how most omnivores see themselves. They know they are empathetic and humanitarian, as evidenced by their kind disposition with their children or by their relationship to their dogs and cats at home, so it’s likely they see us as delusional and hypersensitive to the feelings of mere farm animals. (They really do think of animals as ‘mere’).