1357:
If we are vegan and can’t
understand why others are not, it may be worth considering what actually has to
happen, and why vegans are willing to give away a lot of the benefits of life
for the sake of not condoning the exploitation of animals.
Well, we no longer use a huge
range of products. And that's good for
saving animals. But we're probably the same old selfish bastards as everyone
else. We do what we do for ourselves. We eat serious food instead of crap. We stop associating with social norms which
are unethical (and we can't help but feel good about that). We feather our own nest. We stamp our own principles on our own life, and
maybe we do that without considering other people who might be trying to do the
same. And in that way our own level of
self-determination could be seen to be very selfish. But, there is one very big difference between
our 'selfishness' and the selfishness of non-vegans. Ours is initiated by our outrage at what is
happening to defenceless animals, and there’s no denying the sacrifices we are
willing to make for them. If there are
collateral benefits for us, then we do appreciate them without feeling guilty.
Why do vegans think so
seriously about animals and then translate that concern into their daily lives?
Is it because vegans are more altruistic
or because they’ve found something more interesting (than anything they’ve
previously found)? Perhaps it's all
relative? Altruism is beyond reproach,
because it considers other's (peoples’) interests before one’s own. But I’d agree with what Nietzsche says, that
this definition is demeaning. More
particularly, it’s unrealistic because it is the kind of purity no one can keep
up - being so infuriatingly good all the time.
The fact is that we’re all survivors
- we have to be selfish thinkers to survive. We have to be self-interested. We have to look after our own first. Charity starts at home. The theory goes, that we can extend our love
to others, afterwards. Selfish is
good. As survivors we'll do better by
avoiding being squashed down. But it
all gets a bit too logical without a modifying factor, without something to
stop us crashing into a wall of 'selfish-ism'. Perhaps we need some easily digestible relative
altruism.
We should be able to enjoy life
unashamedly, but it is possible that that could coincide with feeling good
inside, when one is doing something for others and for oneself at the same time.
When we look about us, we can
see that there’s a lot of giving-out needed today. Give here, give there, I get a phone call most
nights asking me to ‘give’. All the more
reason why we shouldn’t neglect our own interests which, let’s be honest, we
all think about a lot of the time. Selfish
is like incoming energy. It seems
opposite to altruism (which traditionally is giving energy away), so where is the
balance arrived at? Perhaps we have to
be very honest here, perhaps it's a matter of a slightly tarnished version of
selflessness, which we might call 'relative altruism', since it has to be self
rewarding - because if it isn’t, then why deplete yourself? The glow of 'being altruistic' soon wears off
when nobody notices it.
Doing good all over the
place, without getting some recognition back, forces us to go looking for it,
which is called boasting. We all badly
need praise. Without it we become
resentful. I give you a birthday
present, I expect a thank you. And when
it doesn’t appear, I’m less inclined to bother buying you anything next
birthday.
Whatever we do, even if it’s
a paid job, we need something extra, a lubrication for our altruism to work. It’s vital. It makes us want to give more, to recapture
that feeling of being generous. I need to feel energetic and energised by my
generosity rather than the pinched feeling of giving the bare minimum expected.
At work, you’d do everything
high-quality if you could, but that won’t turn the profit. There happens to be another ethic, an economic
one, which makes more money and makes the cogs of life go around. But what about job satisfaction? There’s nothing more satisfying than adding
quality to our work. We all like the
feeling of quality, at work, and especially at home where we like giving
quality to our relationships.
By being vegan we give
quality to our own life and at the same time to the lives of the animals we are
attempting to save from being reared and killed and eaten. No one is trying to be Mister Perfect here,
but vegans are attempting to up the ante.
And that's both useful and rewarding and often quite altruistic, which
levels out at a certain contentment - living a life with a strong element of
relative altruism running through it.
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