Crossing the river

1751:

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 leveler, and not so difficult either when the society in which we live 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, I found there was a problem facing me. Certain foods were a huge source of satisfaction for me. To give up my favourite foods for the sake of animals posed a problem. I had to ask myself if I was a compassionate person. Surely, if I’d wanted to test my compassion, I’d have to first show it for fellow humans. There are many humans deserving my empathy. 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, since it directly challenged my participation in ‘normal behaviour’, namely condoning the sort of routine cruelty practised on farm animals.

As a life-long meat eater, my problem came back to this one difficulty. I was reluctance to admit that I might have been wrong all along, about my food habits. To start considering the feelings of animals 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 impose on my daily habits 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 than the adults around me. 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 my way of striking out.

Once I'd 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. I was disassociating from most of the people I knew, outcasting myself, but as I crossed that 'river' I found my erstwhile 'omnivore-thinking' beginning to fade, and that was ultimately satisfying.