Letters to the Editor
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from an editor's choice letter
She does want to know
Before I read the letters posted here, ...I want to put my gut reaction out here about this LW's question.
I don't think there's any more exemplary representation of a certain type of well meaning vegan than the above.
The gut does not reason, it feels. Your gut has no morals, it has instincts. If your gut says "I'm prey, not predator." Great. Go with that. I'm over here doing my own thing, sending loving kindness your way.
The (very real, intuitive) intelligence of the gut has no place in the field of ethics (the branch of philosophy that deals with morality). If you are 'thinking' with your gut, please do not be so crass/foolish/ignorant as to appeal to anyone else's humanity, compassion or free will when you are acting on it's whims.
A wise man once said, "See with you eyes, not with your hands."
Argue ethics from the mind, not the gut. I want to be able to take you seriously.
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What do you tell your vegan friend...
..when she recoils in horror and exclaims "You tell me how you can dare eat that and call yourself a good person!"
You tell her (as you messily slop some sloppy joe into your mouth) "Coz it tastes good. Mmmmmmmm-mmmmm! Hits the SPOT!"
I was a vegetarian for about 6? 7? years following a colorful and shocking education on slaughterhouses in my native Chicago, and around the nation. I was just about to turn 16, and my boyfriend had actually asked me two weeks prior if I wanted the vegetarian meal at the prom, to which I had, at the time, answered with a resounding NO! So we had to scramble to change that a mere days before prom. :)
While a vegetarian I NEVER dared implicate my friends as immoral for their choices to eat meat. Part of my decision was me getting "This is what I'm doing because I'm deciding that this is what is ok for me." If people asked why I stopped eating meat I told them, briefly. If they seemed interested I elaborated. That was all that seemed appropriate.
6-7 years later I was diagnosed with a disease that required I cut way back on carbs and add non-carb based proteins into my diet to stabalize myself, in a permanent way. Because I am an ANIMIAL, just like other animals, MY survival comes first. I started eating meat again.
Suddenly all my vegetarian friends were taking issue with me...and here I had what I thought was a pretty damn legitimate reason for my choices: the alternative would damange my health! After a few months of dealing with them AND my new disease I really wasn't interested in any more shady looks over dinner as I ordered my food, or when they opened my fridge door for a water or beer and saw something dead defrosting. Even without the disease becoming a vegetarian had been a choice, as EVERYTHING is, and stopping it, too, had been a choice in what I would take on for my health and comfort.
So the next person who asked me "But how can you..." got a full open-mouthed chew of cheeseburger, a stupid grin and "Coz it's GOOOOD, man. Have a bite! It's tasty! I like it!"
Shut 'em up right quick. The good folks got it, shut up, and stuck around to be a friend rather than some aggravating wannabe moral compass. The tedious ones took their uppity tedium elsewhere.
And y'know what? Animals ARE tasty. Had I never seen the video and taken the tour of slaughterhouses I never would've stopped eating them. Sure, there's the whole 10-to-1 energy wasting thing with meat-eating. Sure, there's lots of cholesterol in beef. Sure chicken has salmonella. Sure, lots of things.
But y'know what? It's my face, and I'm gonna shove into it whatever I'm gonna shove into it. SEEEEEE *opens mouth wide*
I'm sure your vegan friend has made a choice in her life that she was comfortable with, but with which someone else could take issue. Passing a panhandler. NOT tithing to charity. Not buying free-trade coffee or chocolate or pottery or whatever. Call her out right back. In the name of "friendship."
Or, if she's THAT morally unambiguous in her behavior and choices ask her if she ever wishes she could apply the same moral compass to her actions with her friends by treating them graciously and respectfully, rather than like some sort of tiresome autocrat.
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An animal liberationist take
Well, I can certainly identify with the annoyance with evangelical sorts; as a vegetarian I also identify with the letter writer's friend. As such, I would venture to disagree with Mr Tennis; this friend is not being an asshole for the sake of intolerance, but out of a sense of isolation. I can really only speak from the heart on this, so i'm not going to try to convince everybody that I'm right. My vegetarianism goes back to four years ago, when I was a middle-school animal lover who had just come across Peter Singer's expose Animal factories; not to sound overly sensitive, but it made me weep. I showed the horrific pictures in the book to everybody I talked to, everybody I knew, even strangers in the grocery isle. I wasn't squeamish about meat before, and was a big fan of all things flesh, but in six months I managed to wean myself away. About a year went by, and I went from a welfarist to a rights position, and it gave me a coherent basis for my long0held belief in nature's inherent worth. And I shared my beliefs with everyone; during that time I was only fourteen years old, and my "evangelism" was a single, consuming passion (besides mathematics, as I happen to be a nerd). Again and again I was spurned; in my naive girlish mind, I could not understand it-I had airtight reasoning, evidence for my positions, and a larger philosophical outlook it all fit into; if I could have the reaction I did, why was I the only one? Yet time after time I received the same nauseating lines; "I just LOOOVE meat!"; "It's the circle of life"; "Well, I don't eat that mush meat"; "But that's what they're bred for!". I had no vegetarian friends except on the Internet, and I started to withdraw more and more from my friends; I became an island. (Just to show I'm not the worst at this, Tolstoy shared my beliefs, and felt so alone he wished to hang himself.) I couldn't enjoy myself; the philosophers and scientists I admired ate meat; the music I listened to had been made by enthusiastic omnivores. I thought I was missing out on some essential part of being human, for even if it didn't hurt me directly, my diet made me an outcast, another species. And still I argued, but I had lost the passion for the cause I had once claimed. I kept going to validate myself as a human being; if I was right, how could I be the only one who saw the light? How could people I dearly cared for, my friends and family and teachers and crushes, good people who voted liberal and sent donations after the tsunami and were kind to everyone they met, disagree? It was as if I lived in a dreamworld where everything was warped, but it was all too real. Why couldn't I come to terms with this thing that, sonehow or other, was essential to the human experience? And, if I was indeed correct, how could I love the people that I did, who committed every day what I saw (and, frankly, still see) as an atrocious crime? This was the emotional low point of my life, but I did come out of it. I read Plato's Allegory of the Cave, I spent more time alone and content, and I examined human beings. The only reason I could lift myself out of my hole was to realize that mankind has a great ability to think in paradox; a good man like Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and people who work in the Peace Corps still wear WalMart clothing. But still, there is a trace of the anger, and the isolation, that I once felt; because of this I don't think I'll ever have the potential to dedicate myself to any cause without being jaded by self-doubt.
I will tell you how to deal with your friend: Consider what she says, even if you can't ultimately accept it. Let her see you carrying a copy of Animal Liberation or tell her you'll send a small check to Greenpeace. Just consider the idea that she is probably having the same doubts about your friendship that you are.