Letters to the Editor
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This is so interesting!
I've not yet read the reply posts, so please forgive me if this redundant:
As humans on Earth, we cause pain and suffering. To each other, to other forms of life, to the land and sea and sky... all of it. WE are damaging, we do not tread lightly. There are things we do for sustenance that are difficult to explain, but often necessary. If someone doesn't understand this, I think of them as idealists or dreamers. These people I deal with a little more gently. It sounds as if the LW's friend is an idealist. She probably has deep connections with all forms of life and cannot control her passion.
It's hard to be representing something the idealist holds as reproachable so hang in there. People with this kind of passion can be difficult and even uptight, but maybe it will be fun and worth it in the end. A real friend is always worth it.
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I am grateful for all the helpful insights!
You said it beautifully, Edziu. I wrote my letter hoping to avoid a debate between vegans and carnivores. But I found all the responses useful, even the one that accused me of creating a fictitious friend-strawmen with which to beat up on vegans.
I fear I overstated my friend's stance, as I am certain she would would not recognize herself as demanding that I justify my nonvegan life style. I am grateful to CherieLeigh for expressing what I think is really going on with her. In her gut, she deeply loves animals and doesn’t get “why he doesn’t care in the same way about their lives?” I’m not as convinced as Wonder Woman that the gut has no place in the field of ethics, but your post was sure on the mark for me. The friends who cause me the most difficulty are the ones who use reasons (weapons of the intellect) to justify gut-level choices. It has taken me a life-time to figure out that they push the button that makes me forget it’s impossible to be perfect.
More than one person has accused me of working way too hard to maintain friendships that have outlived their usefulness. But I have lost enough life-time friends to know that “they ain’t making any more of ‘em.” This one is a keeper even though we can tax each other at times (understatement, lol). At her best, my friend knows she doesn’t have the power to fix the universe through her food choices. But when she’s not at her best, I have to remember that I can’t control her attempts to control me. What I find so helpful about posts like this is that they give me a way to cut through some of my crap so when I meet my friend I can be as emotionally present as I have the courage to be. I commend you, Cary, for creating a forum that elicits so much thoughtful, intelligent feedback.
Cary. You asked me what it would be like to be uncompromisingly honest and present with my friend, without the need to be correct or logical or to manage the relationship and her reactions? At the risk of sounding like a prick, do I have your permission, sir, to speak with all the uncompromising honesty I can muster at this moment? I would be exactly like one of her cats. I would love her honestly, easily, completely and without contradiction. I’ve never been able to do that with another human being, though it is something I have longed for all of my life. If you can, you’re a better man than I am. Oh, and one more thing. “Will you be my friend?”
I’ll be happy to report back on how the trip goes if anyone is interested.
Nonvegan in Pennsylvania
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Well, Cary,
one does not need to be wicked to be wrong about an ethical issue. Everybody can make a mistake in good faith. The letter writer's vegan friend can very well think that the letter writer is not wicked or undeserving of friendship, just wrong.
The friend is doing what any good friend needs to do if they think that the other is erring ethically: discuss the matter, and compare arguments. You see, you have to accept the possibility that the friend might be right, and you and the letter writer might be wrong about the issue at hand (an exercise in the very tolerance you think you are promoting with your advice).
Do try the exercise: suppose that you had a friend that you thought was wrong about, say, sexual orientation rights (something I know from your columns you believe in). Would you say, oh, she is my friend, I will not question her and accept her as she is? I don't think so. If you believe that you are right about sexual orientation rights, you believe you owe it to the people that have those rights, to defend them, to speak up for them. Those rights are certainly more important that annoying your friend? And your friend is not necessarily a wicked person, beyond changing her mind. She is your friend after all. So, you give her the opportunity to air her position. Who knows? It might turn out that you were wrong. That can always happen, as you noted, it would be arrogant to think otherwise.
So then, if your friend in our little exercise says leave me alone, you have your beliefs and I have mine, if you want to be my friend accept me as I am, then, dear Cary, what would you think about your friend? Might you not be less inclined to excuse her on account of an innocent mistake, when you contemplate the damage that her beliefs have caused? (Suppose, for example, that you are sitting on your chair reading a paper, and Matthew Shepard's story in the middle pages hits your stomach, and you think of all the beliefs that contributed to the crime). I think you might, because she had the opportunity to defend her beliefs, and instead she chose to ignore the questions. Then it is harder to speak of error, and easier to speak of choice, which is a necessary ingredient of evil, or the wickedness you talk about. Then it becomes harder to call her your friend, doesn't it.
And yet, this is exactly what you have advised the letter writer to do: to refuse to answer the questioning, and deny the friend any answers to her arguments. I think that you have given this advice only because you believe the letter writer to be right, and the friend to be wrong about their ethical beliefs. Yet you can't be sure of you being right about your ethical beliefs, because, as you said, you are not perfect, and you are not God. But if you accept you might be wrong about your ethical beliefs, then you have to accept that it is your duty to always respond to the arguments of those who question them (provided of course that they are reasonable), because if you are in error, you should correct it, if you can. And you can always answer a question.