It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve stopped eating all animal products.
The hardest part however, has not been eating more healthily, but the discrimination I have faced during this time.
In our society discrimination against races, religions, disabilities or sexuality are both taboo and illegal. Sadly, choices of ideologies don’t benefit from the same protection, and people are happy to take advantage of it.
You know in the film The Matrix, Neo learns to understanding the world around him and all its inner workings in a way that others can’t (or don’t know how to)?
Today I was looking at my cat, Amma, simply admiring her as I often do - and I realized that I don’t see her as my inferior or “just an animal”. I see her as a little person, with her individualities, quirks, likes and dislikes. I see her as an equal.
Of course I can see that she belongs to a different species than me. But in the same way that when I look at a woman or a black person I don’t focus on our differences, I do the same when I look at Amma or any other animal; I am able to focus on all the thousands of really incredible and important things that we share in common. And I know that whether I am in my shoe or theirs, I’d want to be respected - so I respect everyone back regardless of their gender, race or species.
But why don’t others do the same?
Almost 150 years ago Darwin shook the world with his publication that proved humans are simply another animal and not the special creation of a God. Unfortunately, although all well educated people today fully comprehend this, the majority still follow the moral principles of a society that saw humans as those supreme beings who were above all other creatures of earth. These people are Darwinists stuck in a pre-Darwin morality.
I just wonder how many more years it will take for all educated humans to see the world with new eyes and follow a set of moral conducts compatible with scientific findings? Because it’s hard to watch as my friends and peers make choices in life that directly impact individuals who are equally capable of suffering as they are. It’s hard to visualize that suffering every day at lunch time when I go to the restaurant as see body parts of these individuals who were so terribly discriminated against.
Taking the red pill means being aware of those horrors - but it also means you are no longer a part of it.
What have I done really? By the way people have treated me one would rightfully assume that I had stolen from the elderly, conned their best friend or was found in possession of child pornography.
But do you want to know my crime? Trying to protect non-humans from being used, tortured and killed by the hands of a species that calls themselves superior. Who on the surface value kindness, compassion, solidarity and love, but who are quick to forget those values when their own selfish interests are at stake.
The difference between me and the average person is that I am constantly questioning my morals and my actions and making sure they are in line with each other. I am willing to change my daily actions in order to change the world.
And I get in trouble when I try to nudge people into questioning their morals and their violent actions, and sadly it seems that some of these people just can’t face their own tyrannical selves. They don’t want to do what they believe is right, they just don’t want to feel bad about doing what they do.
Does this mean I hate fellow humans? No, not at all. We are capable of wonderful things, every single one of us! Do I think humans, as wonderful as we are, should discriminate non-humans because they are different from us? No, not at all either. They are capable of wonderful things, every single one of them!
And I am not one bit ashamed of protecting the interests of individuals who, like children, have no voice of their own to free themselves from this tyranny. And I am not one bit ashamed of doing what I wish someone would do for me were I in that position.
Happy new year! I wish you all the very same you’ll wish others.
Biologically speaking we are omnivores. But omnivore likely doesn’t mean what you think it does. Omnivore means “eater of everything (or anything)”. So they will eat whatever is necessary keep them alive. It does NOT mean that they MUST eat other animals to survive or stay healthy - it simply means they CAN eat animals to survive at times they can’t find anything else to eat. They are adaptable.
Since we in the west live in a society where you can choose any kind of food you want, eating meat is a choice, not a biological necessity like omnivores in nature who sometimes have nothing but animals to eat. We can meet 100% of our dietary requirements eating nothing but plants.
But let’s suppose that humans were obligate carnivores - meaning that, like cats, we would either die or become severely malnourished and weak if we did not consume meat. Now vegans and vegetarians cannot exist, or they would die.
The first problem we face is population vs land space. 8 billion humans would need to eat animals every single day, in the same way that developed countries do. Yet statistically if every single human ate the same amount of meat as the US and Europe, we would need 15 earths to sustain that diet as there wouldn’t be enough land space to breed all the animals and grow food for all those animals. As obligate carnivores we would actually never have been able to grow as a population past a few hundred million - which is correct with most large carnivores - there are very few of them in nature.
Despite being obligate carnivores we would still be humans. We have a conscience and we can also empathize with the suffering of other beings similar to us. We’re then faced with a true dilemma. We must raise these sentient beings and we must kill them in order to stay alive. What do we do?
I was brought up by a secular father and a mother who likes the idea of god/saints etc but never really went to church or anything.
At school religion was never a topic either, I had one religious friend and she was the odd one out.
Soon after I moved to London, an extremely secular place (apart from the asian immigrant population who segregates themselves from the rest). On TV and politics it seems that everyone is an atheist and all of my friends are too.
Then I arrived in America, and started following more Americans on Twitter, and watched American TV - and I was shocked to discover a world I had only heard about but never experienced.
I always thought religion was reserved for uneducated people who really needed somewhere where they could find hope of a better life. But in America I found some of my peers and people smarter than me who were religious. Very religious! To the point they believed in Adam and Eve and all that!
You see, if I met an old lady in Mexico, who needs to count her pennies to pay for her food, and she was religious, I wouldn’t be surprised nor would I argue about the existence of God with her. I think she is probably better off believing that there’s someone looking after her and that her suffering will stop once she goes to the after life. But smart affluent people? Programmers who work with logic all day long? How can that be?
Here are some of the main things that I don’t understand.
Honestly I could go on and on with questions but those are the most obvious ones which basically points any logical person to the conclusion that God was invented by humans in an attempt to explain the mysteries of life before they could actually study them. Just like today we tell fairytales to our children to help them understand life in a more basic way.
I think it’s very important to strive to be a better human being. If you tell me that my toothpaste is made with minerals that are destroying an eco-system and you give me an alternative, I will listen, and I will change toothpaste. If you show me pictures of the sweatshops used by Gap to produce their clothes, and explain to me the impact it has on those families, and you give me an alternative brand that respects their employees, I will listen, learn and change. I just couldn’t live with myself if I were any other way.
So it confuses me that you don’t want me to show you pictures, videos or list facts about your diets, something which has much greater impact than anything else you do. Why would you want to ignore the subject? Why would you not care? Why would you not want to rid the world of suffering, to reduce CO2 emissions, to save the oceans and the rain forests? It confuses me because it’s such a simple change with such a big impact that I don’t understand why you’d be so hesitant to change.
Try to see things from my point of view for a minute and imagine this scenario: you follow a Muslim guy on twitter and he tweets “I just beat my wife up, lol” would you remain quiet or would you say something to him? I imagine you would say something like “you’re a monster”, even though his actions are perfectly acceptable and legal where he lives. So he would probably be confused; why are you calling him a monster when he’s only doing what all his other friends do?
Now imagine you are living in that society where you are one in 1000 who believe women should have rights. And your twitter stream is filled with tweets about men mistreating women, objectifying them, mocking them. And there you are, horrified to live in this world and seeing women being treated that way. You try to come up with ways to show men how they should respect women because you know in your heart that what they are doing is horrible. Some are convinced by your arguments and change, but many just laugh at you or begin to hate you. You lose twitter followers, you lose job opportunities, you lose friends.
I know in your view comparing sexism with speciesism is absurd. But may I ask why? They both focus on the differences and overlook the similarities. At the core of all discrimination there is suffering.
Think about it, would the concentration camps have marked history if instead of Jews all the victims were humans in a vegetative state? I don’t believe so, they couldn’t feel pain or turmoil and that’s why it was so horrific, not because they were humans, because they were sentient. So would it be as horrible if the victims were conscious cows? If pain is pain in both humans and cows then their suffering should not be taken for granted just because they belong to a different species to us. It doesn’t make any sense at all. It makes as little sense as any kind of discrimination.
You see animals as less deserving just because they are different. But you overlook our similarities; our equal ability to feel pain, emotions, discomfort, thirst, hunger, love, etc. Though you only overlook them when you want to, because you recognize those similarities in your pets that you treat like family members, and you would also likely help an animal you found in distress. Some philosophers call this discrepancy in behavior “moral schizophrenia”.
I know it offends some people when I compare them to Nazis. But all I am trying to do is to put things into perspective. Are carnists as bad as Nazis? It all depends. A Nazi doesn’t think he is a bad person but non-Nazis do. If non-humans animals could speak and you asked them whether carnists were bad, they most certainly would feel just as strongly as you do about the Nazis. Sadly, like babies, they can’t express their feelings through words, and their screams and cries are conveniently kept away from you.
What I am trying to do is give a voice to these voiceless beings.
“I am the voice of the voiceless. Through me the dumb may speak, until the deaf world’s ears be made to hear the wrongs against the wordless weak. I am my brothers keeper, I will fight his fights and speak the words for beast and bird, until the world shall set things right.”
You ask me to respect your violent ideology, you ask me to respect your choice to eat sentient beings, and to not tweet about it - some go as far as not wanting me to even mention the word “vegan”. But once again, let me flip the coin, could you respect anyone who follows a violent ideology that you disagree with? ie, rape, murder, racism, sexist, etc? No, because your concern is to respect the victims of those ideologies, not the perpetrators. I respect non-humans, so how can I also respect your choice to hurt them?
When you tweet about the chicken you had, the burger or the yogurt, I am not picturing a slab of flesh detached from a body - I am picturing that individuals entire life in confinement, in a dark warehouse with air so rank and low on oxygen that workers need to wear masks - an individual who has had his testicles cut off without anesthetics simply because humans prefer the taste of castrated males - an individual who after months of suffering was transported for hundreds of miles inside a truck with no water or air conditioning - who saw 15% of his companions not being able to handle those conditions and die in the process before reaching the slaughterhouse - and who finally was sent to be killed by the hands of an unskilled worker who is completely unconcerned about his or her feelings, often torturing them for fun.
How can I see all that and not say anything? Could you remain quiet knowing of such atrocities if you saw them in front of you? I do remain quiet at work, in order to try and keep it “professional”, but it hurts me. I avoid going out to dinner with workmates because it’s too painful to watch them being so happy around body parts of tortured individuals.
Am I crazy for wanting to respect everyone regardless of their species in the same way you respect everyone regardless of their skin color, gender, religion, etc? Am I crazy for trying to spare sentient beings of unnecessary suffering? Is this really the world I live in - where people are more concerned about their palates than the impact of that food choice?
I am suggesting peace, respect, I am suggesting an end to suffering, I am suggesting equal rights not to be tortured and killed. Is that something to be mocked about? Is that a reason not to be hired by a company? Is that a reason to lose twitter followers and friends?
Would the same thing happen if I was fighting for any other cause such as inequality, starvation, aids, malaria etc?
I feel like I being treated as though I am suggesting something completely absurd. It’s not like I’m suggesting we starve to death. I am not suggesting that non-human animals should run freely in the street like cows in india, I am not suggesting they are given any more rights than we have, I am not suggesting anything that will negatively impact your life or the world. Quite the contrary.
A plant-based diet is better for your health and impacts the world a fraction of the amount that your diet does. A plant-based diet is also not without flavors and textures - I thoroughly enjoy my food as much as you enjoy yours. I eat pizza, pasta, risotto, burgers, stir-fries, hotdogs, cereal, chocolate, ice cream, french fries, chips, sandwiches, candy, cakes, muffins, etc, etc. I’m not losing anything essential to my survival and at the same time I know that my diet is not causing suffering nor impacting the world nearly as much. Is that not something to be praised and to aim for?
So please, instead of making fun of me, attacking me, calling me names and spreading untrue rumors, come and talk to me - see if I have something new to teach you, or come and teach me something new yourself.
Often I am asked by carnists to respect their decision to eat meat and other animal products.
You see, I have no problems respecting people’s decisions, such as religion, dress style, sexuality, gender identity, etc. But the minute a person’s decision involves disrespecting others, how can they ask me to respect that?
Would people respect me if I caused pain in other humans? Like if I beat up my wife or children. Would they respect me if I killed another human being, even if I did it quick and painlessly? Then why am I asked to respect their decision to be a part of a violent ideology that disrespects beings equally capable of suffering as us? Beings that I respect as much as you respect your own species.
So no, I can’t ever respect your decision. I can be your friend, because I’d have very few friends otherwise, I can force myself to remain quiet and hold my tears whilst you eat the hacked parts of a previously tortured sentient animal (something you likely would never do if I were eating a dog, cat or human baby). But respect your decision? Sorry, that’s asking way too much.
