IRKED #1: High-horse Vegans.
I have been a vegetarian for most of my life.
As I was but seven years old when I first made what would be an incredibly persistent decision, my reasoning at the time didn't go far beyond 'I don't want to hurt animals'.
Obviously as I grew older and became more aware of human nature and the way the meat and dairy industries worked, my beliefs developed further. After much soul searching and many different dietary experiments, not to mention a few brushes with uptight vegans who seem to think that substituting meat for tofu makes them better than everyone else, I have reached a conclusion in my late teens and early twenties that I am perfectly happy with.
There is nothing morally wrong with eating meat.
Whether we have higher functions or not has nothing to do with it. We are animals ourselves, and as such we need to feed. We have the power to choose what we eat - some choose meat, some choose alternatives, and I am happy to be a humble, habitual vegetarian. I do not pretend that this decision makes me superior to anyone, and I don't believe that one person saying 'no thanks to that roasted corpse' will really make the meat and dairy industries go "Oh, shit, are we doing this wrong?". My choice to be vegetarian won't save any lives, but hell, it gives my conscience a little cuddle, and I'm fine with that.
There are some pretty gigantic and gross issues with the way we receive those products as a culture. The mass production of meat is completely unnecessary and the dairy industry is vile, no doubt, but I have a newsflash for the scores of superiority complex ridden vegans out there - putting some soy milk in your tea between soaking chickpeas and scarfing down tubs of peanut butter doesn't save you any more cows than we do. You don't get any moral raw brownie points for that unless you're actually out there pulling pigs out of slaughterhouses or pursuing activism - which, by the way, omnivores do too.
"What? You mean we're not the only ones who care about animal welfare? Shit, son!"
Yup. That's right. There are plenty of vegetarians and dare I say it, meat eaters, care just as much about animals and the environment as you do - except they actually do something about it. If you're an apparently superior vegan who sits at home barely supporting the weight of your own calcium deficient teeth, living on nuts and vitamin supplements, whining about the plight of the soy bean or whatever it is you people do, you are morally poor compared to the hundreds of veggie/meat eating activists and conservationists. It does not mean that you love the planet any more than they do.
You are measured by your actions, not your diet. Vegans who go out there and actually do something about the broken industries have the moral high ground here, but no more so than omnivores who do the same. Even if you only eat meat or dairy from local farms, you're doing the world much more good than buying basics ham from your friendly neighbourhood global chain.
Before you gulp down some rice milk and spend a few hours getting riled enough to pop open those Taurine pills to have a go at me, I did try going vegan, if only to see what all the fuss was about. I hated it, but that's fine. It's not for everyone. What I certainly don't need is some moody hippy spitting scarcely mustered vitriol at me for not adhering to the way they believe people should live.
I believe that a man is entitled to the sweat of his own brow. If he has reared and slaughtered pigs and cows himself without resorting to the horrible mass production practises, he is entitled to that, and the monetary rewards. If a man spends a day catching fish, he is then entitled to eat those fish. Would you deny any other creature the spoils of the hunt?
Oh wait. You would.
The idea of denying your pet meat when it's a staple part of their diet sickens me far more than the meat industry. Humans have the power of choice, cats and dogs do not - they are physically built to hunt and eat meat. Surely this is classed as animal abuse. You may claim "Oh, but they can survive just as well on taurine supplements and protein based dishes", but this is fundamentally wrong. If you don't want to feed a cat meat, don't get a cat. It's simple. Your so-called animal love has been twisted by your own broken morals and your animal has become an extremely sad trophy of your crazed 'ethical' crusade.Animals hunt. Morals are simply not relevant to them because morality is a human concept - not one of our best, either. Stop trying to implement human ideas onto other animals, because it's just cruel and it makes you just as bad as the meat industry.
The bottom line: It is the meat and dairy industry that is morally wrong - not the consumption of it, or the people who do so. Hunting is hardwired into nature's philosophy and it all links in to that big ol' circle of life - some animals are born to eat, some animals are born to be eaten. By all means, crawl back into your cave, wipe the granola from your keyboard, and try and enforce your beliefs on the rest of mankind from the safety of the internet.
I'll be sat here, fielding your comments, your snide japes at my philosophy, in the smug knowledge that I'm right.
-SZ
