The Door is Not the Floor
Building a Permanent Framework of Peace
There are hundreds of solid, logical reasons to go vegan. You love the environment? Great. Stop eating meat and lessen the demand for mowing down rainforests. You want to lose fifty pounds? Well, you could do that on a meat-eating diet, but, okay. Go vegan and lose fat. You’re abhorred by the zoonotic diseases chicken leaks into your body? Who wouldn’t be?
These are great reasons, but they are only doorways. They let you in but, alone, they won’t keep you vegan. Peace and nonviolence will. Compassion weaves the floor that will support you forever. When you construct your sincere, ethical framework in the well-being of animals, you will never turn your back on it.
I will take the room analogy a step farther. The entrance which piques your interest is also an exit.
You want to lower your bad cholesterol so you go on a “vegan cleanse” for three weeks. Goal met. Vegan agenda ditched. You might pick it up again if your LDL rises.
Some people, upon replacing heavy, fast food with healthy, vegan meals lose weight. And then what? You’re thin, and fit. After a night of drinking, do you order a portabella sandwich or a bacon omelet? If you’ve gone vegan to lose weight, and now you’re thin, what’s to keep you from eating the eggs?
Realistically, in the context of obesity and cholesterol, what is the effect one little piece of bacon per week on a fit, healthy person? It won’t kill you.
But what about something you’re morally opposed to? One rape per week? Is that acceptable? Of course not, it’s atrocious.
Would the following appeal work in trying to convince a serial rapist? “Hey, man. Lay off the rape. Think of all the gas you burn driving to the dark parts of town to find your victims. That’s so eco-unfriendly. Avoid rape for the environment.”
I don’t know any rapists, but I’ll wager it would not deter them, even if they were Eco-Friendly Rapists.
Peace is the unmovable base supporting consistent thoughts and behavior.
read moreWhat if the Killing Was Painless?
People ask me how I would feel if the cows, chickens, geese, salmon, buffalo, ducks, salamanders, crocodiles, sheep, turkeys, goats, camels and dodo birds were killed painlessly. Would it be okay to eat the animals then?
Pain is irrelevant. There are four strong reasons that taking the life of a sentient being against her will is not justified simply because the method is painless.
First, she is being deprived of her further experiences. I rank this first because there is absolutely no working around it. If someone removes your mother from this world against her will, she will never again experience anything. The timeline is cut and cannot be mended. The presence or absence of pain caused by murder is irrelevant.
Second, killing a nonhuman is the murder of an innocent. This is unjust. The method of murder is irrelevant to result from the crime.
Third, it is a speciesist notion that murdering a chicken is acceptable while doing the same to a human is unacceptable. Modern-day court systems would not permit the murder of red-haired children or black children, because those kinds of appeals are racist, illogical nonsense. Like racism, all defenses of speciesism are faulty, if not absurd.
And forth, it removes her from her family. They absolutely will notice her untimely departure. At the idea of sparing one animal from physical suffering, you create suffering in the members of her family who mourn her. (This point could be argued against by suggesting we engineer single animals with no parents or siblings from test tubes; that we kill all the families and friends together at once; or otherwise engage in sterile yet psychotic behavior. The problem with these ‘solutions’ is obvious: they are speciesist. If these acts were committed against humans, it would be like a scene from a horror movie.)
You already know these answers, of course. Replace the nonhuman in your question with a human. Then, the reasons why we must show compassion are endless.
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