Oh no, inspiration. Well-timed
inspiration. Anyway, I'd already been pondering what it is about
vegans and veganism that puts so many people off as well as how to
get along with people regardless of what they eat--it's not like
veganism is the only radically different value that I hold, after
all, yet nothing seems to wind people (including me) up as much. (Not
to imply that I've gotten into a ton of conflicts over it--most
people are very accepting, and I'm good about keeping my mouth shut
more often that not.) And then along comes this post from Marla,
which fits into all that very nicely.
In a way, it doesn't matter how heavy or
significant the facts behind veganism are because facts alone are
not convincing. They did not
stop me from becoming an omnivore when I was six or convince me to
knock that shit off, so I really shouldn't expect them to help me
much when interacting with others. At best, they help show
open-minded people that I'm not some extremist who's putting a
frankly-not-so-effective-by-itself attempt at living by one
altruistic principle ahead of their social life, their happiness, and
their health.
I suspect that
everyone who makes any kind of long-term, life-altering decision that
isn't necessitated by their own immediate needs probably has some
sort of moment where something lights some sort of emotional spark
under their ass (or at least turns on a lightbulb somewhere in their
headspace) and convinces them to change. Here's what changed my mind
(skip to the third-from-last paragraph if graphic fantasy violence triggers you
or you're in a dire emotional state.)
The foundation was
laid when I was in fifth grade and I saw the video for Pink Floyd's
"Another Brick in the Wall" on a big screen in the Hard
Rock Cafe. The actual message of the video flew right over my head,
but the people in cloaks and masks getting tipped off a conveyor belt
and falling into a meat grinder disturbed the fuck out of me. Even
now, it is probably the single most disturbing thing I have ever
seen. It took me a long time to be able to hear even the first
several seconds of that song without panicking and smashing a button
to turn it off or running away from it. I still feel uneasy when I
hear that song. But I never quite connected the sight of what was
meant to be ground-up humanoids to the chicken nuggets in front of me
as I cried.
That kind of
imagery still disturbs me, though. Fast-forward ten years to Berlin
in 2012 when I saw the movie Cloud Atlas. It looked like (and was) an
incredible movie--it was complex and pretty enough to keep me
entertained, but unlike a lot of things I enjoy it wasn't just
dealing with creepy and violent things in an aesthetically pleasing
way--it could be as brutal as it was beautiful at some points, and
one of those points was the slaughter ship from the Neo-Seoul
storyline, where human clones were "recycled" into food for
the clones who were still in their prime (unbeknownst to any of them
except for the protagonist.) The clones were told they were being set
free after years of slavery, but as soon as they were out of the
sight of their fellows they were systematically killed and
transported to the recycling part of the facility on meathooks. I
covered my eyes, but I'd seen enough and could still hear enough to
figure out what was going on, and it plagued me for at least a month
afterwards.
I couldn't help but
draw a parallel between the clones in the film and livestock in our
world. And since there have been instances in our not-so-distant past
of humans being murdered in the millions by industrial means as well
as treated as livestock, was the predicament of the clones of
Neo-Seoul really so farfetched? Humans might like to think of
themselves as separate from nature, but we're still animals and we
can still see that even as we tell ourselves we're different--how
else do we become so attached to our pets, regardless of species? And
when we systematically murder and abuse animals and make use of their
corpses and the byproducts of their bodies so often that we come into
contact with those products on a daily basis and think nothing of it,
can it really be possible that it has no effect whatever on how we
view our fellow humans?
I'm not suggesting
that omnivores are the same as murderers, or that they take anywhere
near as icy-hearted a view towards their fellow humans as the people
of Neo-Seoul in Cloud Atlas. But I can't help but think this
widespread and systematic mistreatment of animals and the way most
people refuse to really think about what they're helping to
perpetuate when they use animal products (let alone take any kind of
action to put a stop to it) has some kind of effect on how we view
all animals, even the ones we like and consider to be people. And
there is no way that effect could be positive.
The above is not by
any means the only or even a particularly good reason to go
vegan--it's just what convinced me. I decided to cut out meat
entirely two days after seeing Cloud Atlas, and the only reason I
didn't immediately go vegan (not to mention quit buying leather, used
or no) is because it took me awhile to fully discard my omnivore
filter. I didn't feel ready--it felt like too big a step (and now
that I think about it it's kind of ridiculous how fast I was able to
forget what that felt like), so I assumed I was doing enough by
avoiding meat and didn't really look into the facts behind at all. It
took about ten months plus another nudge in the right direction
(which came in the form of Davey Havok's outspoken vegan streak) to
convince me to take this as far as I can.
Try as
many vegans might to spark similar emotional kicks in the pants with
disturbing slaughterhouse footage and info dumps, I think most people
have to encounter that moment on their own, because everyone has
different weak spots, and it's often next to impossible for an
outsider (or even the individual themself) to predict what will be
effective. In the mean time, any outside attempts to create that
spark will probably irritate the fuck out of most people and create
mental scar tissue more than anything else. Regardless of what I
think other people should
do, there's no effective way for me
to get them to do that. Not that I've really done much of that--any
half-hearted attempts that may have seemed like that were more snark
resulting from the frustration of dealing with omnivorous dietary
customs in restaurants and gatherings or people questioning my
painfully obvious reasons for cutting out animal products than
anything else. (And yes, I should be more careful about that. I'm
working on it.)
Anyway. TL;DR: I've
realized that most people need time, at least one example, and a potent kick in the feels to go vegan, and the latter may be something
they never get and is almost certainly something they won't get from
anything I say. Mine is described above for anyone who's curious.
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