Why I am a Vegetarian
I've been a vegetarian for about 8.5 years now. Some of those years were as a vegan (or quite close to it), but I haven't knowingly touched any meat products in that time (oh except for one jello shooter once, I think, heh). It's actually only in the last couple years that I have really solidified my reasons for becoming a vegetarian, my vegetarian ethic if you will.
My mother raised the point, as did a friend of mine, that if I ate organic, ethically produced (i.e. not factory farmed) meat, I might have more of an effect on the welfare of animals, since, theoretically, the meat industry cares more about the opinions (via the dollars) of meat-eaters than of people who won't ever buy meat. Since it's highly unlikely that meat-eaters will ever fall into the minority, nevermind disappear, there will always be a meat industry, and we should aim to make it as ethical as possible through both boy- and buycotts.
The only retort I have for this, and it isn't foolproof, is that a reduced demand for meat would reduce the benefit of factory farms, which rely on high demand. But it would take quite a lot of vegetarians to accomplish that, and it's entirely possible to have an unethical small-scale farm.
The one reason for my vegetarianism that I've really stuck with is based on my belief that hypocrisy should be minimized-you should walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Here's how it works for me and my vegetarianism:
- I would be extremely uncomfortable (that's actually probably an understatement) killing an animal myself. And not just in a gross-out way, but in an ethical way-I'd have a hard time looking an animal, pretty much any animal, in the face and then pulling a trigger (metaphorically or literally). This is, I realize, entirely "in my head" and subjective, but that doesn't change anything for me.
- Therefore, it would be hypocritical of me to close my eyes and let someone do the killing for me. And since hypocrisy is bad, I must therefore be vegetarian.
This argument obviously only works because I have an actual ethical problem with killing an animal. It's not a reason for everyone to become vegetarian, if one has no real problem killing an animal. But I know of a good many people who are as uncomfortable with the idea of killing an animal as I am yet can chow down on a hamburger with no problems-unless, of course, you bring up the fact that they're eating an animal's muscles, in which case they tell you to shut up and not talk about it. That kind of hypocrisy makes me sad. You can talk all about the plants I eat and I won't get upset, and I've both planted and harvested plants before with no ethical quandries.
So I have more respect for hunters (that is, hunters who eat what they kill) than for people who can only bring themselves to buy shrinkwrapped, fully butchered meat, almost as divorced as possible from the actual act of killing. I actually only realized this a couple of years ago.
That's the main reason I'm a vegetarian, although I started out with others. For instance, by avoiding meat, and knowing that there are at least a few other people who avoid meat, the general suffering level of life on the earth is reduced a tiny bit. Even if plants suffer in some comparable way (and I haven't seen anything really convincing for this argument), at least I'm removing one level of suffering-plant to human instead of plant to animal to human. This also is an argument from a resources point of view (energy is lost in the intermediate step of being transformed from plant to animal). But all in all, I just plain dislike hypocrisy.
My mother raised the point, as did a friend of mine, that if I ate organic, ethically produced (i.e. not factory farmed) meat, I might have more of an effect on the welfare of animals, since, theoretically, the meat industry cares more about the opinions (via the dollars) of meat-eaters than of people who won't ever buy meat. Since it's highly unlikely that meat-eaters will ever fall into the minority, nevermind disappear, there will always be a meat industry, and we should aim to make it as ethical as possible through both boy- and buycotts.
The only retort I have for this, and it isn't foolproof, is that a reduced demand for meat would reduce the benefit of factory farms, which rely on high demand. But it would take quite a lot of vegetarians to accomplish that, and it's entirely possible to have an unethical small-scale farm.
The one reason for my vegetarianism that I've really stuck with is based on my belief that hypocrisy should be minimized-you should walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Here's how it works for me and my vegetarianism:
- I would be extremely uncomfortable (that's actually probably an understatement) killing an animal myself. And not just in a gross-out way, but in an ethical way-I'd have a hard time looking an animal, pretty much any animal, in the face and then pulling a trigger (metaphorically or literally). This is, I realize, entirely "in my head" and subjective, but that doesn't change anything for me.
- Therefore, it would be hypocritical of me to close my eyes and let someone do the killing for me. And since hypocrisy is bad, I must therefore be vegetarian.
This argument obviously only works because I have an actual ethical problem with killing an animal. It's not a reason for everyone to become vegetarian, if one has no real problem killing an animal. But I know of a good many people who are as uncomfortable with the idea of killing an animal as I am yet can chow down on a hamburger with no problems-unless, of course, you bring up the fact that they're eating an animal's muscles, in which case they tell you to shut up and not talk about it. That kind of hypocrisy makes me sad. You can talk all about the plants I eat and I won't get upset, and I've both planted and harvested plants before with no ethical quandries.
So I have more respect for hunters (that is, hunters who eat what they kill) than for people who can only bring themselves to buy shrinkwrapped, fully butchered meat, almost as divorced as possible from the actual act of killing. I actually only realized this a couple of years ago.
That's the main reason I'm a vegetarian, although I started out with others. For instance, by avoiding meat, and knowing that there are at least a few other people who avoid meat, the general suffering level of life on the earth is reduced a tiny bit. Even if plants suffer in some comparable way (and I haven't seen anything really convincing for this argument), at least I'm removing one level of suffering-plant to human instead of plant to animal to human. This also is an argument from a resources point of view (energy is lost in the intermediate step of being transformed from plant to animal). But all in all, I just plain dislike hypocrisy.