A Change in Diet is a Change in Perspective and Vice-versa

    I have been a vegetarian for almost two and a half years. I was certain that this was the right decision and that, despite some minor drawbacks, my life was better this way. It better matched my envisioned perfect representation of myself.

    Two weeks ago, right after my last post I was afflicted by a severe gastric-intestinal virus. It forced me to spend a large amount of my time on either bed or bathroom, leaving room for my mind to idle on various thoughts, including vegetarianism.

    This meat-eating forbidden diet started after a philosophy professor reminded me of the process that goes into putting the meat we eat on the table. It was by deliberating on the amount of environmental change and suffering imposed on the slave-species that are part of the human animal domestication process that I realized that human species, as rational beings, could act more rationally than that. Hypocrisy came down on me and I have decided to assume a responsibility for killing what I ate. From that moment on, I have decide to only eat what I would be capable of killing with my own hands.

    The transition was not easy. And it still isn't. And I am still far from being guilt free from my own perspective. I still use leather shoes, eat eggs, have ice-cream and use many other man-made objects that are a by-product of animal slavery and obliteration. It is a struggle to give up on the many pleasures modern society provides me with, despite the guilt imposed by my own consciousness.

    Perhaps, because giving up is so hard, it is why most people would rather assume an oblivious attitude towards this matter. To me, when becoming a vegetarian, the most impacting aspect of my life was not the change in diet itself, but rather how my perspective on food and other aspects of my life has changed. I have come to realize the multitude of bad social habits our society has gotten us accustomed to during our existence. Habits masked by many veils of bureaucracy and technology. Veils that keep important issues at arms-length, invisible and far enough from us, that allows us to comfortably accept the false claim that whatever happens on the other side of the veil is none of our business and we should not care. And sas if this post was not already boring enough for the readers expecting different types of discussions, let me take boredom to the next level by illustrating my point with some examples.

• The first point was already partially explained. Let us deal with the crude bestial reality of the way we treat animals. They are mere preys and resources to us. If we run out of cattle, I bet pets will be promoted as such. Why this distinction of pets and cattle? How hypocritical and selfish is that? Why a distinction between men and other animals? Why not eat the meat of prisoners in the death row or of those who pass away?

• The second point is with respect to socio-political power. Everyone, including myself, complain about how politicians are corrupt, how our lifestyle hurts the environment, how impoverished are most of the population. Yet, most of us do little to nothing to change that. I myself have been trying to participate in on-line petitions and donate to various NGOs. Nevertheless, I have never been able to dedicate a reasonable amount of my time engaged in activities that more directly affect the course of how my community develops. I recycle most of my garbage, but have never requested a company to stop sending me Styrofoam plates or avoided buying their products because of that. How many beggars have I crossed by and turned my careless face away from them.

• The third point is about self-respect. How many times do we do things to comply with society, family and other social circles, and end up leading our lives mostly to the satisfaction of others but ourselves. I have done that a lot. Only a few years ago I realized how much happier I could be by doing what I like, with some compromise of course. After all, living in family and society is about learning about the right amount of compromise that benefits both sides of a deal. 

    These three examples attempt to illustrate how untruthfully we tend to live our lives nowadays. Vegetarianism brought light to these issues in my head and provided me with a different perspective of reality (the objective reality :) ).

    I wonder why learning how to measure your actions more carefully and  better analysing their consequences is not an essential topic in high-schools worldwide. How many problems could have been better solved if more well-thought out decision-making was done based on a more in-depth analysis. How many lives could have been spared? How much suffering could have been avoided?

    After spending many days thinking about this - because, yes, I like thinking a lot about things and my CPU unfortunately is not multi-core, so it takes a while for me to reach a result - I have reached an  ingenious conclusion for why humans act the way they do: because it is only natural!

    Yes, it is human nature to act like this. We do what takes us the least amount of effort and bring us the most benefits. In fact, all animals are like that. It is about making the best use of the available resources in the easiest way possible to facilitate self-preservation and increase chances of survival. And no matter how evolved the thoughts in our brains are, at the end of the day, human nature has the final word. And inside each of us is a wild beast that tell us that "mine" comes before anyone else's. A beast capable of accepting and disregarding logical contradictions while proclaiming to follow the path of reason.

    Hence, here is another paradox of our existence: we design complex sets of rules to guide the collective group we call society, but the rules themselves are in conflict with our very nature and hence will never be strictly followed. The old saying "Laws are meant to be broken" seems to indeed hold true with regard to human nature. No matter how much law enforcement we have, in the dark silence of the night, those with power or lack of supervision will commit the most horrendous social crimes simply because the power of their nature has overcome the strength of their moral values. And is that really wrong, or is it only natural?

    And this leads me to my concluding remark:

    "Human existence and civilization is the endless conflict between nature and nurture."

P.S.: After two years being a vegetarian and getting sick a lot more often than when I was an omnivore, I have decided to step-back on this diet for a while and re-evaluate, grateful that the process brought me a new perspective of the world, a perspective I do not wish to ignore or forget.
P.S.2: A little time later I have decided to become a full blown vegan. Let the diet challenges continue...