A Post on Vegetarianism

Lately, I’ve been asked why I am a vegetarian. Because I grew up in a vegetarian family, sometimes I forget that vegetarianism is not the norm, that not all people understand why vegetarians would choose to not eat meat as a life conviction. “Meat is too good”, some people tell me, “Can’t survive without it”. Others add, “How do you know meat is not good if you’ve never tried it?” It’s true, there are certain things I can’t say if I’ve never tried eating meat. However, what I can say is that there are moral, environmental, religious, health, social, philosophical, political, and personal reasons for why I choose not to eat meat. Since I won’t be able to discuss all of these points in detail, I will focus this particular post on the personal reason. Personally, I chose not to eat meat out of a respect for and an awareness in the processes in life.

In the world we live in today, technology and globalization has made it easy to create, design, package, ship, shelve, and store products at such a rate previously unimaginable. Such an efficiency makes life more convenient, and it provides consumers with many more options to choose from. However, this inundation of products creates an overload that removes us from the process of production. When we walk into a supermarket, we see the product, the price, but not the process. This technological expediency creates a gap in our awareness between the product/price and the process that was involved. This awareness about the process, I would argue, is significant to living a meaning life, and the lack of awareness produces behaviors that are less sensitive to the cost/benefits, political dynamics, and interacting relationships in the world.

All things involve process, and this process can be considered like “history”. A leader has a history of learning and growth (going to school, growing up with friends, developing mentors, and finally becoming the leader perceived today), a product has a history of production, and an animal has a history of maturation (as all humans do), etc. To lose awareness in understanding such processes makes it more easy to navigate in our busy world. However, this detachment also removes a deeper respect and appreciation for the things we interact with. If I don’t know a leader personally, blaring headlines about his/her sudden death would mean little to me;  if I am unaware of the production process of a product, the fact that such items were produced with child/slave labor would mean little to me; if I forget that animals also live life, that they grew up from little babies, the fact that they were fattened up in cages,  injected with hormones, and cut up in a slaughter house will mean nothing to me as I order my 99 cent hamburger. Only the price would matter.

The loss in social meaning that results from detaching ourselves from the history of things around us can be illustrated in the following twists: what if the leader who died in the scenario above was your personal mentor who changed your life? What if the cheap diamond ring you bought on ebay was cut from a relative who was raped and killed in a third world country? What if the animal that was gutted and served to you in a 99 cent burger was the pet you had since you were 3? These alternative scenario clearly highlight how differently you would feel if these objects revealed their history as something that was intimately connected to your life. Ultimately, an appreciation for these inherent histories, an awareness that they exist, and a respect for their inherent values are what lend me personal strength in my conviction as a vegetarian.