Notes on comments from "Eatin' Meat" and Tantra.

Two good comments, much more thoughtful than I was expecting. If you have not read them you can read them under the post "Eatin' Meat."

From nlv, the main thing that I was hearing was the "why is this so repugnant to people?" problem. Why does it bother people so much that others choose to be vegetarians? As nlv said, "Why on earth do people feel so threatened by someone cutting meat out of their diet? Who can i possibly be hurting by this decision?"

I think there are many reasons why people feel so threatened by others' choosing to become vegetarians, but they all revolve around identification. People are creatures of habit, and their habits, and activities, become mistaken for who they are. For just a gross simplification, think of somebody who always goes out with his friends for beers after work. If he stops drinking, or even if he finds a new activity, or a girlfriend, say, his relationship with those people can change drastically. He may find that he was friends with them more out of circumstance than anything else, and they may resent him for this. Again, this is a drastic simplification, but think about how people answer the question, "who are you?" Beyond age, sex, and nationality (still not a real determiner of who a person is,) isn't it most often with a list of activities? I am a mother, I am a soccer player, I am a restaurateur. The work one is probably the answer given most. Who are you? I am a television ad-man, I am a teacher, I am a window-washer. Now, most people won't answer "I am a meat-eater," but they don't have to (see below,) and the point is just that people often mistake what they do for what they are, so when somebody else chooses to do something that seems opposed to one of their activities, they feel like they are being attacked, because, on some level, they're taking it personally.

But with meat-eating especially, because this isn't even a conscious choice. It's so embedded in people's activities, and in the culture, that it seems one-hundred percent natural. That someone would choose to go against this is an affront. (What could be more American than a hamburger with cheese?) And so that somebody else has gone through the conscious process of rejecting this makes it feel (feel being very important, it is an emotional reaction, not a rational one) as if someone has consciously deliberated and debated and come to the decision that yes, you, meat eater you, are wrong as a person. Especially if somebody is close to you, or if you are part of a group with a set of associated characteristics, meat-eating being one of them (I'm thinking, like, a sports-team of manly men big boys beer drinking meat eaters, perhaps, or a frat house...or pig farmers,) your decision to forgo meat could make them feel uncomfortable. You were on their side, they trusted you, and now suddenly, "I don't even know you anymore, man."

There's often a defensiveness in this as well. Your conscious decision, even if it's not paraded in someone's face, can make others guilty, especially if they haven't themselves done the thinking necessary to justify their choices to themselves. You're making them look a little like a slob. I'm not suggesting that most people have thought out their meat-eating, quite the contrary, they haven't, and this might also make them uneasy.

As nlv says, "But what really bothers me about everything is not that i get embarrassed or even harassed for my choices, i can deal with that no problem, it's that i see a cruelty expressed by people when something appears against their own traditions. It has been made so clear and tangible because they are allowed to make fun of me, and their initial reactions aren't suppressed because it's not a big deal to make fun of a vegetarian." This sums up what I've been saying nicely, I think. Why is there a word "vegetarian" but there's no word "omnivoritarian?" Or "carnivorarian?" (Despite the fact that a diet of eating only meat would be ridiculously damaging to one's health I think most omnivores in america would contend in vain against a vegetarian that they were carnivores until the mistake was pointed out to them.) It's groupthink, the tendency to just go with what seems normal, without ever trying to figure out where or why something is normal. What's normal never needs to be defended, it's assumed, which is why there's no word for the "ideology" of one who decides to eat meat, though there is vegetarian "-ism."

I think the feeling of loathing one feels as a meat-eater for vegetarians that I noted in the post comes from this, and is a projection. You feel, as a meat-eater, that vegetarians are attacking you irrationally, because, of course, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. They're attacking not only one thing, but all the things that you stand for in your life (again, what could be more American than eating a cheeseburger, so someone who loves america and associates america with cheeseburgers is going to feel as if you're trying to change what america is with your transgression of ridiculously "not-eating-cheeseburgers-as-an-american.")

Obviously, I'm not saying that any vegetarians are actually attacking meat-eaters when they become vegetarians, quite the contrary, but that's the point: the identification is a mistake. You can eat meat, but that is not who you are. The more emotionally mature and stable somebody is the less likely they are to be offended what you decide, but, then, perhaps most of the population is not extremely emotionally mature. Fortunately our society is less coercive than most of the societies in history, even if it can still be difficult to make the choices, or, as nlv says later, be the type of person that lives necessarily on the outskirts of mainstream society.

And the other thing is that most people, excepting those close to you, and those who are truly idiots, and those who are partisan for one reason or another, probably don't care that much if you're a vegetarian, even if they might make fun of vegetarians behind their backs, or feel vaguely threatened by it. But, of course, the people who are loud get all the attention. Few vegetarians are militantly so, but those are the ones you remember. Something like being Christian and being constantly identified with Jerry Falwell.


As for Cary's comments:

One word she mentions is "sacrifices," and actually, though I understand what she's saying, I would have to disagree with the word. I think when people make "sacrifices," they're usually making a mistake, or trying to jump into a decision before they're ready for it, or they are simply blaming something else for making them miserable.

An example would be if somebody had a child early, and they feel as if they are sacrificing their youth and fun to take care of the kid. They are always working, and they dislike this, they bitch about it, etc. etc. They feel as if they are forced into it by something, or by themselves, and they end up seriously resenting the kid. But, they are not being honest with themselves, or at least not open with themselves. They are making a choice, and though the circumstances may have forced them to make a choice they wouldn't have wanted to deal with originally, they do have a choice. They are working for their baby. They are not forced to do this. They could desert the child, or give it up for adoption, but they have chosen not to do this. I am not suggesting that they are all good choices, merely pointing out that when you feel forced to do something, you are usually just leaving some possible choices out of the framework. But, by doing this, you are denying the part you play in making the choice. It doesn't make work any better, perhaps, but at least there's the recognition that you have chosen to do this, that, given the circumstances, which you cannot change, it is what you want to do. (yes I am aware of the grammatical problems with the subjects in this paragraph and I don't care.)

Fortunately, no one is going to force you to be a vegetarian, and you shouldn't force yourself to do it either. "I think the biggest issue for me, and I think for others in my boat, is how daunting it seems to take this whole thing on fully." There's a Japanese concept from a mashing of two words that mean "good," and "change," and it's Kaizen, which means, basically, small, constant, incremental change, which takes active engagement with your life. As Cary says, conscious consumerism, or let's say, for here, living a conscious life, demands your attention, but there's no reason you should force yourself to sacrifice anything you don't want to, and that's the point.

Tantra, which in the west is usually associated most with freaky sex, unfortunately, is this kind of active conscious lifestyle. All it asks is attention, and everything else is permissible. So, instead of forcing yourself not to eat that piece of steak, etc. etc., you say, okay, I want to eat this piece of steak, though I feel a conflict as well, I will pay attention to what I'm doing, I will use this steak as a vehicle for awareness. Two things happen. One, you find that your conflicts become less and less, internally, that you stop being so hard on yourself, and Two, that the changes you want to make come anyway, naturally. Let's say you're really paying attention while you're eating this steak. You may come to notice externally (and there's nothing wrong if you don't) that, actually, it's kind of gross, maybe you can see a vein or maybe paying attention to it brings associations (like the bones of the steak with the bones of a living animal or roadkill you just saw) you don't want to make when you're eating, or internally, that actually your desire to eat the steak was coming more from outside expectations or environments than it was coming from the steak itself. These are hasty examples, but the basic idea is that with attention, internal and external, you will less and less desire those things you had before. This is in contrast to the Yogic mindset, which says "This is WRONG, I WILL not do it," detrimental for two reasons. One, how do you know it's wrong if you've never really investigated it yourself, might these ideas of wrongness be received as well, just from another side of the debate? And Two, you're strengthening your ego in this process, in the long run aiding its games and your own helplessness to its whims.

So actually, what you call half-assed vegetarianism, is actually not such a bad thing, provided that you are active in your investigation, and constantly thinking and watching, even if you still want to or occasionally eat meat. Half-assed vegetarianism is terrible, of course, if that means you never think about it and just use it as a way to feel better about yourself relative to other people.

Any ideology is mistaken, the only best thing to do is to think and investigate for yourself. Get to the bottom of it, and when you do, dig deeper. So, do what you can now, and it will seem less daunting to you, but do it with one-hundred percent of your heart and attention. You will find, I think, that if you do this, and continue to do this, and continue to do this, you will get far much more accomplished than you ever felt possible.

By the way, the "conscious," part of "conscious consumerism/ capitalism" is a word that rankles me as much as "vegetarian" used to when I was a teenager, because I think it makes a lot of people feel better than those around them. I am conscious, I am awake, I know, I am right, and everyone else is a jackass. In a way, part of this is correct, someone actively engaged with their life and not just drifting is, in a sense, more alive, and yet this is no license for superiority, because there is none. So I prefer the word "tantra," though I am looking for a better one, if anyone has any suggestions, wrapped up as tantra is with hairy-people sex.

And, of course, this doesn't mean that you don't try, it means that you try as hard as you can to pay attention to everything going on in and outside of you, which, if you do, you will find making everything else around you falling into place naturally, and it will seem as if it all just happened. Do what you can. Those who try and do too much at one time almost always end up making things worse. Either they ruin their cause, or they turn others against it. The Soviet Union tried to force a feudalist society towards communism in strokes of the clock, which was totally missing the historical argument of communism. They were trying to make an infant graduate from college, and those that try and make huge life changes instantly usually relapse in a week, stealing from themselves the motivation and confidence to make further improvements.

Further:

"We don't realize the costs that this mentality and these expectations have on everything". Nope. We don't. But we will. There is no free lunch.

"And until it's easy for people to do the right thing, they probably won't."

That's basically the whole idea of conscious capitalism, and, actually, capitalism isn't that far away from this at its heart, though it gets crapped on by people who don't understand it. (And I wouldn't say the U.S. is a pure capitalist country, just as it isn't an actual democracy.) It's the most efficient way to allocate resources, and I think that we'll find, as this goes on, should it start to succeed, is that we'll see that the fair way of doing things for everyone is also, actually, the most efficient way, like how automakers, who all complained they wouldn't be able to make money if mpg standards were raised in the seventies, all saw their profits increase when they were implemented.

But any way, the moral of the story is pay attention to what you're doing, and don't be willfully blind, because, at the end of the day, there is no universally right thing to do. Just keep plugging.

You are unlikely to change a lot of people's minds, especially in your generation or of those older than you. Those that agree with you were likely predisposed towards your viewpoint anyway, but push on. The differences you make may seem small, but they add up.

nlv- "You can eat all the meat you want or not, i don't think you are a worse person for it. For some reason, i don't think the majority of people can say the same thing." Hopefully one day they will, and people won't find themselves the focal point of the hatred of others for their conscious choices, or, nlv says, simply "because they are different."

Make Connections.