Ambivalence is a cruel and relentless mistress. Without the passion to choose one path, every road is ahead of you, but none seems worth the bother of starting down.
Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn, writing on MSNBC’s website, has a bad case of ambivalence … about eating meat. Eating in a restaurant is torturous to her:
I squirm, caught between moral horror, my taste buds and a desire not to be the ‘weird’ vegetarian. I’m 38, and I have been engaged in this internal war, off and on, for nearly 20 years. I have been a vegetarian, semivegetarian and old-fashioned carnivore. Right now, I eat everything — but with a pervasive sense of unease.
DeVita-Raeburn’s vegetarianism hits all the standard highs and lows. She was a VUG in college—Vegetarian Until Graduation. Her family worried over what she would eat on Thanksgiving. A boyfriend (Italian, natch) awakened her senses to conscious eating and the joys of meat. Later, she comes to understand that animals are more sentient than we like to think:
I couldn’t help but empathize with them. Because wouldn’t I, too, feel hysteria if I knew my seconds were numbered? What made me so different from these animals? I wondered.
But despite her awakening, she still is an ambivalent vegetarian, riddled with guilt, yet unable to make a clean break with meat-eating. Doesn’t she know that kind of stress while eating can lead to a whole other kind of diet?
I grew in godforsaken nowhere midwest, full with the winding dirt road and fields of cattle and corn. I have vivid memories of sitting down to dinner with my family, biting into a juicy, rich, home-grilled burger and actually hearing the cows lowing right outside the window. However, instead of guilt, this experience granted me an intense understanding and admiration of the food I was consuming. I KNEW this cow I was eating, and thus, since they were to be butchered anyways (farmer Glen needed to make a living) I could at least make sure their death was not in vain.
The key to being a clear conscious carnivore is to have standards and respect. Even now that I live in a big city, without the farms right next door to get my produce, I am selective of where and how I get my meat. Don’t be blind to what you are consuming, pay the animals the homage they deserve. Then enjoy your burger, thanking the cow-gods above that made the experience possible.
AFAIK, Vegetarianism has been common to only one place on Earth: Southern India. And from everything that I have read, Southern Indians get Heart Disease at a rate SEVENTEEN TIMES GREATER than their Northern Indian Meat-Eating Brothers and Sisters.
Also, it seems that all modern societies were built around the raising of animals for slaughter. And that is why we raise these animals; for slaughter.
And those animals that are commonly hunted, well, they were being hunted anyway.
Yet, somehow, vegetarianism (which involves killing living things) is seen as the moral choice. I have never understood this.
Ian Lewis
I’d like to see some references on the heart disease statistic, from what I’ve read, a vegetarian diet leads to lower rates of heart disease and cancer. however, whether veg or meat-eater, it’s about balance and both can lead to bad health.
As for the dilemma, I’ve felt it too and agree with star7bs. if you’re respectful and thankful for the sacrifice, then there’s no problem. We’re not the only animals that kill other animals for sustinance. When it comes down to it, it’s not so different from the lion that hunts the gazelle or the grizzly that catches salmon. Just have respect for life, don’t be a glutton, and accept your place in the food chain.
I got it slightly wrong. Northern Indians consume 17 times more animal fat, but have 1/7th the amount of Heart Disease:
“In 1962, it was shown that heart disease in northern India was just one-seventh of the rate in southern India yet northern Indians who had a mostly meat diet consumed 17 times as much animal fat as southern Indians who were mostly vegetarian.” – http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=2082
“Mortality from coronary heart disease in southern India was seven times higher than in the north and the age at death 44 years compared with 52, although people in the north ate 19 times more fat, mostly animal fat, and also smoked much more.4″ – http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1122148
I could probably find more, hopefully that will do.
Ian Lewis