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Originally Posted by noumenal
Why?
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Firstly, let me say that I stopped eating 'meat' in 1984 (I was 13) and I have to say I found it really quite easy to stick to. Once I'd started I was surprised by how little I wanted meat, so in my experience it was the worrying over the decision to start that was awkward rather than the practicalities of it once I'd begun.
It's a big and correct decision to make in my opinion. It's a moral choice, and those are the best choices to make.
As for being questioned: it's not so much that I get annoyed at being asked why, it's more the general offensiveness and/or stupidity of some of the people who ask. Three examples:
1. They start to rattle off as many possible things as they can to 'catch you out', ie dumb questions about shoes and belts and beer and this and that. They are desperate to convince themselves and you that being veggie
isn't the moral choice, yet they expect you to be morally infallible if you are veggie.
2. You get offered things like chicken and fish, because people are just
too f****** dumb to understand that fish and chickens are animals.
3. They mention that Hitler was veggie, as if that means anything at all. Them: 'Hey, did you know Hitler was a veggie, just like you?'
Me: 'Yes, and he was also a tw*t, just like you.'
You'll hear that vegetarians always push their opinions in people's faces, but in fact it is generally the opposite that is true. I've never attacked someons for being a general meat eater (although I certainly have for eating veal, of course!), but I myself have been verbaly attacked on several occaisions for being veggie. A lot of people are for some reason intimidated by others' moral choices to the point of aggressiveness, and this is becoming both more common and more extreme.
I'm vegetarian formainly moral reasons; I believe that life should be guided by morals, and that vegetarianism is a big moral choice. Anyone who cares about my reasons can have a few:
I detest the cruel nature of modern farming (and slaughtering), that amounts to little more than torture. It also produces dreadful quality meat, but that wasn't a big part of my choice. That people make a living, or even become very rich from this form of extreme cruelty is sickening, to be quite honest.
I come from one of the richest countries on earth. I have never - absolutely never - been so hungry that something else has had to die to fill my stomach. There is no reason to inflict stress, fear, pain and suffering on a living creature just so that I can eat.
Some foods, like veal and sharks fin soup, go beyond even basic ideas of cruelty and are just a sign of a barbaric attitude.
Social conditioning is not necessarily a good thing - sometimes questioning and challenging that conditioning is the right thing to do.
We could feed a lot more people by using land for crops than we do by using it for grazing. Why are people across the world starving? Another by-product, of course, is that large area of rainforest are destroye to rise cows for McDonalds.
I also just
don't want to eat bits of dead animal. Why on earth would I?
There are other reasons, of course.
When I weigh up the evidence/morals/whatever, the truth is that I can see little reason to eat 'meat', especially in today's economy where vegetarianism is no more expensive a lifestyle choice than 'meat' eating.
Sure, some of it tastes nice (I think - I can't really remember), but the only real reason I can see to eat 'meat' is conditioning. That's just not enough, for me, to overcome the moral (and health) advantages.