Vegetarianism

I'm a fairly new vegetarian, but I don't have any intentions to revert to meat eating. I haven't eaten meat (which does include fish and chicken, mind you) for over 6 months and I'm not tempted to at all.

When I first became a vegetarian, I felt it was necessary to let my friends know that I wanted to do this so that there would be no awkward moments later when I'm offered a hotdog, etc. A lot of my friends told me that I was just doing it for attention and to be "different." Many guranteed that I wouldn't stick with it.

I have stuck with it as long as I have because I chose this lifestyle for a reason. I saw so many terrible things done in slaughterhouses. Obviously, I had always known that hamburgers were in fact dead cows... but the meaning of that never really sunk in until recently.


As a society, we are systematically killing thousands of animals, living creatures, for the sole purpose of fulfilling our appetite. Notice I said appetite and not hunger. In much of America and other developed countries, it is entirely possible to live healthy without killing animals. (I realize in poorer countries, the livestock raised on their land may be their only diet. I respect that. In their case, it is survival and I would never deny a human their right to survive).

We are not like the lions or the wolves. We do not have an innate predatoral desire to kill and eat meat. And yet, we continue to eat meat.
This is where we are greatly separated from the carnivores. The lions and the wolves, and all other carnivores of our world, eat meat for survival. They kill because that is the only food they know how to obtain and that their digestive systems understand how to consume.
They hunt for all of their food and never take more than is necessary.
Whereas we breed, raise, and slaughter animals in hundreds of factory farms across the world. Think about that. We raise animals for the sole purpose of killing them. But that's not all, many of the meat produced is wasted. A life entirely wasted.


I also oppose eating meat because of the hypocrisy of meat eaters. There are animals that we will eat, and there are animals that we would never even think of eating. We'll happily scarf down a juicy dead cow, but the thought of eating a dog or cat will make us lose our appetite. Nobody wants to eat poor Fido, his life is more important than any cow, pig, or chicken's. But why?
Why do we "rank" animals in this way?

And it's not even like there is some kind of universal list of consumable animals.
In Western countries, we love beef and pork. Yet in many Eastern Asian countries, cows are sacred and pork is unclean.
We have laws protecting dogs and cats from slaughter, yet it is known that some Asian countries have no such protection and dogs may very well be eaten.
How do we decide which animals we will eat and which we will not? There is no way to do this justly. The rules of consumption are made without meaning or reason and yet society follows them so devoutly.



Coming back to the point I was making earlier. In most developed countries, a vegetarian diet is completely possible and healthy. And so eating meat is no longer a means to survive. I believe that meat eating has outlived itself and is an anachronism to our time. Continuing to support the slaughter of animals when it is entirely unnecessary can be considered a sadism of sorts.
If we define sadism as a satisfaction derived from inflicting pain or harm on an individual, then meat eating in our society does apply to this. We cause pain and death for living creatures simply for our own satisfaction.


Now please don't mistake what I'm saying. I do believe that when your life is put against the life of another creature (human or not), your own survival should be the only thing that matters. Some people have made a passtime out of asking me "What If?" questions that usually involve Eating Meat vs. Starving to Death.
If I starve to death, I can't do much good in future so of course at that moment, all morals and ethics go out the window.



There ya go. I have reasons for my vegetarianism. I don't do it for attention or to be "different." I do it because I am passionate about the life of other earthlings. I refuse to eat meat because I don't believe it's necessary.

I dare each of you reading this to attempt a vegetarian diet for one week. Easy enough.
I dropped meat in one day and haven't tasted it for over half of a year.