Another rant from a guy who means well but ends up doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
Here’s an adorable lamb:
And here’s a rack of lamb kebabs:
Did tears of joy suddenly turn into salivating drool — only to whiplash into pangs of guilty regret? That’s me! Somewhere between compassion and carnivorousness is crass rationalization enabling the love of animals one second, the desire to gobble them up the next. Excuses are made, none of them tenable. We manically crave the daily intake of animal protein and fat.
Even though pigs are smarter than dogs, we don’t care. “Bacon tastes good,” insists John Travolta‘s gangsta character ’from Pulp Fiction. “Pork chops taste good.” They sure do, the issue being less about hygiene, as Sam Jackson insists, and more about the morality of breeding billions of relatively smart, sensitive animals just to devour them after their short, miserable lives.
Believe Me, I Tried
Some people become vegetarians for ethical reasons, others for environmental ones, still others because they just don’t like the taste of meat. Because I think bacon is the best thing ever invented since condoms and video games, I fell squarely into the first category, but only after personal tragedy struck: my 11-year-old broke his tibia during a skateboarding accident.
A spiral fracture is certainly insignificant compared to far worse things that can happen — but as I stood there helplessly watching my son writhe in pain, I had one of those “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” moments. Throughout the whole ordeal I was in worse shape than my poor kid, who quickly learned the benefit of lying around helpless, bossing everyone around.
Anyway, my reactive, dumb-ass answer to all this was to stop eating meat. That actually made sense, at least in principle: the less meat I ate, the fewer animals had to suffer. In practice, though, the result was a total disaster. Having eaten Atkins style for decades, I shifted from a diet consisting of low-carbs to tortilla chips, refried beans, cheese pizza, and ramen noodles.
The onslaught of sugars and lack of protein and vitamins sent my whole body into a tailspin, and literally shut down my brains. Layers of soft, squishy fat surrounded my once-ripped muscles; usually smart as a tack, even simple tasks became a struggle for me, my job on the ropes as I worked ten times harder than usual only to blow otherwise easy and fun projects to bits.
As my kid healed, moving on from bed, to crutches, to walking cast, to cane, to total rehabilitation, my own condition steadily deteriorated. What began as a noble quest to make the world a better place eventually resulted in my personal life becoming an unmitigated catastrophe. Soon as junior got his cast off, I threw in the towel: it came down to the barnyard or me, and I chose me.
Reason #1: I Leaped in Blind, Deaf, and Really Dumb
In retrospect I failed as a vegetarian for many reasons, the most obvious one lack of planning. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, didn’t seek out expert counsel until too late, and didn’t pay any attention to my deteriorating body and declining brains. Consumed with my struggling kid and faltering job, I made everything worse by eating horrible plants and weird fake meats.
Reason #2: I Became a Vegetarian for All the Wrong Reasons
Not eating steak shouldn’t be contingent on a family crisis, or any crisis for that matter. You might read The Jungle or watch Supersize Me and make big decisions, but reacting to one discomfort by substituting it with another is a distraction typically leading to disaster. If I wanted to alleviate suffering, getting fat and fucking up my job were probably not the best ways to do it.
Reason #3: I Ignored All the Signs and Refused to Adapt
Turning into a meatless zombie didn’t happen overnight. I should have paid better attention, especially since the symptoms of failure were so painfully obvious. But once I set my sights on a goal, no matter how ridiculous, well-intended, or self-destructive, I tend to take things too far; and the worse things got, the more stubbornly I persisted — until I fell off the vegan wagon.
Reason #4: I Was Smugly Self-Righteous the Whole Time
Despite the chaos, I felt like a religious zealot on a messianic quest. My kid broke his leg, and I was reducing his suffering by channeling it into my own. If I could eventually save a cow, a pig, a goat, a chicken, then the whole planet became less painful, and my kid’s agony had meaning. But that logic was total bullshit. Worse still, the delusion fueled the ease of my inevitable failure.
Reason #5: I Never Really Meant It
For years I convinced myself that if we didn’t breed and eat them, none of these animals would ever have existed. My philosophical nonsense centered around deciding which is better: either never having lived at all, or living briefly and uncomfortably until another species finally eats you. Needless to say, soon as my kid started walking again, I started eating them again.
Hope for the Future: Lab Grown Meat
Fast forward a few months and my kid is playing soccer and I’m back to shamelessly consuming bacon cheeseburgers, medium-rare steaks, chicken sandwiches, and yes, succulent lamb kebabs. Do I still feel guilty? Do I have regrets? Sure I do. But my new rationalization is the eventual dominion of “cell-generated meat” — coming from a laboratory, and not a slaughterhouse.
The FDA just held hearings on what to call it and how to regulate it. Whether the stuff is even called “meat” begs the question of this food tech becoming a viable alternative to the carnage of billions of living creatures that feel pain, and likely possess a level of sentience we’re too embarrassed and ashamed to admit. Soon we can have our compassion and our carnivorousness, too.
Until then the slaughter — and savory deliciousness — continue. A hundred years from now, hopefully sooner, people will look back at our era and liken it to the savagery of pre-industrial times. But with billions of creatures never to be born, and our food increasingly processed, will future generations also miss something? Will a lamb kebab still be a lamb kebab? Baaaa, baaaa.
Comentarios