Veganism, Part 4a

Isn’t it always the plight of the heart, to be analyzed by the mind? For its vast, amorphous feeling, to be reduced to science? To judge emotion by the same, rigid standard by which thought itself is judged?

As I sit here, thinking how best to portray my personal reasons for adopting veganism, I am reminded that thought is very much like a sieve, through which we pass our emotions. We sift out the impurities; the parts of our being that remain unpredictable or mysterious. What we seek to produce, is purity, something with the seamless consistency of logic. Something that is the same through and through, that we can rely upon time and again. 

My previous arguments for veganism have been of a scientific nature.   

I presented these arguments because there are those among us for whom it will be difficult to accept that which is not absolute proof. Those individuals will always require the substance of numbers to sway them. They will find the appeals of the heart empty, and perhaps even foolhardy. They will deplore those who choose to found their lives upon the ceaseless rocking of waves, which we unerstand to be feelings. They will wonder why some of us choose mystery over certainty.

I respect those who swear by their minds, even as I am one who swears by his heart.

Even using the word “reason” to describe why I am vegan, seems somehow a contradiction.

But let me start at the beginning. I first considered becoming a vegetarian some five years ago. A part of me, which I would be unable to point to on a map of the body, felt at odds with the lifestyle I was living. I had consumed animal products since birth, and it is well-understood that old habits die hard. Though often, I considered changing, I knew it was easier to trust the society in which I had been reared, than to break off radically and choose another path. 

Society, with its long-reaching arms and its air of certainty, instructed me that humans had always survived on an omnivorous diet; that we had evolved to eat both animals and plants, and that to do anything apart, would be no less than a rejection of Nature. So it seemed to me that I was up against something much greater than social conditioning. I faced thousands of years of evolution.

But much in my life had always been a countercurrent. While I watched others as they sailed by peacefully, I found myself always moving in the opposite direction.  I wished as one does, who feels terribly different, to experience life from the other side. Just once, I wished. I longed to rid my heart of strange feelings, and to think my thoughts without pangs of self-doubt. If only I waved my paddle a certain way; if only I shifted my weight this way or that; if only, if only; then, all things being equal, I should be able to turn round my boat and sail with the others. But all things are not equal. And the more adamantly I struggled to turn my course, the more immutable it became. The more I tried to change, the more I stayed the same.

While we can think our way through almost anything, we cannot change the way we feel. And this is the very definition of a moral compass: a marvelous device of the heart, almost entirely irresistable, but to the subtle art of the mind.

Alas, it is not so easy to embrace one’s true feelings. Nor is it easy even to see those feelings, hidden, as they are, beneath the crust of social conditioning. From our earliest consciousness, we are taught to sift out our emotions, and to purify our thoughts. We are taught to weaken our instincts because they are unpredictable. We are taught to silence our hearts when they beat most importunately. Far better are we, indeed, who employ reason, when feeling is hysterical. 

And so we all look forward to that day when everyone will be so rational, when society will be vindicated, and guilt will be the disease of ancient history. Everything, then, will be the light of reason; and for every facet of human nature, a number will exist to make it all square. We will accept what we see and what we do without ever wondering if it is right or if i it is wrong. Every action, will have its equal and opposite reaction. And we will know our lives even before we have lived them. Ours will be a living science, and a science we live. Is this bliss?

Or is it tragedy? What is our time on Earth if not a chance to explore, even recklessly, that which lies before us? Pavement may end; but roads go on. When civilization is nothing more than a dot in the distance, the neverending glory of Nature will stretch before you. And what is more natural than to see, or touch, or taste, or smell? And is it not unnatural to stifle those senses, and forbid them when they beg to be used?

I drew Nature alongside Civilization, and for the first time, I could see there, the desperate fear of people in a world they could never fully control. All around them: chaos. At the edges of our cities, where the buildings seemed to shrink and pale, all-mighty Nature snaked its way between slabs of concrete, weakening the foundations of our constructs. Wilderness invaded wherever humanity struggled to maintain semblance. But downtown bustled with activity, seemingly strong against Nature. Here were skyscrapers, and sidewalks and streets; billboards with made-up people; digital readouts; news tickers; and money. All things we created. All things to give us false confidence in a chaotic world.  

I got to thinking: we spend all our lives long trying fruitlessly to contain Nature. We are besieged by the wilds all around us, and we define our humanity more by what we shun than by what we embrace. We tell ourselves that we are not animals and that the same laws that apply to them, do not apply to us. To prove it, we erect cities in defiance. We swallow down pills by the hundreds, if only to prove that Nature cannot create a plight that we cannot cure. With our science, we attempt to show that Nature is easily reduced to a blackboard of equations.

But would our cities not crumble before the winds of time and the rush of water, even in spite of our cleverness? Do we ever cure the last disease, before Nature returns bearing a more pernicious affliction, the like of which we’ve never seen. The unknown plagues us, even as we increase our knowledge. The more we know, it seems, the less we know.