I’m vegan except…..
09 March 2008

Lots of people seem to think that veganism is hard. It isn’t. At first, it may be a bit overwhelming, but that fades fast. In a few weeks, it is like second nature, and it is easy. It doesn’t require a huge amount of will power, all that much discipline, or any kind of elaborate rituals. Yet, I think people make it more complicated than it needs to be by not just stepping up and simply making the commitment to do it, and do it fully.

Every so often, I get email correspondence from people who tell me that they’re vegan, but for one exception. One of the most common things that I hear and read is “I’m vegan, except when I eat out.” This perplexes me, in all honesty. People who are on the verge of going vegan like this clearly have a pretty good handle on why one would go vegan. They clearly want to do it. And they understand the ethical reasons involved. So, I’m left wondering....do the animals that produce dairy and eggs for restaurants not suffer as much as animals that produce them for your home? When you break it down, the same dynamics of production are still involved, the exploitation is the same, and the suffering is the same. There’s no ethical reason to eat non-vegan foods when you’re out of the home.

The only reason that people do it is convenience.

Yet, for someone who has decided that the suffering of animals matters, convenience is not a solid justification. I realize that this may seem radical, or fundamentalist, or divisive, or whatever, especially when we have people like Peter Singer advocating for the “Paris exception” of eating just about whatever the hell anyone wants every so often. What I’m advocating is not radical: it is simply recognizing that some ethical principles matter, and that living by those principles is important, even when it is inconvenient. This may mean that on occasion, you don’t have as many choices, or that you have to appear “weird” in front of friends and waitstaff. But so what? Living your life as a vegan matters, because you’re standing in for the animal. You’re the living witness at the table, the lone objector who says, by their actions, “Exploiting animals isn’t right, and I won’t do it.” By failing to do this, you fail not only to live up to your own principles, but you fail to make as big an impact as you could. You fail to introduce the necessary cognitive dissonance into the lives of those around you. In short, the visceral protest of veganism becomes limp and falls flat if you can’t actually be bothered to go to the trouble to be vegan.

I live in a extremely rural area. People around here have no clue what a vegan is, yet I’m able to get vegan food when I go out to eat, simply by asking nicely for it, and being clear about my needs. It isn’t complex.

I’m not trying to argue that I’m an exceptional model of veganism. I’m not. I’m just another guy trying to live as a vegan as best I can. But in the end, if your principles mean anything to you, they should mean something even when they’re inconvenient. When it comes down to it, people make going vegan harder than it is. I see a lot of people pity themselves for their “sacrifice” as a vegan, which is absurdly misplaced pity. The pity shouldn’t be for yourself, it should be for the animals that you claim to be caring about when you decide to make this commitment. Ultimately, going vegan isn’t that hard for most of us, and the sooner that people recognize that it is doing the right thing by their ethics, step up, and begin living by the principles that they say are important, the sooner we’ll actually begin to make changes in the world.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under: Opinion | Stupid Welfarists | 

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