This post is trying to clarify a very common misunderstanding I've encountered over and over. Your comments are most welcome here. I present here my personal perspective and opinions.
Being vegan is NOT a dietary choice but a way of relating to sentient beings who are not humans. Vegans often simply think that unnecessarily harming another being, be that a cat, cow, sheep, dog, fish, elephant or any other, is morally unjust. That's it, nothing so big and nothing that most people cannot easily relate to. Being vegan is, in a nutshell, enlarging your circle of empathy to include others who are not human. While I believe such empathy is in the nature of most of us (how would you feel when you see someone beating up a dog and hear the dog whimpering?), it is forcibly repressed during our childhood by misinformation and indoctrination. Re-opening to that natural empathy and compassion makes individuals around the world change their views about many things that the majority of society still accepts.
While people relate most often to the dietary aspects of not eating
flesh of another animal or drinking milk of a cow, being vegan isn't on par with
"I believe white sugar is bad for your health and you shouldn't eat it" or "don't smoke, it's bad for you and everyone around you".
Choosing to be vegan is a moral choice. Most vegans would not wear clothes made of skins or hair of an animal. Most vegans wouldn't ride a captive elephant, camel or horse for their pleasure, feeling that the animal might not be enjoying the ride or its captivity as much as the rider. Most vegans would not enjoy a circus show of lions jumping through hoops or dolphins dancing in a pool. The reason is that, as empathy works, they'll look at these situations the way they think the animal would look at them.
Maybe vegans are wrong. Perhaps dairy cows who have semen pushed into them by a human enjoy the process and the vegan use of the word "rape" is out of context. Perhaps these cows don't feel bad when their babies are taken away from them because they enjoy their daily milking routine so much. Perhaps their newborn babies are happy to grow up confined to a small cage for the few months of lives they are given before becoming "veal". Perhaps there's nothing wrong with cutting the throat of or electrocuting a captive animal as its physical death helps its soul reach nirvana more quickly. Perhaps. I don't know for sure. My empathy to them makes me feel horrible when I see such acts of torture but maybe my feeling are misleading me.
What is important to me when talking about being vegan to people who don't understand it is sharing real facts that most people are unaware of (as in the amazing movie
Earthlings) and explaining that there is a moral choice to be made. Most people don't think that eating meat, dairy or eggs is a moral choice as it's the default in today's society. Most people wouldn't think twice about buying leather products as they're offered right next to everything else. This perception is wrong. It is a moral choice and we're all making our choices. Personally, I thought again about my choices and made the change 19 months ago and have written a
blog post you're welcome to read about it.
A vegan diet, one of the aspects of being vegan, has very important ramifications both health-wise and to the environment. One can have a very bad vegan diet that would be unhealthy but
constructing a good diet that does not include animal products has proven health benefits. Hell, I used to think that vegetarians are weak and sickly and those who adopt a crappy diet actually are. Factory farming is an ecological disaster and you can look it up yourself. If there's one thing I'd really be happy to learn that you did after reading this post, it would be to search for information yourself. Learn and make your own choice.
