Vegetarianism — Right or Wrong?
I have been a vegetarian for all the days I have lived and hopefully will continue to be for the rest of the days I am to live. Vegetarianism was a part of my upbringing, like it is in very many Tamil Brahmin families. But my continuing of being a vegetarian has less to do with me already having been a vegetarian. After all, there are countless Brahmins nowadays who consume meat with great joy. ‘Oh my God, you are missing a lot in this world!’ is a leitmotif I hear whenever I dine with my meat-eating friends, as they lick their KFC coated fingers with closed eyes while I pick on my French Fries, chuckling. I think to myself it is far easier to have rather stayed abstained than to get entangled and clamber mountains in order to quit.
I never get into an argument championing vegetarianism against a meat-eater, simply because I would lose the argument right away. Why? Not because of lack of argumentation but because of the inherent flaw in vegetarianism. We are designed by Nature to be non-vegetarians. There is very little rationale, guided by logic and objective reasoning, behind staying a vegetarian from Nature’s point of view. To kill an animal and eat its flesh when facing adverse hunger is, seems to me, as basic an instinct as plucking a fruit or devouring the nuts. The evolutionary trait of meat-eating has stayed brain-wired into us helping our very own survival for millions of years; and so tailored is our body’s metabolism. Another way to look at it would be that many a creature on Earth has born, grown, developed cells, tissues, muscles and lived full of life only to die for another creature to get their cells, tissues and muscles consumed for a meal. Oh Nature, thou art vicious!
Where did this vegetarianism come from? Nobody knows. Historically, the first recorded practice of vegetarianism dates back to 500 BCE in India and Greece. One of the first famous practioners of vegetarianism in history is Pythagoras of Samos — the man behind the proof of the theorem that now goes by his name. He didn’t do it out of kindness towards other creatures but because he believed in after-lives and he didn’t want to eat a human who happens to be trapped inside an animal’s body. (A small digression: many people think that it was Pythagoras who ‘discovered’ that the sum of square of sides of a right triangle gives the square of the hypotenuse; it is not true. This mathematical rule was well known to many civilizations long before Pythagoras’ time, including Babylonians and Egyptians, however Pythagoras was the first guy to give aproof for it, i.e., he proved that this rule is true for all right triangles.)
So much for Pythagoras, let us cut to the chase blunt and clear — the widespread practice of vegetarianism sprang after humans developed culture and it sustained when man became ‘civilized’ and started sprouting thoughts such as kindness to other creatures and must have gone, “Ah, fuck it! Not killing any animal anymore.”
And that is all there is to vegetarianism as far as I being a vegetarian is concerned. I wouldn’t like to devour the juicy thighs or breasts of a chicken, not at the cost of its life, simply because I’d rather leave the chicken alive, full of life, to cluck happily pecking on food or to announce to the world every time the day dawns.
If you ask if I believed in the ‘sanctity of life’, no I don’t. I unknowingly kill thousands of insects every week, mosquitos and flies, and my White Blood Corpuscles kills innumerable microorganisms. If I get cancer, I wouldn’t show any mercy to my tumour, I would kill the bastard with radiation. While I don’t feel sorry for the killing of numerous such ‘living things’, why do I feel sorry for the meat that is served on the plate? Am I a hypocrite in selectively choosing what I would like to kill and what I don’t?
Yes, I am very much a hypocrite and the choice is very much irrational. I am usually a rational person and my brain takes pleasure on most of the occasions on taking logical decisions and scorns at the illogical. But somehow on this issue, my heart has over-rid my brain and has convinced to it that the sorrow and disgust coming from the butchery of animals far outweighs the mere pleasures that emanate from the taste buds on consuming their meat. My brain doesn’t like the decision an iota (though I am sure it would certainly put a firm end to the heart’s squabbles if I happen to be stranded on an island with nothing but fish, rabbits and deers to eat. I wish that day never comes.).
That said, I don’t want to make my non-vegetarian friends look cruel. They obviously don’t mean any ill-will towards the likes of chicken, beef, or pork. They would probably just shrug about their appetite being in line with animal meat and would simply get on with it. They may ruffle their pet dog with one hand as they gobble roasted chicken with other. Heck, they may even feel sorry for the creatures they devour. But if you give a knife to all the non-vegetarians along with a live chicken, I am sure majority of them would right away refuse to butcher the poor creature. Now are they hypocrites too?
Yes, they are. Their hypocrisy hinges in the very fact that they consume meat despite feeling disgusted by the thought of any butchery at all. But it is not bad, to be frank. There is no ‘right or wrong’ here. They are not at blame at all. It is indeed Nature who is to be blamed, for it is Her who has made us an omnivore, putting us at the apex of the foodchain with all the capacity to consume meat and at the same time to have endowed us with a mind that is sensitive to compassion and empathy towards other creatures. Oh Nature, thou art more than vicious!
And I too am a hypocrite, remember? Just like how an average non-vegetarian lets the butcher take up the dirty work of making meat out of living animals, I leave all the non-vegetarians to take up the dirty work of eating them for the sake of ecological balance. I am a tad ahead in the hypocrisy curve, that’s all.