(edited and expanded from previous version)
My friend Benson converted
to vegetarianism, or I should say veganism, about five years ago. He went whole
hog, excuse my bad pun. He didn’t eat dairy. He didn’t wear leather belts or
leather shoes. He wouldn’t go inside my car, a Nissan Maxima, with its leather
seats.
“Converted” was his word.
He didn’t gradually move toward veganism for health reasons or because he was
revolted at the thought of eating dead animals. He had a powerful conversion
experience on a religious level. For Benson, the world was Light and
Darkness, vegans and non-vegans.
One afternoon while Benson
and I were in my kitchen eating falafels and couscous with raisins, I explained
my need for a little animal protein.
I said, “As you know, Julia and I are trying to get pregnant and we read
that adding a little red meat is better for my motility and general
testosterone levels.”
“That’s very convenient
for you,” Benson said. “Worry about your macho testosterone while allowing animals to
suffer before and during slaughter.”
“That they do,” I
conceded. “In nature, we kill to survive. Take the Eskimos. They slaughter
whales and seals for their survival. Are Eskimos immoral? Should they be
required to be vegans just because you wish to impose your cultural bias on
them?”
“Really, that’s such a red
herring to bring up the Eskimos,” Benson said. “What percentage of humans need
meat to survive? Less than five percent, I’m sure. The fact of the matter is
that you can perfectly live without
eating animals and yet you choose
to eat them for your own pleasure and convenience. And of course your precious
testosterone.”
“I offer a blood sacrifice
to the Reproductive Cult.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I’m sorry, bro. Hey, if
it makes you feel any better, I do try to exercise compassion toward my fellow
creatures. For example, I stopped eating lobsters after reading the David
Foster Wallace essay.”
In Wallace’s famous essay,
“Consider the Lobster,” he describes how lobsters desperately bang the lids of
the pots as they’re suffering an agonizing death in boiling water.
Benson was not appeased.
He said, “Selective morality doesn’t cut it. We can agree over the lobsters.
But I can show you video footage of chickens, pigs, cows, dogs, cats, monkeys,
and other animals—all bred for human consumption—and you’ll see the look of
despondence in their eyes. And their worst suffering is yet to come.”
“I feel sympathy for
mammals, I admit. But fish are too removed from me. I could quit eating
mammals, for sure. But I’d still eat fish, which means I could never be a
member of your Vegan Tribe.”
“It’s your selective,
arbitrary morality speaking again. Any creature that is sentient should not be
consumed.”
He was quoting from Peter
Singer, his Vegan Messiah.
I said, “I don’t believe
in Peter Singer’s sentient being theory. I’d kill rats if I needed to. And mice
and other mammalian pestilence. That’s not an issue with me. But I do share
your objection to making animals suffer, shedding their blood for our
delectation. That can, under certain circumstances, be barbaric.”
“It’s not certain circumstances. It’s most circumstances. Ninety-nine percent of meat comes
from factory farming, which in an ongoing atrocity. What can you say to that?”
“What do you want me to
do, Benson? I don’t have a magic wand.”
“So just shrug it all off
because of apathy. What a courageous friend you are.”
Benson lowered his head
and poked his fork through a mound of couscous. Since becoming a vegan, he was
overcome with depression—the kind of overwhelming sadness that results from
seeing 99% of the human race as unfeeling, cruel, self-centered and completely
immoral. The worst part of his becoming a vegan, he recently explained, was
that he had developed an overwhelming hatred for the human race. He knew he had
to face the despair of knowing he could not convert everyone on the planet. His
mission in life was to convert what few individuals he could.
He looked up at me and
said, “I know you care. I could tell when we were watching those videos of the
newborn calves being separated from their mothers and those pigs languishing in
those tiny cages.”
“Of course I care. You
think it gives me pleasure to see animals suffer like that?”
“You seem better than most
of them,” he said. “If only I could convert you. If only I could get you to
take the next step forward.”
“Sorry, my man,
for the sake of my declining middle-aged testosterone I’m still going to eat
some animal protein, mostly fish and some dairy like yogurt and nonfat milk.
Can you be cool with that, at least while you’re living under my roof?”
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