My dilemma

I don’t know if I’ll end up hitting the publish button and reveal this on the blog or not but I need to write about it. If I have published it, know that I expect nothing humorous to come out of this so if you’re looking for jokes I beg you to skip this post and move on.

I’m not going to try to explain here why I hold no belief in such ideas as good or evil or right or wrong. How even the concept of species and the label ‘human being’ are to me, only ideas; only patterns of generalized observation that contain no qualitative certainty. How the only things that exist in my perception of reality are matter, cause and effect, the unique living experiences of each unique living organism and the natural consequences that punish or reward every action we take.

I’m being punished right now.

I have not awakened from a dream in which I brutally murdered a family of innocent people only to suspect that it might not have been a dream and had to grasp the horrific implications of it. Not precisely, anyway.

But I have been experiencing an awakening of another sort for a couple years now and the changes in my life are wildly profound. I’ve been relearning everything I once thought I knew and it was inevitable that this current reckoning would arise.

A couple weeks ago, while driving a long distance and pondering some of the great volume of material that I work with and measuring their great many connections against each other, I stumbled onto the flaws in some beliefs I chose to subscribe to more than twenty-five years ago and the disturbing reality of a 39-year-old habit. I was stunned by intense remorse and I broke down in tears and have done so several times since.

As a teenager I confronted the idea of vegetarianism and immediately dismissed it for three reasons.

1 - I was meant to be carnivorous and had the incisors to prove it.

2 – Life for a beast in the wild is brutal and typically ends in bloody violence. Life for a beast on a farm is surely more pleasant.

3 – If it weren’t for farming, these species would probably not exist but would be extinct or facing extinction for their failings under the laws of natural selection.

These arguments all collapse in the face of my current understandings, except that I really don’t know for sure about the life of a beast on a farm. And – as always – no understandings can be consolidated until I fully experience them with my own five senses.

So I will make no firm decisions about the future of my diet until I can experience the relevant realities. Getting onto family farms will be a cinch. Gaining access to industrial farms will be another matter altogether. And getting into slaughterhouses will be a significant challenge, I’m sure. But I must do it. I have no choice. The chances of finding balanced objective books or documentaries are almost nil. Every author and producer will surely have an agenda. But I’m determined to succeed. An acquaintance works at a Maple Leaf processing plant where killing is done but he doesn’t work in the killing area and he’s a junior person and he’s new there and is unlikely to welcome the risks in breaching his employer’s security. Mind you, I did write the resume that helped him get the job so perhaps he’s grateful enough.

Some interesting things have happened in this two-week period of troubled speculation. One could easily call them signs or omens but I know they are only coincidences. My favorite butcher closed down; went out of business. I was at the library looking for fantasy and sci-fi videos and spotted a DVD titled Earthlings. I grabbed it and immediately sensed that it had to do with the treatment of animals and not spaceships. Of course I watched it and found flaw in almost every word stated. Its agenda is clear. I kept a dinner date at the Keg steakhouse knowing that it might be the last steak I’d eat and allowing a qualified chef to make his case for meat eating. I chose the top sirloin labeled ‘our most flavorful steak’. It tasted utterly bland to me. Whether it was something psychological or because it was prepared unusually rare – I don’t know.

For now I can no longer buy the meat of mammals. My instincts suggest there is almost surely more cruelty behind it than I can tolerate. I will still eat fish and dairy for now; until I’m able to investigate those industries and make enlightened decisions.

The prospect of diet change is a troubling one. I’m generally not fond of fruits and vegetables. Starchy foods are an unwise choice for me. I’ve been living primarily off meat and dairy for some time now. I wish I knew more vegetarians. I could use a lot of advice.