|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Having been vegetarian on and off for the previous few years, in January 2000 I made
the final
positive step of becoming vegan. I had known about the reasons why I should do so for
almost a year by this
point, but it had taken until then for me to put aside factors such
as convinience, fashion and my own selfishness.
Having
researched the moral and ethical reasons why I would consider become vegan from
various sources (both pro animal rights
organisations and impartial government sites),
the evidence before me was undeniable. Based upon the fact that I view myself as
being
a good and honest person, I simply could no longer live a non vegan lifestyle without
feeling like a complete hypocrite.
For those that are dictionary impaired, veganism is the practice of living without the use of
animals in any form. This
includes eating any animal products (meat, fish, milk, eggs, honey etc),
the use of animal products (wool, leather, silk etc) or
products which have been tested on
animals.
When writing this site I decided to divide this page into 2, with all my reasons
going on
the animal rights page. This page will instead concentrate purely on the logistics of being
vegan.
Before I go further,
I'd like to say 2 things. First of all if you think I'm a flaky hippy then
I don't blame you, before I had a mind open enough to actually read
up the facts about life in
the real world I thought all vegans were nutters. Secondly, I would love to be 'deprogrammed'
and talked out of
being vegan. However, all those who have tried (and trust me they have)
have only forced me to research more, and each time my choice has been
strengthened. Unless anyone
is to give an argument I haven't heard numerous times before, there is no point anymore. Even
within a month or so of
becoming vegan I was convinced that a vegan lifestyle is the natural
way forward. Much that from a selfish point of view I'd love to be able to eat
many of the
foods I grew up with, I don't ever see myself converting back.
A few weeks ago I was having an all night chat with someone
about various activism issues. Of course as the night drew on more beer was consumed and it got increasingly hard to effectively explain our view points
without going round and round in circles. So i came up with the idea of taking a few moments to think, then trying to sum up our whole reasoning on
certain issues in no more than 30 seconds. It was a great idea, but quite daunting, because my views on issues can't be linked to just a few key points,
they have been developed over years of reading thousands of pages of text and research. The answer i finally came up with once put in that situation for
my reasoning of being vegan is as follows.
The reason I got into Human Rights is that there is large amounts of suffering going on in various
parts of the world. False imprisonment, slavery, genocide, torture, murder; in the name of politics and profit. I know what it feels like to feel like crap
and I want more than anything to live a life where I don't impose unnecessary suffering on anyone else. However, the same suffering is going on right
here, right now in my town, on my doorstep, all around me. But not with humans, with animals. Whilst there is any doubt, whilst there is no concrete
scientific evidence on paper that animals do not feel pain, emotions and experience the world in the same way in which we do, I want to play no part in
their mass imprisonment, torture and murder, whether in the name of food, medicine or any other justification, which at the end of the day, just with
exploiting humans for slave labour etc, only benefit our own selfishness. I believe that living a vegan lifestyle is the only way I can come close to
this.
Maybe a bit more than 30 seconds, but I hope it gets the point across.
It is important to note that my reasons for becoming
vegan are purely ethical, I neither
knew many vegans nor thought it would improve my social life (which incidentally it hasn't).
A vegan diet has many
well known health benefits, but being a geek that didn't interest
me either. Being a someone that hates eating vegetables, taste certainly wasn't a factor.
As it happens, since I have become vegan I have noticed major positive changes in my health
(i used to suffer from chronic hay fever which has almost
completely disappeared now) and
now I have to cook all my own food, mostly from scratch, I've gained a much greater appreciation
for food than I ever used to
have.
There are many misconceptions and myths surrounding veganism. Many people think you will
become deficient in protein and vitamins, but this is simply not
the case. By eating a varied
diet you can get more than what is required and to be perfectly honest I have never been healthier
or felt more alive.
What
people in the west often forget is that many eastern religions stipulate veganism as a goal, and
thus there are tens of millions of vegans living healthily in Asia.
For starters, virtually all
Buddhist monks are vegan. In this country, because veganism has not been required by religion,
the recipes that we have developed are not
vegan. That said though, the main source of taste in many complex non vegetarian dishes comes from the vegetable and herb/spice components. In Asia however, there are
hundreds of vegan recipes which have been developed over thousands of years and are just as nutricionally balanced and tasty as European recipes.
One of the nice things about coming vegan is that if you want a varied diet you are forced to explore
the recipes and ingrediants of
other cultures, and discover many foods that you would never do so
normally. To say that a vegan's tastebuds are limited compared to
non vegans is correct. But vegans only loose out on a handful of base ingrediants, out of the thousands which exist in nature. Most
non vegans who aren't forced to cook from scratch never sample even a small subsection of these, they merely eat what mainstream
society provides for them. Thus, whilst the amount of flavours and textures available to vegans is slightly less than that of
carnivores, in the grand scheme of world cuisine it's negligible and certainly, once you've gotten over missing those you were used to
before, no great loss.
Unknown to me at the time of conversion, many of the worlds greatest thinkers and scientists led
a
vegan or vegetarian life. It seems more than a coincidence to me that such people were pro
animal rights. The list includes da Vinci,
Einstein, Pythagoras, Darwin, Newton, Edison, Van Gogh,
to name a few. Not to mention Weird Al Yankovic, my personal hero :-)
I
could write for hours on this subject, but instead I think I will end here with some quotes. All
are most likely quoted out of context,
but I think they put the point across better than I can ever
do. I'm not the sort of person who goes out of my way to try to convert
people, but if you view yourself
as an open minded individual, I encourage you to read my animal rights page and follow the links
provided
there. I have many meat eating friends and if when you've read them properly you still think all vegans are weirdoes, then I'll have more
respect for your decision than I would otherwise.
"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their
mental
faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness,
and misery." - Charles Darwin
"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the
murder of men." - Leonardo da Vinci
"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat,
he participates in taking animal life merely
for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is
immoral." - Leo Tolstoy
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of
all
evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still
savages." - Thomas Edison
"The greatness of a nation and its
moral progress can be judged by the way
its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each
other. Indeed, he
who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras
"Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening
our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty." - Albert Einstein
"Atrocities are not less
atrocities when they occur in laboratories and
are called medical research." - George Bernard Shaw
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
