Vegetarianism.

So, here it is, the promised prolix re: vegetarianism, and/or why they get slated by people for no apparent reason. I wanna look at a few different reasons which I've assumed are the (aforementioned a long time ago) justifications: sanctimonious propaganda, pescatarianism, whining-complex, and lack of balls. This entire liturgy will be based on my critical observations of people who assume the vegetarian-hate; and thus, as these are just my assumptions, please don't take anything I say as fact, even though - let us face it - it probably is as good as fact. As the banking world says: "[I am] doing 'God's work'".

Well the first point is pretty self explanatory [sidenote: had to work incredibly hard not to add a comma splice after "well". It's something I must get out of the habit of doing.] What you have with any kind of ideology, lifestyle, en masse personality is an inherent proselytizing; it's latent, and sometimes dormant, but it is always there. Now, I don’t think we can take that as a platform for any kind of criticism, so I will have to assume that this complex is inadmissible, and thus assume that the issue is taken with the individual, rather than the ideology. Now, it would be less than accomplished for me to continue this train of thought with this kind of bias dragging me back, but this, unfortunately, is the first launch-pad for criticisms against vegetarianism.

People don’t like sects of society which attempt to convert them – there is an understandable fear surrounding that kind of ‘cult’ behaviour; it is apparent throughout religious ideology, through political manipulation. In short, through that which people fear most: organised, autocratic, dictatorial leadership. There is a natural prejudice against anyone seen as propagating a certain lifestyle, it is seen as intrusive and obtrusive; no one dare enter my ideological yard, for fear of the secularised, fictionalised, non-denominational, politically-correct wrath o’ the Reaper. Alas! for us rational beings there is an acknowledgement that in fact that just because people belong to a certain sub-sect of society that they are obliged to try to convert. I know I mentioned that ideologies are naturally ‘conversion friendly’ but that does not necessitate the follower being the same. Individualism, people. It is precisely the same as any kind of bigotry, or ideologically-bred hatred, xenophobia; there is that natural reticence human beings feel when their self is threatened. Freud would call it repression, I would call it the destabilisation of the consciousness; that intrusion of a differing – and alien – perspective which causes upset to the sense of self; the consciousness.

So if we step outside of that kind of myopia, we might be able to realise that people aren’t necessarily going to try to convert us to their way of life; of course, there will be some people, but the minority in this case does not represent the whole. Once we step outside of that we can see that in fact these people are just existing with a different lifestyle, and one that cannot be criticised as ‘unnatural’; the eminent-idiot towline for anyone wishing to criticise vegetarianism. This kind of perspicacity ruins the whole ‘conversion’ debunking, and it leads on to my first (if you can believe it) point: sanctimonious people. Yes, that’s not a criticism; that’s laughable.

We cannot attempt to critique a person for being sanctimonious, because it’s so utterly (and ironically) natural to have that kind of subjective superiority. I don’t want someone telling me that I’m a bad person because I eat meat, but nor would I want someone telling me that I was going against the natural order – as dictated by who exactly? Antiquated ideas of natural selection, etc.?- so I can understand both positions. Every story, and all. There’s also not going to be a sudden and insane downswing in the sales of meat: a few people not eating a bit of pork every now and again (Jews, anyone?) will not suddenly bankrupt the agricultural sector. If you want to play the Darwinian card, then I will play it right back at you: it’s called evolution.

So let’s not go there. Thankfully for you I think I’ve amply covered propaganda and lack of testicular fortitude (in my head that rhymed..., sigh...) and so I will rush on to pescatarianism. Now this one, I hate to say, I can appreciate on no levels at all. This entire plateau revolves around the idea that we can criticise someone for poor taxonomical knowledge or something, I dunno, never really looked into it. Yeah, it’s feeble to pretend you’re a vegetarian, but could not the excuse just be the fact that pescatarianism is a niche and pointlessly self-contradictory idea? Basing a lifestyle on an axiom of preclusion and inclusion of the same ideals is kind of silly so I don’t think we can have a go at people for choosing that. Like bi-sexuals who are gay and choose to stay with the guise they’ve created for themselves? Could also be the fact that these people don’t know about the word or choice? Or could it be that they don’t see the issue in this kind of negligibly interesting miscategorisation? I think it’s the last. People aren’t as hung up as you; now who’s being sanctimonious? The whole world is riddled with these fabulous ironies, I swear to God, no wonder Eliot was so fucking popular; she saw these kind of streams that others completely missed. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever realised this profligate hypocrisy until I started venting about them. I guess it’s the kind of thing you take as accepted and commonplace, so you don’t think about it. Dunno.

I’ll wrap this up like a quarter-pounder with cheese because someone criticised me for going on too long. Admittedly my response was: don’t fucking read it then, jesus, it’s not exactly designed to be fabulously entertaining. Whoever heard of a would-be author trying to entertain people? You want entertainment? Go to the circus.

The whining-complex has been lightly touched upon earlier by me, brushed with the fine bristles of empathy. So from caressing, to stabbing repeatedly in the head with a 4b pencil, here it is, my rationale behind the dismissal of “vegetarians whine at me”. People whine at everything. In case you’ve missed the last 3,0000000000,0000000,0000 (this is how numbers should be written) words I’ve written since I started this blog, my underlying and underpinning argument (I pray you did notice it) is that people are people they are not necessarily their traits. The traits form the person. I said to someone only yesterday “you're meant to like people, regardless of their faults; not dislike them because of them” and I think it translates fairly admirably. It should be irrelevant what people want to do, and whether or not they want to moan at you or bitch at you or pretend you’re an idiot for not listening to them. There’s a simple solution to this problem: tell them to go away. Whining is not a sect-exclusive trait.

And I love meat more than you can ever know.