I have struggling with veganism, but not in the way you might think. It has been so simple to give up meat, then eggs and milk, and even being at the mercy of the CYA cafeteria I have found it more difficult to eat conveniently than to stick to my guns.

Much more problematic is how I am to deal with the omnivores around me. They are my family and friends, and as much as I want to believe that veganism is simply “my personal choice,” that is statement is not consistent with my values. At first I went about seeking ways to defend those values in the most reductionist terms, something akin to Peter Singer’s utilitarianism: it’s good for the environment (you know, the planet we must live upon), it’s good for one’s health (taken with a grain of salt), and it’s good for ensuring a full range of empathy and compassion (arguably keeping up more a harmonious society).

But it comes down to this. As a society, we should decide what we want to value rather than defending or pushing the values we already have. We can not hope to reduce ourselves to purely-rational robots, since we require points of view and frames of reference to think within. We need deuterotruths, and however flexible our brains may be, we can only trade one set for another. Because we occupy an intellectual and social space as well as a physical one, we need a common ground for negotiating that space. And genetically or culturally, we are all given a starting point: we all value life and abhor suffering.

I like those values. Unadulterated, compassion leads to the urge to preserve ourselves, our companions, and the environment that sustains us. The compassionate person is open-minded and tolerant, hoping to understand and connect with the world around them. The compassionate person seeks out the beautiful things in life, because those things reinforce their values. And as much as I hesitate to define the value of living things by their capacity to suffer, it is surely a great measure of how much compassion we feel. Where we share suffering, we should extend our empathy.

But we quickly start watering down our values in an attempt to paint to world in bold strokes of black and white. We want situations to be Right or Wrong, completely justified or not at all, so we start qualifying where and when to apply our compassion. Why not accept the inconsistencies of the world, and struggle instead with juggling the full weight of our values? When people share values, they can communicate effectively and productively debate over what to do with them.

For example, does veganism naturally lead to an anti-abortion stance? I have wrestled with this issue on my own, but other vegans have done the same in concert: on one Australian forum I found, vegans with differing opinions managed to have a sane and thought-provoking discussion (at least on the first page). Unlike the Christian fundamentalists and heart-bleeding Liberals, who become so entrenched in defending their own values that they fail to communicate with each other at all, the people in that forum share a simple unadulterated compassion. They are seeking how best to be compassionate when the world offers so many factors to consider. No matter what anyone says, abortion is a difficult moral issue that deserves this kind of moral questioning.

I once thought women would only abort their pregnancies in extenuating circumstances, but I have heard that in Greece and some social circles in the US, affluent young women use abortions as a form of birth control. I find that upsetting, like crushing bugs on a window ledge, and rather excessive when they made the decision ahead of time to forgo preventative measures like condoms, pills, and IUD’s. But I am certainly capable of being saddened by an abortion at the same time that I object to forcing a reluctant mother and an unwanted child upon the world. That is surely the greater source of suffering.

From Jackqueline on the Human Abortion and Veganism forum:

Rights inevitably clash.  Hate speech is a clash of the freedom of speech can clash with the right to equality.  [What] they do each claim has to be weighed against the other.

But back to my problem of living and loving omnivores.

There seem to be two types of meat-eater: the one who eats meat because of its cultural pervasiveness and for its convenience, who would rather turn a blind eye to the hundreds of animals who suffer and die for their sake than suffer social awkwardness or diet change; and the other one who eats meat and accepts, even rejoices, in cold hard reality of animal butchery. I cannot respect the hypocrisy of the first, and I cannot respect the values of the second.

Some object the use of disturbing images of animal cruelty to turn people into vegetarians. Yet if you find them so disturbing, should you really be supporting those practices by reaping the results? How can you be a whole person if you reject your own compassionate impulses? Do you really believe that those animals aren’t suffering, that they are so inferior as to deserve it? Do you really value the simple pleasures of intelligent beings over the entire lives of less intelligent beings? Is that really what you want to believe?

I can challenge omnivores all I want in the safety of my head or the company of vegetarians or the lofty words of this article (which are not meant to be passive aggressive, but a hard-edged formulation of my thoughts, without the careful hedging I might do in the presence of a loved one). But I don’t want to come off as judgmental — I do that all too easily — and I don’t want to antagonize those around me and isolate myself in a fortress of moral superiority. I am hardly perfect, but I try to do better. I may not be able to prove that veganism is undeniably Right, or construct the perfect definition or defense of compassion, but I can certainly ask people to reflect on their choices based on their own feelings. Feelings at least, unlike morals, ethics, or values, are real.

If you consume animal products of any kind, you have the responsibility to know where they come from. There are gentler ways to inform yourself, but soft words do not always do justice. Watch Meet Your Meat or Earthlings if you can, though it feels like getting shot in the gut. I could only get through a few minutes of each before wanting to vomit and cry, and I would be concerned if they don’t make you want to do the same. Yet how could it be a dirty tactic to show you these videos, however shocking, when they show you a reality that you are otherwise unwilling to accept? We find it necessary to be saddened by war movies and holocaust exhibits because it reminds us of the human capacity for cruelty, that we might better avoid great harm and indifference ourselves.

Somehow, no matter what comes along to crush my faith in humanity, there is some part within me refuses to become jaded. My deepest belief — or perhaps my greatest hope — is that every human on this planet has a seed of compassion buried deep within their minds. It is as powerful as apathy and as world-shaking as hate, if only we would let it grow unhindered.

But perhaps it is too painful. My own is often left untended. For there are too many horrors in this world for one little girl to handle.