That would be the smell of hypocrisy cooking…

I don’t know that it’s hypocrisy, technically. The public recantation of my meat-eating has long since been made.

Finding this photo from a few years back, posted in one of my Facebook albums, has prompted some curious thoughts.

I joked about finding a tofu alternative – May 2009.

Actually, no, no, it was hypocrisy. Assuming my values at the time, vegetarianism followed.

I suspect this may be a good part of the reason some meat eaters resort to ad hoc rationalisations, defensiveness, and outright silliness, when someone merely discusses vegetarianism in their presence. That their own values point towards not eating meat, yet they’re for whatever reason unable to realise these values, having their noses unintentionally rubbed in it whenever someone else’s ethical success reflects poorly on them.

It bothers me, a little, when I’m told I’m denying myself by not eating meat. What exactly am I denying, my instincts or my values?

Sometimes, being human, it’s my instinct to throttle people. You don’t get to live in the land of the bogan without being tested like this sometimes.

But still, I don’t go around thumping people left right and centre (or much at all whenever I can avoid it). This kind of aggression is contrary to my values.

Would people have me change this – that I deny my values and indulge my instincts? What if we all lived like this? Yeah, I thought not.

So if we’re talking about values, who’s denying themselves?

Maybe the defensive omnivore has other values in addition to what we share about the well-being of animals – pragmatism and other mitigating values. But why then the ad hoc defensiveness? Why not just state these mitigating values coherently?

It’s not convincing, really.

‘Well I’m glad you’ve got it all worked out now, Mr Lah-dee-dah’.

Yeah, I guess I don’t want to get too cocky. I’ve eaten meat for most of my life, actions out of line with values.

I often give converts of one kind or another (theist-to-atheist, left-to-right, working-to-middle-class etc.) shit for being too overzealous, and I stand by the judgement. I guess I’ll have to make sure my behaviour as a convert to vegetarianism falls in-line with this ethos.

~ Bruce