Go eco, go vegan

[toodlepipsky]

As a part of my zoology degree, I've been running a research project on people's emotional attachment towards animals and the general human capacity of empathizing with emotions of non-human animals. The more I read into cases of animal abuse, people's rainbow of attachment to their pets etc. the more I realize it might not be natural for all of us

Comments

[suraineko]

It would be easy to assume that everyone working in the meat-production industry are psychopaths (lacking compassion). However I don't think that's the case. Just like the meat eaters who deny there is a problem though their belief that animals are meant for food, I believe many meat-production employees have created defense mechanisms to protect them from the horridness of it all.

For example, when I was in college and before I was vegetarian I dated a cowboy. A real legit cowboy. It was much less graceful than in movies. He was a stubborn guy who believed that cows were mean horrible animals that were out to get you like a rabid dog that needed to be put down. It's not that he was incapable of thinking that if he was in their situation he wouldn't bite and kick his captors. It was more that he couldn't have that thought because then he couldn't live with himself.

On our first date he made sure I wasn't a vegetarian because he couldn't be with someone who didn't "support his industry." As if everyone stopped eating meat all these cowboys and meat-production people couldn't find another job.

These people don't want logic, they don't want the truth. They can't handle what they've done. Honestly, I cry when I think about the animals that had to die to feed me before I stopped eating meat. I can't watch movies about the horrors of the meat-industry because I feel so guilty about eating meat in the past.

[toodlepipsky]

Compared with the rest of the population, the workers of the animal products industry and a bit on the rare side and the chances of running into one are not very high. Obviously, people have defence mechanisms, these exact defence mechanisms are the ones that make people walk away from the vegan propaganda booths with the bloody pictures.
However, if you shift the argument from animals and guilty humans to humans working for a better, cleaner future and the environment, the guilt factor is gone and so people listen more.