I have lived long enough to realise that humans as a species are absolute trash. Poets and writers singing accolades of their achievement for some self-satisfactory ego boosting is equivalent to a person watching themselves in the mirror while masturbating.
We marvel at how far we have come, from single-cell organisms to space-faring civilisations. It is genuinely marvellous yet we wage war on sentient beings in billions and torture them for satiating our hunger for taste, not hunger of stomach mostly, proves that we as a human race have only stood on the shoulders of great people and called ourselves tall.
Lately, I had the misfortune of crossing paths with two “animal lovers”, both in the fields of research and education and both love to eat meat. When I had a logical conversation with them, they as usual fell back to the age-old defences of, we all have been doing it forever, it’s customary, it’s cultural etc etc yada yada.
One question I asked was that even marrying 12-year-old girls was customary and enjoyed by men which is now not only illegal but severely frowned upon, what if a paedophile wants to bring that back? They said, “They should all be arrested”.
I have been a vegetarian for 20 years and I have not died of hunger, I say again if you stay in the forest and hunt your meat and get hunted back, that is the only time you have the right to eat meat, factory farming of all shapes, sizes and magnitude should be outright banned.
My logic hits on the face of duplicit people because they then ask, “OH! You compare humans with animals, they are not the same”. Consider that faulty logic for a minute, what if I prove by their logic most humans are below my dignity to even talk to? Do I then have the right to do what I want with them? One slap and they will go crying to the police and I’ll be in jail or prison.
To discuss more in-depth, the fallacy of their own devices, one of them teaches sustainable living and told me that people who are tribals and poor have no other method of getting quick protein and can only get it through meat and we living in cities in positions of luxury should not judge. I completely agreed with her that yes if they hunt and eat I accept their position but she herself lives in South Delhi and has an amazingly luxurious life from what I gathered unlike most of us is still being partially funded by her father, I wonder why she needs to eat meat except to indulge in her depraved act of eating flesh because she enjoys it.
The other one teaches non-violence, I told her violence starts on a food plate first, and she got agitated and corrected me that she was talking about self-violence and of not loving oneself. Her own words proved by large what the human race stands for, do anything necessary for self-love even if it causes harm and suffering to others. These conversations were similar to the ones I have had with hardcore feminists who want women to be on the top of the food chain while chewing on meat and dairy and when I questioned them whether it was fair to demand absolute justice for themselves and not understanding what other sentient being mothers were going through as they were females of other species being forced impregnated and their children were stolen away for meat and butchery? They always all got severely defensive and rude.
How convenient it is for meat eaters to have a coin that they can toss and say “Heads I win, tails you lose”, because no matter what it’s the animal who always loses, always, especially when educated so-called “animal lovers” are their biggest enemy. The laws of man have always been for legal benefit and not for justice, especially not for creatures of no Gods.
Hiranmay Karlekar