Vegetarian Friend Shatters Comfortable Conformity
by Matt Ball
Are there many people who like change?
Growing up, we are taught to act in a certain way, believe a certain dogma, and pursue a certain path. Many at CMU are here as a part of the American Dream -- get a good education to get a good job to get a good salary, success, security. Speaking our minds, deviating from the norm, seeming strange, or offending others only seem to serve to push us away from these goals.
Growing up, I was taught to "play the game": to regurgitate what my teachers wanted, to smile and be quiet. I followed the straight and narrow -- honor roll, scholarships, sports letter, a practical, promising major -- with only a few typical rebellions thrown in (an unapproved girlfriend, not going to church). I was the cookie-cutter All-American.
Then McClintock ruined it all.
Fred McClintock was my roommate freshman year, a 21-year-old transfer who was not your typical college student. He didn't express his angst by wearing black or cutting/coloring his hair for shock value. Neither did he judge his life by his girlfriend, his car, his prof's opinion, or how wasted he was last weekend. He did, however, have open mind and the strength and ability to act differently, according to his honest, unrationalized assessment of the world.
Fred McClintock was a vegetarian.
At first, I ignored him. Then I tried to distance myself from him, saying how extreme, unimportant, or difficult vegetarianism was. I liked going out to a nice restaurant or grabbing a quick burger when busy. This was how I had lived and how the people around me lived. Fred could live how he wanted, but I just wanted him to leave me alone -- it's a free world, right?
But it wasn't all right. I was unable to continue to hide in my grades, my jobs, my paycheck, my pals. I was no longer shrouded by the blind bliss of ignorance, and I knew that the meat I ate was the flesh of another animal, a being who wanted to live, a life I had paid someone to end in the horrors of the slaughterhouse. This piece of juicy meat, which I had always believed to be the symbol and reward of "the good life," was now revealed as a bloody chunk of carcass, an unconsciously and callously carved corpse.
Yet while I came to understand this, I fought against its implications, which struck me initially as unbearable. I was a "good person." I liked animals and would never inflict pain on them. Yet Fred would play the Smiths, and Morrissey would sing with simple, undeniable logic on Meat is Murder, "It's death for no reason, and death for no reason is murder."
What could I do? My head knew that this was true, and my heart was repulsed at the thought of factory farms and slaughterhouses. Meat is murder, and it is wrong. Yet my traditions -- everything I had been taught to believe and to honor -- said that eating meat -- animals -- was OK, unquestioningly accepted and inherently good. To listen to my own thoughts and decide for myself would be to reject the central celebration of meat by my friends and family, for I knew that once I accepted the cruelty and cut meat from my diet, as per Kant's moral imperative, it would not be "OK" to be around others and remain silent, as if nothing were amiss, as if nothing had changed.
To this day, I dread discussing vegetarianism. Since I met Fred nine years ago, I have seen factory farms and been to slaughterhouses; the screams of these animals stay with me every day. It is the worst when I am faced with someone who reacts as I reacted to Fred -- not wanting to hear, not wanting to question, not wanting to change. The agonies of the animals, living and dying hidden from our eyes and ears, their corpses disguised and exalted on our plates, struggle against my sympathy for the person confronted and my desire to avoid judgment.
While I try to be "moderate" and "reasonable," I know that eating meat is not a matter of choice any more than slavery or child abuse is a matter of choice. It is the exploitation and murder of fellow sentient beings who feel pain and fight to stay alive. In the face of this injustice and suffering, of what compulsion is conformity?
