[Part 4: Continued from, “Uh oh. Are we becoming those vegans?”]
There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
- Anonymous
**********
I’m happier and healthier now than I’ve been at any point in my adult life. If it’s not clear by now, I’m also really, really pissed off.
I’m unabashedly pissed off about the slaughter of animals for food, sport and the production of products.
Don’t worry; I’ve had the same thought - and thought a lot about it:
“Steve, how can you have gone from a charcuterie board-loving omnivore to a kinda scary-sounding pissed-as-hell vegan in two short years? Didn’t you say you were becoming vegan for health reasons…? Don’t you think it’s fair for us to suggest you get off your high horse and chill the fuck out?”
I’ve struggled with that question myself. Some days I’d like to cut myself some slack.
First off, I regret every day I spent ignoring that tickle of my conscience telling me I should pull my head out of the sand and look into the facts I’d heard here and there over the years about animal flesh consumption and its effects on health and the environment – not to mention the animals themselves!
I attribute it to the highly-effective blinders of cognitive dissonance.
In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.
In short, I couldn’t be consuming meat, eggs and dairy and at the same time truly understand and believe the abundance of quantitative science and qualitative stories about the environmental, health and ethical problems with doing so. I had to either continue to deny the facts, or accept them and make the tough adjustments to bring my behavior into alignment with that acceptance. For most of my life, I did the former, while being careful not to expose myself to more pesky truth than I’d be able to process through my psychological Deny-o-Matic. I grew up in a religious, conservative home with a father who watched the Fox Propaganda Network, listened to Flush Limburger, and thought climate change was a left-wing hoax, so I think I inherited the genes for a pretty robust Deny-o-Matic.
The first twenty minutes of Forks Over Knives (which I talk about in Part 1 of this series) put a crack in my Deny-o-Matic.
My people-who-watched-this-also-watched-this health documentary binge blew out the motor.
Trusting that taking a giant leap in behavior change might lead to the intellectual, psychological and ethical change to make it stick blew it to pieces.
***************
Isn’t this just a hoot? I’m thinking about turning it into a stand up comedy act.
Tune in for my next installment in the next day or two.
Thanks for reading!
polkadotchihuahua liked this herbitarian liked this
ask-steve-blog posted this