My slow, slow, and on-going switch from meat eating to veganism.

I see a parallel between violence against animals and violence in general. The final destination, will be non-violence. That’s the vision that Jesus gave us. But we need the path to get us there. I still struggle how the total opposite of Jesus’ teachings have been employed by governments using his name. Tolstoy (in The Kingdom of God is within you) was of the opinion that slowly and like a snowball effect the Christian values would take over. But the 20th century showed us the horrors of what humans are fully capable of.

I get the feeling that the teaching of turn the other cheek is too extreme for people. They’ll believe in a God that will save them but not actually getting punched in the face once and asking for the same again the other side. I tried it once in school. A kid smacked me on the side of the face with a ring binder folder. I then offered him the other side and he merrily smacked that too. I gave a non-Christian response to that.

We need a path that involves a slow but steady upward path with gassing, burning and hanging at the bottom and hugs, kisses and cheeks at the top. I can see a path similar to switching from a meat eater to a vegan and I can also see the path to daily meditation as a good reference.

This is my slow and steady approach to becoming a vegan.

Its only taken 40 or so years.

I ate meat every day and never questioned it until I was around 18. But I questioned sometimes the violence I saw against animals. My best friend caught a daddy long legs, pulled its wings off, then a couple of legs and then laughed at how it couldn’t fly any more as he dropped it out of the window. Torturing flies and ants is a common thing amongst children. I would swat and kill flies, but I never tortured them. Burning ants with a magnifying glass was another pleasure my fellow kids would enjoy.

I had a nest of house martins outside my window, I always loved the sight. My mother would take me bird watching but I wasn’t a fan – although I do appreciate birds, talking to bird watchers is rather boring. I saw a fly struggling whilst on my toy wooden train set. I felt sorry for him and tried to take him to the window to let him fly out. He couldn’t fly any more and soon died, but I feel like I gave him respect.

I loved bacon sandwiches, tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches, chicken sandwiches. Steak, chicken breast, turkey, pork, lamb, beef. I talked to vegetarian friends at university, some nearly but gave in to bacon sandwiches. I admired vegetarians and vegans. I had a vegan colleague at first job. Had been vegetarian since childhood, made up his own mind. I then met more vegetarians at my second job, a vegetarian couple.

I have a major love of curries and respect for Indian culture. It ironic how that came about through the abuse of the English on the Indians and their slow immigration to England bringing their beautiful food. They make simple vegetables taste and smell so amazing. It is pure magic how they transform and mix spices in a way that the English could never. We eat meat and two veg that’s it. Again and again and again. We’ll cook potatoes for chips with salt and nothing else. But all I ate of Indian food was a chicken madras again and again. The heat from the chilli was amazing. The taste of the food has nothing to do with the chicken. If you put tofu or paneer cheese in a madras it tastes and smells just as good.

I slowly began with replacements to vegetarian alternatives for lunch. I read up about protein requirements for vegetarian diets. I came across things like the the vegan body builders forum and their discussion on vegan bicycle tyres (its a real thing).

By now I had the general feeling that I wouldn’t kill an animal, so I had no right to eat meat. However I carried on eating meat not to cause problems for those around me, also through laziness. I felt more and more guilty.

I moved to Belgium and we had a large garden. We wanted to have some chickens for eggs, but this failed in so many ways. It has showed me in hindsight the damage you can do though not knowing enough when caring for animals. First we allowed chickens to die by not protecting them properly and buying from improper sellers. We bought young chickens, one became more and more ill. Looked after him in the beginning and he became like a pet. One of the family had a dog and this dog maimed one chicken in the garden while it’s friend watched.

The final blow to my meat eating came from this chicken who watched his friend being maimed by the dog. I half killed this chicken myself by letting a wooden pallet blow over onto it. Through nothing but my own stupidity. Then had to put a spade through its neck to kill it, I didn’t even have the guts to do it myself my partner had to do it with me. The guilt of that day has never left me.

Were it a human I had killed even by accident, I would now be in prison for manslaughter. From that day on I vowed not to eat chicken or any meat. That’s all I could do to say sorry. From then on I became something like 99% vegetarian and still am ten years later. I would eat meat if we went to a friend’s house, or someone forgot to cook something vegetarian for me. That’s mostly how I lived for the last decade. I still drink milk, eat cheese, eat eggs. Occasionally I still eat meat if my daughter doesn’t finish the meat she has. I always knew not to eat fish as a vegetarian. I never have a secret wish for meat. The smell of bacon is still very nice, but I still have no desire to eat it.

I still wasn’t vegan. My mum always told me how vegetarians are hypocrites for their preaching about not eating meat, but then merrily drinking milk and wearing leather.

So slowly, slowly, I’m replacing non-vegan things. Stupid things like no more gelatin sweets. The first step was oat milk with my morning cereal. It took almost effort to change. Slowly I am replacing regular milk in coffee with oat milk too. A cappuccino with (barista) oat milk is almost a perfect replacement for a regular cappuccino – I say this as an actual barista for the last 6 months. I replace the things that I eat and prepare myself with vegan alternatives. It causes no one else problems and it is rarely a hassle. I ask for cappuccinos with oat milk as another vote towards the cafe owner from buying more oat milk.

I will continue to do this piece by piece. I pass the lessons on to my daughter. She still eats meat, but it more conscious of it than I am. I don’t believe there are many vegetarians who do it for moral reasons who switch back. I fully believe that veganism is the way we will slowly head. As vegans we can live much closer to what we eat.

This was my path to lesser violence. There has never been any direction except for less and less violence in the food I eat. At each step my eyes were slowly more opened to the next lesser layer of cruelty.

You have to remain at a certain level, for that level to become normal, instead of some ‘weakling’ version. Stay at a level that you’re comfortable with, but keep learning, keeping teaching your kids to do better than you did. Improve where you can, but know it is a life long task.

There are real peaceful ways out of where we are. Slavery isn’t normal any more. The death penalty isn’t normal any more. There is the occasional mistake like Roe vs Wade, but it’s good that the debates are so strong. It’s no longer just normal that it’s illegal that women have abortions – it’s seen as a major controversy. Women who get pregnant outside of marriage don’t have their babies taken whilst they are sent to the insane asylum. We (mostly) don’t burn women any more. Can you believe it? We’d burn women. We’d gather around in the town square, build a fire with a pole in the middle. Strap a woman to that pole and burn her and watch as she burned. Something to do on the weekend, no cinema and a bit of free warmth paid for my the town council.

The path is slow, but it is going in the right direction. Violence, death by death, is becoming less. Not always, but as each century passes by we get better overall. A thousand years ago, maybe Hitler and almost certainly Stalin would have been written about as heroes.