The Price Of The Lust For Meat

If each time I were to open the refrigerator I would see a picture of a starving person from another part of the world I would eat less I would especially wouldn’t be able to eat meat.

If each time I went to a restaurant I would see a photo of a starving child I would probably have an easy time being vegetarian.

I suppose we all would.

 courtesy of breezeDebris

The trick that we are all playing is the trick of duality, we have food on one place and we have the starving people of the world on another place, somewhere we can’t see them unless we try.

Would the knowledge that stopping the consumption of meat alone can help solve world hunger, help the environment, help the poor animals whose happiness and the right to be treated with minimal decency we completely ignore, change anything in the actual human behavior?

I feel that it is not the lack of knowledge on the intellectual level it is the distance between cause and effect. Seeing an animal killed every time one of us orders a steak would probably change the amounts of steaks ordered dramatically. The problem is that we can grasp the connection in our minds much easier than we can grasp it in our hearts.

It is that deep emotional realization that changes behavior naturally be entering compassion to the equation and it is so much easier to close our hearts.

The problem is that living with a closed heart is really not a very good way of living.