Of Hamsters and Men

We continue the tale of my transition from carnivore to herbivore...

Two comments capture the feelings that followed this decision.

The short one first. Kronk astutely notes, "It's all coming together."

But some people prefer G. K. Chesterton to animated Disney characters. In his book Orthodoxy Chesterton described his Christian conversion experience as one where two seemingly incompatible "machines" came together. Miraculously, they came together well.

...The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world — it had evidently been meant to go there — and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the first fields of my childhood."

Kronk said it more succinctly, but Chesterton said it better.

After I threw in the towel and decided to give in to the idea of going vegetarian, incongruity after incongruity fell down before me.

Sources of guilt fled. Paradoxes unraveled. Decisions made sense.

Examples? There are many, but most can be anticipated from things I've already written in recent days. (Don't repeat yourself, Pilgrim!)

But two (I promise, just two) thoughts remain that I want to get down.

I'll break them up into two blog post, this then being the first of two.

Don't delegate unconscionable tasks to others.

This principle has helped me navigate some tough topics and grey areas in life. Consider torture, for instance.

We all know the old question. "Is it OK to torture one person in order to find out the location of a hidden bomb and thereby save a city?"

I used to answer this question with a reluctant Yes. It's a very unsavory job, but if it must be done, so be it. For the good of many...

A few years ago I abandoned this line of reasoning after realizing that I could not and would not do the dirty work myself.

And if that is the case, how can I ask someone else to do it for me?

It's another topic for another day to discuss why I myself can or cannot torture a terrorist "for a good cause." My point here is simply that if that is my conviction, I can't ask others to do it for me, either.

So I'm opposed to torture. Period.

All that to say... There are some jobs that are unpleasant.

And then there are jobs that disturb your soul.

I could collect garbage for a living. No problem. It's just a smelly job.

Killing animals for a living would trouble my soul, however.

Fact is, I have a very hard time killing animals. The practical matter of putting a dying hamster out of its misery has proven difficult enough. We paid a vet to do it for us last year. Spent $80 to give the hamster a more peaceful exit.

So I find it hard to kill a dying hamster. What about a healthy one?

And oh-by-the-way?

A hamster weighs half a pound and has rocks pebbles for brains.

Yet for years someone out there has been killing and cutting up much larger and smarter animals. Healthy ones. All day long. For me.

Perhaps it doesn't bother them. But some assassins don't mind killing people, either. The conscience I am responsible for is my own.

For decades I've been complicit in this uncomfortable arrangement.

But today I am free of it. And that feels good.

To be continued....