A non-veggie speaks

From J.M Coetzee's Disgrace:

To his own surpirse, he is trying to comfort her. 'Perhaps he has already been through it. Born with foreknowledge, so to speak. This is South Africa, after all. There have been goats here since the beginning of time. They don't have to be told what steel is for, and fire. They know how death comes to a goat. They are born prepared.'

This passage remained with me long after I put the book down. Have goats and other animals that humans regularly and systematically slaughter, developed an evolutionary awareness of their impending predestination? Do they live their lives, realizing at some deeply sub-conscious level, that one day they will meet an unnatural and horrible end?

As a non-vegetarian struggling with a moral conundrum, I would like to believe so. Then I can justifiably renounce the immoral act with a degree of haughty self-righteousness. Unfortunately, the cold practicality of science dictates that it cannot be true. Animals are not gifted with the ability to reason. Thus, realizing, and what is more, accepting one's fate is beyond even the most precocious animal.

This philosophical deliberation seemed like the right preamble to the more practical debate concerning vegetarianism vs. non-vegetarianism . Vegetarians often make the point that eating animals is morally wrong because of the pain and suffering they are made to go through. To this, I reply that, if humans stopped eating meat this instant, we would face a severe food crisis in the world.

This statement at the very least, reeks of the insolence of occupying the top of the food chain. We have bestowed upon ourselves, the divine right to choose what to eat and what not to. I realize the feebleness of the argument myself: the instinct of self preservation, so vulgar in us humans yet so beautiful in animals, will demand that more grain and vegetables be cultivated. A few millions will perish in the interim, regions hitherto populated will become uninhabitable, but we would have renounced a throne that we have unjustly occupied since we came into existence.

Even if we accept that animals are not aware of their fate and do not have the intelligence to perceive what is going to happen to them, we should not for one minute let it obscure the fact that they are put through unspeakable agony before they are slaughtered. This is especially true in developing countries like India, the repungnant attitude of most people being, 'are janwar hi to hai' or 'vaise bhi marne vale hai'.

It seems like, as someone who enjoys meat, I have dug myself into a hole. I eat non-vegetarian food because it tastes good. This does not mean that I do not care for animals, I love them very much. Then how can I still eat them? A sense of detachment from what walked the earth once, alive and hearty, protects me from myself. And this self-deceiving apathy allows me to consume with relish what is placed before me on a plate. I offer no excuse for my excesses. I can only hope that, one day, my conscience can no longer bear the darkness of the the hole I find myself in. I can only hope that one day the baying souls of all the animals that have been slaughtered at my behest, will force me to crawl back out, never to venture in again.