Selective Compassion

Here's another article about recognizing that animals are sentient beings who suffer horribly in our factory farms and slaughter houses. It's called Selective Compassion and here's an excerpt:

When I discovered what had been methodically hidden from me for so long, I stopped eating animals and their eggs and milk. I “became vegan.” For the first time, I was able to truly manifest the innate compassion with which I had been born, and it was a profound and liberating experience. However, people didn’t quite react the same way they did as when I was a child. Helping fallen baby birds or taking in stray animals were considered admirable childhood pursuits, but when that very same compassion followed me into adulthood and extended to pigs, cattle, chickens, and other animals killed for human consumption, it was met with hostility and suspicion. The message was: Limited compassion good. Unconditional compassion bad.

The day I discovered my role in this socially sanctioned dynamic of selective compassion was the day I woke up – literally. A veil was lifted from my eyes and heart, and I saw the immense suffering and terror that billions of animals experience every moment of every day, for naught but satisfying our taste buds. I woke up to the fact that the truth about the systematic exploitation and slaughter of animals was deliberately hidden from me – by my parents, by the media, and most certainly by the industries that make billions of dollars off the backs off young animals. Ignorance good. Exposure bad.

I also woke up to my own values. Having been conditioned to compartmentalize my compassion and suppress my mercy for animals, my lifestyle – as a non-vegan – was not truly reflecting my principles of nonviolence, simplicity, and kindness. I couldn’t imagine hurting another living being, and yet I was paying someone else to do it for me. Once I knew, once I was a witness, I couldn’t but act, and the natural response was to stop participating in a system that commodifies and kills animals for human pleasure. Living fully awake can be painful; after all, ignorance is indeed bliss – but only for those who aren’t the victims. However, I wouldn’t trade the heartbreak for all the world. After all, only an open heart can break.

I beg you all to open your hearts to the immense suffering perpetrated on innocent animals that we arbitrarily decide are to be used for food. And the problem isn't just using them for food. That could be done humanely. Except that we don't do it humanely. The crueltry with which animals are treated on the way to the dinner table is simply beyond horrific. Please educate yourself. And then choose not to support the meat industry with your money or your willingness to eat its products. That decision is a good one. It's good for the animals, it's good for the environment, it's good for your health and it's good for your conscience.