If Nothing Matters There's Nothing to Save.

I recently read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is an excellent book for anyone who is new to, or has been considering, vegetarianism/veganism. For more serious vegans, it is definitely still worth reading but you may find yourself getting a bit frustrated with him at times, because he is obviously not an animal rights activist. He is, in fact, just a guy who wants to make sure he raises his kid the right way.

Eating Animals actually began when Foer decided to learn about factory farming in order to determine whether or not he should raise his son to eat meat. I find this very admirable. I wish everyone would think about the way their lifestyle affects their children, and ultimately all the generations that come after them. In most cases, the way you raise your kids will be the way they raise their kids, and the way they raise their kids etc. If you have any doubts about your own lifestyle you should think very hard before you pass that lifestyle on to your children.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there, sorry. This post is not about how people should or shouldn't raise their kids. What I really want to talk about is a story from Eating Animals that Jonathan Safran Foer's grandmother told him when he was a child. She survived World War One by constantly running and hiding from the Germans. She lived on whatever food she could find or steal, which was not much, and toward the end she was very close to starvation. When things were at their worst, a farmer saw her and took pity on her by bringing her a piece of meat. Unfortunately, the meat that he gave her was pork and therefore not kosher. Even though she was on the verge of death, she wouldn't eat it. When Jonathan asked her why she wouldn't eat the pork when she thought it would save her life, she answered "If nothing matters, there's nothing to save."

I loved this story as soon as I read it. I think it conveys perfectly the way that I, and I'm sure many others, feel about veganism. I, like most vegans, have had many ideological discussions with omnivores. These kinds of conversations tend to be very frustrating, because what they usually come down to is the omnivore trying to convince you that you don't really believe in veganism as much as you think you do.

One of the most common question that I think all vegans get asked is the "What if you were starving?" question. I try to be very careful when I answer this one because I don't want to sound unreasonable by saying "Absolutely not! It's never okay to kill an animal!" even though that's basically how I feel. Usually I try to respond by saying that I don't really have that much of a moral objection to someone killing an animal to save his or her own life, but that I would never do it. Most people who I have said this to have obviously not believed me. They either give me a very skeptical look or say flat out that I wouldn't feel that way if I were actually starving.

I'm quite sure that things would look a bit different if I were on the verge of starvation, but I can say with 100% certainty that I would die before I would kill an animal. The reason for this is, if I were to take the life of an animal to save my own, that animal would have died for no reason. My love for animals and my dedication to saving them is what makes me who I am, it's what defines me. If I were to throw all of that away to save my own life, who would I be saving?

So yes, I'm sure being close to death makes people do things that they otherwise wouldn't do. However, I know that, no matter what the situation, I would still have the presence of mind to realize that I would rather die than live with myself knowing that I had forsaken everything I believe in. If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.