The difference between principle and pretense

I once spent a year as a vegetarian for practical reasons.

Sidebar: I mean practical as in “not ethically motivated”. There was nothing practical as in “useful” about my reasons. I was a vegetarian because my Sat Sadh Guru told me that it would improve my daily karma which would help me hear the Shabd, which would lead me to the astral plane. Story for another time.

At the end of that year, I was developing conflicting values. I either wanted to dedicate my time to achieving full enlightenment, or getting sexy. I thought that I wouldn't have time to both meditate and lift weights. More importantly, I thought I was going to have to eat meat if I wanted to gain mass, which would throw a big karma coated wrench in my universal consciousness machine. Eventually, I decided that my six pack was more important to me than access to the akashic records, and I determined to start eating meat the following day.

But I couldn't sleep that night. Visions of enslaved and mutilated livestock danced in my head. The thought of killing an animal for food had become horrifying to me. After a few hours, I got up and I cried half the night over PETA propaganda films. I instantly became a vegan and I stayed that way for two more years. All the while, I preached compassion for the suffering of other sentient beings, and fire and brimstone against the non-human exploitation industry.

But questions started coming up pretty quickly:

1. What about honey? If it's immoral to benefit from the exploitation of oysters because they can experience suffering, then how could it not be immoral to benefit from the exploitation of bees?
2. What about vaccines? Don't scientists make those using chicken embryos? Is it immoral to kill baby chickens to save baby humans?
3. Why is my reaction to killing human beings infinitely more intense than my reaction to killing animals? If I were in a situation where the only options I had were to starve to death or kill and eat another human being, no matter how much of a self serving bastard the guy was, I'd probably choose to die. But if it came down to me or a cow, no matter how much of a doting, playful, docile, once-saved-a-kid-from-a-burning-building bovine hero she was, wouldn't I kill her?
4. Why should I respect the rights of species that lack the empathy or the intellectual capacity to respect the rights of others? The fact that animals have the capacity to experience suffering is insufficient. I have the capacity to experience suffering too, but the grizzly bear eating me alive doesn't really give a shit.
5. Actually, why do I have rights? Why does anybody have rights?

The answers were difficult to accept, which is why it took me two years to be able to say:

1. Fuck bees. They don't respect my rights.
2. Fuck chickens. Human life is more important than anything else ever.
3. Fuck cows. Killing a cow and killing a human aren't morally equivalent anymore than killing a cow and killing a fruit fly are morally equivalent. To say otherwise is to devalue the intellectual and emotional capacities of both species.
4. Fuck animal rights. They don't have any. If you physically lack the necessary hardware and software for universal empathy, then you don't get any rights. Sorry, animals. Rights are a two way street. Call me when the nano-swarm infects you with augmented consciousness.
5. I have rights because I have the capacity to respect the rights of others and have so far demonstrated my willingness to do so. This is why you lose your rights when and to the degree that you violate other people's rights. If you steal my car, not only do I get to use force against you to get it back, but I get to take more from you than you took from me, to compensate myself for the inconvenience. If you murder my child, you become my slave for as long as I choose to allow you to live.

This is the general pattern of principle building:

1. You have an emotional reaction to something. (like, killing an animal)
2. You assert a universal principle. (like, respect the rights of animals)
3. You follow the principle to an absurd conclusion. (like, respect the rights of fruit flies)
4. You assert a better universal principle. (like, respect the rights of those who respect yours)
5. Repeat steps 3-4 ad infinitum.

This process, I hope, stands in obvious contrast to the normal pattern of pretentious moralizing:

1. Have an emotional reaction to something.
2. Assert a universal principle.
3. Make exceptions.
4. Maintain the assertion irrespective of reason, evidence, contradiction or consequences.

Let's illustrate this process with guns.

1. Emotion: Gun violence is bad.
2. Principle: No one should be allowed to have a gun.
3. Exception: The government should use guns to take every one else's guns.
4. La la la la la I can't hear you.

Now let's do a comparison to really see how the models differ from each other. The principled process goes like this:

1. Emotion: violence is bad.
2. Principle: Don't use violence.
3. Absurdity: Don't use violence to protect someone you love from an attacker.
4. New principle: Don't initiate violence.
   3. Absurdity: Don't initiate violence to steal a car to drive a dying friend to a hospital.
   4. New principle: If you initiate violence, compensate your victim.

The pretentious process goes like this:

1. Emotion: Violence is bad.
2. Principle: Don't use violence.
3. Exception:  The government needs a monopoly on violence to protect us from violence.
4. Don't taze me, bro!

If you aren't questioning your principles, if you aren't following them to the point of absurdity, if you're making obvious exceptions, if you ignore reason and evidence, and if you get offended when I point these facts out, you're pretentious.

You can either give up asserting moral principles, or you can give up making exceptions to them. You can either begin an honest search for justice, or you can forfeit any right to appeal to morality, but you can't have both. Make a decision.

p.s.

I never did get sexy or achieve enlightenment.  But I did free myself from many of the chain rattling ghosts of childhood trauma. So that's cool.