Going Veg.

I just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, Eating Animals, which delves into the many layers behind why (and more importantly, how) people eat meat. It was a good book, not too hung up on the gross-out business (a vegetarian's best weapon), but I still came away from the book with a less-than "right" feeling about it. It wasn't guilt- I only eat meat maybe once or twice a week (interestingly enough, environmentalists ask that people reduce the amount of meat they eat by that much- that is, that people cut meat from their diet one or two days a week to reduce the toll raising meat takes on our planet, but I honestly can't imagine eating meat more than the couple of times a week I do- the thought kind of grosses me out). I had read in several reviews that this book does not present the farmers in a positive light, but that wasn't what was bothering me about the book. Honestly, I thought that the farmers came across okay, as people doing their work to live their lives.

And the problem was not with the format, which was lovely: interwoven between interviews and statistics are family stories about eating, because families and stories and eating are intrinsically linked.

No, the problem I had with the book- the point at which I felt it was good, but didn't sit well, was the smugness of vegetarianism. That holier-than-thou attitude, that outrageously poor leadership! If you want to convert someone to your beliefs, to your cause, then the exact wrong way to go about it is to insistently tell people that you are dong the right thing, that you are better than everyone else and therefore they should try to be like you. I know I've spent a lot of time on this blog finding out about the wrong ways to lead, but I think that when you can identify the wrong things- the ways you know will not help you lead- then you can better identify the good ways to lead. For the record, I was a vegetarian (twice, actually), but I always framed the discussion (which would invariably come up at barbecues, where there is never anything for vegetarians besides one sad salad) as a personal choice; that there were things in meat that I don't want to eat, for example, or that I just like vegetables better (true). I would never say that I'm doing it because I care more about animals (thanks, PETA) than anyone else. I probably don't. If you want to convince people to follow you, you have to connect with them around a common idea (we all want to be healthy, for example, and meat, particularly corn-fed meat, is not) and then expand from there. Otherwise people will just feel that you are lashing out at them and respond with clichéd, knee-jerk reactions we've all been hearing for years. It's hard to convince people to do the right thing, especially when it's not as easy or as delicious, but it's a much easier discussion if it is a discussion and not a fight.

(Apologies for the late post; my computer crashed earlier)