I figure that the ultimate purpose of writing is to make some element of change, so since this is my last time writing for this paper, I am finally going to give it a shot. I haven’t been especially vocal about what I am about to say until now because I thought that doing so would annoy people. In the name of not bothering people, in the name of being a friendly guy, I hardly spoke about it. Maybe if I had thought that I could actually convince people, I would have acted differently. But I figured that saying it would make people feel defensive, and that feeling defensive would make people feel annoyed, and that feeling annoyed would make people stop listening to me. I still feel that way, but for a brief moment, I am going to stop caring.

I think that humans have done plenty of horrendous things over the course of history, and I would be shocked if our contemporary treatment of animals did not eventually come to be seen in the same way. It’s hard to imagine how we will explain to future generations the thought process that allowed us to walk through entire supermarkets filled with food that did not require killing animals and choose the one food that did.

It is worth remembering that the suffering of people who live far away from us, or who speak different languages than us, rarely conjures the same feelings of empathy that the suffering of a family member would. But when the voice of reason tells us that the suffering of all humans is real, that the suffering of all humans matters, we know we have to listen. Should we not keep the same lesson in mind when it comes to eating animals?

Maybe we don’t want to. Maybe most people really do want to be ignorant about the atrocious conditions on factory farms, lest they be forced to choose between the taste of a juicy drumstick and their self perception as ethical people. I have to imagine it’s the reason no one would agree to watch a PETA video before each time that they ate meat.

I know what it’s like to be on the other end of this conversation. Before I became a vegetarian, I would often argue with my vegetarian brother about the ethics of eating meat. I remember the terrible uneasiness I felt as I tried to find a moral justification for satisfying my cravings for steak. Sometimes I would make jokes to try to relieve the stress; other times I would just shout at my brother. But neither method worked. My brother convinced me, and I have been a vegetarian ever since. Is there a chance that I convinced you?