Why do people’s choices mean so much to other people?
I didn’t get a cell phone for a long time. I disliked them. (I still do.) They turned public places (buses, record stores) into people’s private phone booths, turning anyone nearby into an inadvertent audience.
Pay phones, a cheap convenience we all shared, have disappeared, in favor of an expensive convenience everyone has to have. They’ve extended the work day, shrinking the barriers between home and office, between leisure time and productive time—and, by extension, raised the bar of workplace expectations to even more unreasonable heights.
So I didn’t want a cell phone. But I learned, over the years, that almost everyone I knew wanted me to have one. No matter how often I pointed out that I was able to manage a successful social life without one, the response was the same: “But it would be easier,” “But you could do [this],” “But I could reach you [there]”—“Look, you should just get one.”
One friend was baffled when I got a GPS gadget. “You can do all that on an iPhone,” she pointed out. “Sure,” I said, “but I only have to buy this once.” (The annual cost of a cell phone was another strike.)
I finally broke down; we moved, and were without a land line, so pragmatism won out. But now, the discussion has shifted to Facebook. I don’t dislike Facebook; I just don’t care about it. I do have a page (not under my own name), which I check every month or so. I accepted a handful of friends and family early on, and I’m all set. Anyone I want to be in touch with, I’m in touch with via other means. The world keeps turning.
And yet, the discussion goes on. “But I could send you [that],” “But you could see [grade school playmate]’s kids,” “But you could read what my horoscope says today”—“Look, you should just be on Facebook.”
But I don’t want to be, and, without meaning to come off as disingenuously anachronistic or Luddite-ish, I find it odd and unsettling that friends and family take this as a kind of stubborn, groundlessly contrarian stance. The gist of the situation is that I’m not interested in Facebook, and they are. One of us must be wrong. Right?
I mention this because I keep seeing parallels with the way I eat. As a 93% vegan (a term I just invented, meaning “vegan in general, with infrequent exceptions for special occasions and/or extenuating circumstances”), I eat differently from most people I know. This wouldn’t seem to be a big deal, and yet, it often is. Again, let me stress that I’m not trying to be disingenuous, but surely, what I eat, or don’t, is pretty low on anyone’s list of hot-button issues, objectively speaking.
But, of course, it isn’t. And the reason why it raises such hackles, and turns discussions into debates at the drop of a drop of soy milk, is both fascinating and frustrating.
Where I stand on other peoples’ dietary choices is based on one thing: how much I care about them. If some schmoe at the airport wants to wash down his food court pepper steak with a Cinabon, that’s all him. But if a good friend or family member is eating unhealthily, well, then, I start to care. What I do about it is, of course, the next step.
I’m not the type to lecture, admonish or evangelize on behalf of the informed choices I’ve made. In general, I try to stick to answering questions—when asked—and picking up on the subject if someone else brings it up. But I’ve learned that simply stating facts can come across as contentious; articulating a perspective grounded in scientific study can be seen as elitist; answering a question without couching it in layers of “I agree, but,” or “Sure, but I’m not talking about you,” or “Of course, I respect your dentist’s opinion,” can sound snobbish.
What we eat, and how, and why, are clearly deeply-held emotional choices for the majority of people. It’s difficult to hold a civilized, balanced and dispassionate conversation on the topic, because when both sides know they’re right, there’s no middle ground in which to explore the overlap or intersection of ideas, nor is there room to philosophically explore and critically evaluate the roots of one another’s convictions.
It’s great that everyone has an uncle or a grandfather who ate bacon sandwiches every day and lived to be ninety-nine. But the fact is, we also all know someone who died too young, of heart disease, diabetes or cancer. If you loved that person, and could talk to that person now, wouldn’t you want to find a way to share the things you’ve learned?
And the people who researched these questions and tested their findings and wrote books to share them with other people—if those people all fell over dead tomorrow, it wouldn’t change the way I look at my diet.
This is partly because I know it takes more than a handful of people to make a valid sample, and also because my choice isn’t based only on my own health. The environmental, social and economic effects of the animal farming industry are, in themselves, more than enough reason to take a step back and at least consider dialing down the amount of animals one eats in a week, or a year.
But it’s hard to say these things to people. Because, to return to the cell phone evangelists and Facebook converts I mentioned earlier, people are more comfortable when you make the choices they’ve made. If you choose differently from me, it means that one of us is wrong.
And who likes to feel like they’ve been wrong all this time? Especially when it means accepting the possibility that a huge American industry (in which even schools and hospitals are complicit, if more passively) has shaped your understanding of nutrition based on preserving its own longevity and health, and not yours at all?
To conclude, I’d like to ask anyone reading this to consider the choices they’ve made. If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan, how do you talk to meat-eaters about their choices? If you’re an omnivore, how do you talk to herbivores about their choices?
Are you asking—because you want to know? Or are you telling—because you already know?
P.E.D.A. 