Revolve

I have been hunting since I was a child. I love the thrill of the chase, the discipline it teaches me, and the hardships I sustain in pursuit of the animal. Hunting makes me a complete person because it brings me closer to Nature and keeps me grounded.

Sometimes, we need to give for someone else to take. Sometimes, we sacrifice now, so that we reap the benefits later. It is not my fault that this is a zero-sum, doggy-dog world, and I just want my balance to be positive.

Difficulties only make my character grow, and that’s why I welcome them. With each passing day I become more ready for life, but also for death. My pastor says that I am a fiercely mortal creature. I totally get it: death is all around us, and we could either choose to embrace it or flee from it like cowards.

Hunting is not for everyone, I understand. It can get gory. Sometimes you have to finish the job from up close. But I do it because I harbor no animosity toward the deer. I want its meat, but I take no pleasure in its suffering. There is no point in suffering for suffering’s sake. And of course I recognize the deer’s primal instinct to live, an instinct I share with them.

Fundamentally, we are the same: organisms looking for this next gulp of life and comfort. I am no different from the deer. If someone were to hunt me, I would hate it, I would fight it tooth and nail, and I would cling to every breath like it is my last. Until it is my last.

Sometimes these thoughts make me feel uncomfortable. I have doubts, and I seek out how others like me deal with this. Some of them raise really good points – for example, animals hunt too, and no one thinks to fault them for it.

But at some point the false consciousness simply gives way to a life where I don’t have to lie to myself. When I recognize my fundamental equality with the prey, when I see that we are the same in front of the vastness of non-existence, I cannot in good conscience continue hurting these animals.

So I have made the logical step: I am no longer a hunter. My life is infinitely more fulfilling in its honesty now that I don’t exert violence on those who cannot defend themselves. I am no longer forced to choose between my dogs and the forest creatures and to justify how I feed and caress the former while shooting the latter dead. A life of compassion and guilt-free existence, and it finally feels nice.

It was not difficult to replace venison with beef. That’s most of the meat I eat now. It’s easier to supply anyway because our society has made it abundant and cheap. No hunting needed. I don’t even need to see the animal. Its meat comes as a reddish lump in a plastic tray from the supermarket. “Beef.” “Pork.” Not cow or pig. It’s clean and guilt-free, and I like it that way.

It’s true that there is a lot of suffering involved, I’m no fool. But this just is the nature of the world. Something has to die, so that we may live. I am deeply interested in living, so for me the question is not difficult: I will gladly pay for some other creature to die for me, if this is what it takes.

Eating meat is essential. Our ancestors have been doing this forever, and it seems to have worked for them just fine. And now that I realize how unfair it is to kill deer, I need to still supply my food from somewhere. Yes, I feel bad for the cows, but they have been bred for a life like this. They haven’t seen anything different, so it’s more ok to kill them than to kill a freedom-loving stag. Besides, if everyone were to stop eating cows, their numbers would rapidly go down, and soon there would be none.

That’s what I think, anyway. Though usually, I try not to think too much about it because I feel bad when I do. There is this intrusive idea that even though life is unfair, I don’t have to add to that unfairness. The resistance to change often feels like a rationalization.

If I stop eating meat, the world will continue in just the same way. Others will pay for the torture of cows and pigs, and that torture will continue. I can still refuse to eat meat if that would make me feel better, but it would be pointless without others joining in. Yes, maybe it will at least signify that I have good intentions. And maybe I shouldn’t care about what others do that much. Perhaps, it’s not about what others do but about what I do.

And if everyone thought like me, well then the problem wouldn’t arise. “If everyone would just do the right thing…” Such a naive thought. That’s not how people work.

Yet people have changed their ways in the past, and while it’s unreasonable to expect full compliance, once a sufficient number is reached, a revolution becomes possible. Maybe my little role is to do the right thing no matter what, and if others want to join because of me, well, that’s even better.

So I have decided: I don’t want to be part of this organized hell anymore. I don’t buy the free-range bullshit about ethical treatment; if there is death, there is no ethical treatment. And the animals obviously don’t want to die.

So this was it for my meat consumption. It’s not right. I don’t stand for it. And when you think about it, eggs and dairy are no better. It’s all exploitation of the most vulnerable and voiceless anyway.

Being in touch with the endless pain everywhere could be quite exhausting, but it’s the right thing to do. Better to be aware of it than to sweep it under the rug of your happier thoughts.

And happy thoughts no longer do their job to distract me. I am guilty, as most people are, though of course it’s better to see it once and for all. It’s better to face the reality that you’ve been a speciesist all of your life than to hide. And seeing it is no joke. There is no rational basis for my preference of some creatures over others.

Sometimes I wonder how deep my speciesism really goes. Maybe there are still parts of me that think uncritically without even realizing.

We seem to be most prejudiced in favor of other humans. It’s understandable, but also among the trickiest prejudices to get rid of. Other animals don’t talk, vote, or make money, so they have no power and no easy way to express their desire to live. But that desire certainly exists because they avoid danger and run from predators. The way they would run from me when I was a hunter is the way they run from their predators.

So their lives are valuable too, even though they can’t tell us that. For all intensive purposes, their lives matter like mine does. And if someone were trying to hunt me, I would try to stop them because living is good and important. Living is all we have, come to think of it. This life is our only possession.

But I am not more valuable in any deep way than a deer. My life is not more expensive. I don’t know by what currency it would be more expensive. Life is life.

To be consistent in my rejection of speciesism means to protect the vulnerable regardless of the species. I would protect a human child because a child has no resources to defend herself against, say, a wolf. But a deer doesn’t have that many resources either. A wolf pack is a bad news for a deer just as it would be for a child – and for me, for that matter, if I didn’t have the means to protect myself.

Thankfully, I have these means. My experience in hunting and this newly found awareness of injustice are my resources and my motivation. I can make the world a better place. The best part is that I know how to make the world a better place.

The deer need to be protected instead of victimized. It only follows logically from the importance of their lives. It also follows that I must stop those who victimize them. I must stop the predators.

So I find myself dusting off the old hunting rifle. I can’t say that I didn’t miss the feeling of power when I hold it and take aim. With it I am more than myself: I am myself plus the one tool that could bring real, tangible justice to this wretched world.

I join hunting expeditions once again, this time for wolves and coyotes. The other guys are all solid people worried about livestock and the numbers getting out of hand. “If we don’t control them, Walter, who would,” they ask, and they are right.

Some days we can exterminate an entire pack. That is actually way more compassionate than leaving a single wolf to fend for himself and put himself in danger trying to get food. It’s better to not let them experience that awful life at all.

The more I think of it, the more I realize I am doing a giant favor to these wild beasts. I mean, their lives cannot be as good as mine. They are constantly on the run, preying on other creatures but also running away from us. They are rarely in good health; their bodies are covered in scabs and missing fur. The parasites must be horrendous to go through. Imagine itching and aching all the time, and chasing after animals to attack them in a dangerous fight – because they are fighting for their lives! – only to get a few bites of meat and organs, as what will be mostly left for you is the fur and bones after all the other wolves join in. You run, you hide, you chase, you starve, you repeat the cycle. I would certainly not want to live like that. I would desperately want someone to put me out of my misery.

Life itself is marked by this struggle, and this is true for all of us, human or beast, predator or prey. We never truly get what we want. It’s like a treadmill that seems to only get faster as we age. What we want is unobtainable, and what we get becomes old fast. This is the sentient condition: constant struggle and never-ending pain.

Suffering and pain are just a case of our desires left unsatisfied – just an extreme version of that. But regular dissatisfaction is no good either. And that regular dissatisfaction is just our natural state as living beings.

Occasionally I have this daydream of making it all go away. My compassion and altruism don’t allow me to just take myself out, though this wouldn’t be so bad anyway; my compassion and altruism lead me to the logical conclusion that life is bad for all of us, and the only good thing to do is to just stop all of it. If there were a button we could press that would make everything disappear forever, it would be a good button to have. It would probably be the only unequivocally good thing in the world.

The treadmill must be stopped. It’s senseless and cruel, but it has also enchanted us. We don’t see our situation clearly at all. We are deluded to crave and hold on to life, as if there is any lasting value in it. We are life-lovers, birth-seekers, DNA-worshippers. We are vessels used by our genetic code, a string of letters that does not care about our happiness. We have the largest, sickest, most existentially tragic Stockhold Syndrome.

My heart breaks at the thought of how much more evil existence is for non-human animals. It could leave you light-headed. The sheer amounts of pain and violence everywhere we look, but also everywhere we don’t look, for it would not be somehow better there.

It is my compassion that led me to taking the wolves out of existence, but I now see how incomplete this is. It’s not only predators that need the salvation of non-existence; we all do.

The deer need to be saved too. This is only rational; this is only compassionate. And it’s not difficult to accomplish with a smoking barrel of compassion.

I have been hunting since I was a child. I love the thrill of the chase, the discipline it teaches me, and the hardships I sustain in pursuit of the animal.