Am I Really an Animal Lover?

Jun 22, 2020

"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."
-Charles Darwin

Character Development

My entire life, the defining aspect of my character was being an animal lover. Even while going through the turbulent years of youth, trying to figure out who I was as a person and who I wanted to become, that one part of me remained constant. In high school, while carpooling with my friends, I would ooh and ahh at the fields of cows we passed, and I'd make a fuss when I saw a squirrel run up a tree outside the window. (To be fair, I still do these things.)

However, despite all this, my primary love for animals largely began and ended with wild animals and domesticated home animals. When I traveled the world, though I loved visiting some of the most beautiful places to ever exist -- the Taj Mahal, Machupicchu, the Great Wall, the Great Barrier Reef -- what I loved even more was seeing all the animals around: cows and dogs roaming the streets of India and monkeys jumping across rooftops, llamas and alpacas in the mountains of Peru, koalas and wallabies in Australia, and sloths and toucans and capybaras in Panama.

For the first 18 years of my life, I was content with this. I didn't feel a need to change the way I lived; I thought I could simply go on loving animals the way I did, blissfully ignorant to all the animals I killed with nearly every action I took. Of course, that all changed once I went vegan. Now, I could go on to say how you can't be an animal lover while consuming animal products, and while I agree that's true to an extent, I'd like to talk about something a little different. Maybe this will resonate with how some other vegans feel.

Into the Mind of a Carnist "Animal Lover"

Forgiving the writing skills of my fourteen-year-old self, you can tell from my descriptions of certain Panamanian animals -- hummingbirds, monkeys, sloths -- the favoritism I held for them as compared to more common, less-beloved animals -- pigeons, caterpillars.

Superiority Complex

In the past five years since going vegan, my emotions have been all over the place. Sometimes I feel angry and hateful while other times I feel hopeful and helpful. The world as it is really messed (and messes) with my head, and it's difficult to try to live a normal life when you know how terrible basically everything is for both animals and the planet. I've said many times in my environmental posts that I consider zero-waste and eco-consciousness an important part of veganism because all the products we buy have a footprint, and when we buy things or support companies that don't care about the planet, we are hurting not only the forests and oceans, but also all the animals that inhabit those areas. Veganism extends to all animals, not just farmed animals.

But I don't think I really embodied that philosophy until recently. Because of all these emotions inside me I've been trying to work through, I think I almost shut myself off from my original love for animals. Because I didn't place as much value on the animals I used to love so dearly -- the monkeys and llamas and toucans -- as I placed on farmed animals -- the cows and fishes and chickens. Though "food" animals are the most exploited on the planet, I had this -- and I hate to call it this -- superiority complex because I cared about all the animals that nobody else cared about. They all care about the koalas burning in Australia, the elephants poached in Asia, even the sharks killed for shark fin soup. It was like because I felt superior for caring about all animals that I almost began to resent the animals that everyone else cared about.

A Shift in Perspective

Between becoming more focused on zero-waste in my personal life and since writing "The Importance of Connecting with Nature," something inside me began to shift. (Though that was quite a simple, forgettable post, it actually documented a pretty profound experience that I still think of often.) I really needed to take a step back from my own mind -- a difficult task, as one aspect of anxiety is that your irrational mind is always trying to control every little thing that you think and do -- and appreciate the world around me. With time, I began to re-expand my circle of compassion to the more popular animals we all know and love. Like I said in "Standard Arguments Against Veganism, Pt. 5," it's not a cow's fault for being born a cow. And it's not a koala's fault for being born a koala; it's not their fault that people like them more than cows.

Now, this isn't to say that my primary focus will shift away from farmed animals. No, the animals that are exploited the most by "animal lovers" will continue to be the reason I live each day the way I do, and nothing will stop me from that. But I want us all to have respect for animals as individuals, regardless of species or breed or cuteness, and I hope that all vegans, myself included, will incorporate more animal rights activism for all animals into their lives.

Accepting Flaws

I'm not sure if this post will be helpful to anyone or if anyone else has experienced these kinds of feelings. Honestly, I don't know what the purpose of all this was or if there even is a purpose. But, if there's one thing you want to take away from this, it's that we're all flawed. (Even vegans, as much as we might hate to admit it.) But having flaws is just a part of being human. We can analyze why we do the things we do, and maybe we'll come to understand why we feel the way we do. In the meantime, we must work to be open-minded, open-hearted, and compassionate to all.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan