Baa baa black sheep, have you any succulent flesh for me to feast on?

As you might have guessed from the title, this is a post about vegetarianism. But it is also about the way of thinking that allows most people to go from “aww cute little lambies!” to “mmm, roast lamb” without missing a beat. It’s a way of thinking I believe I've seen elsewhere and no good comes of it, so it’s worth a closer look. Vegetarianism is just one example; an important one I think.

I became a vegetarian for environmental reasons (global warming, better energy efficiency of growing arable crops versus grazing animals etc). I didn't think there was actually anything wrong with killing and eating animals in principle, and I had no particular emotional reaction to the idea of eating meat; it just seemed rationally better not to.

I had always wondered why I wasn't repulsed by the idea of eating meat; why we all aren't. There must be a moment in childhood when you find out what meat is, and it seems like that should be pretty traumatic and put you off for life. Yet I remember no such moment, and other people I have talked to mostly don’t either. I wondered whether, when I stopped eating meat, I would develop an emotional disgust-response to the idea of it. And I did. It’s why I think that happened that’s interesting, so enough of the autobiographical wittering, and let’s look at that.

When we are doing something that isn't really right, I think the subconscious reasoning goes something like “I do this, and I'm not a bad/stupid/thoughtless person, so it can’t be a bad/stupid/thoughtless thing to do”. Sometimes you hear people say things like this out loud. I've met people who think “well I've always eaten meat” is a justification of some sort, and I'm sure you have too. Once you stop doing the thing (eating meat in this case), that line of thought is cut off. Then you can think about the thing itself, without your self-image getting in the way. If there’s one thing that clouds all of our judgement, it’s self-image.

I said this applies to things other than vegetarianism, so what do I have in mind? One example is abusive relationships. There’s a tendency to think something like “I wouldn't get taken advantage of because I'm a strong and smart person, so given that I'm in this relationship, it can’t be one in which I'm being taken advantage of”. And then you don’t leave. (Of course I'm not implying that strong and smart people don’t get into abusive relationships. Learning that they do sometimes can be the way to get out without destroying your self-image).

I have seen the same reasoning applied to drunk driving. An acquaintance off her face on chardonnay was giving a group of people a lift home. Someone suggested she was in no fit state, but she told us that she doesn't drink much because of her religion. Presumably the thinking was “I don’t drink much because I'm not that sort of person, so I can’t be drunk”. Again, self-image (and admittedly booze too in this case) gets in the way of seeing what is actually going wrong.

This thought pattern is a kind of what George Orwell called doublethink. You can learn to live with the tension between believing something to be wrong (or at least having a nagging half-conscious sense that it is) and explicitly denying it. In this case, the trick is pulled off because of the way self-image gets in the way. We don’t even need an Orwellian oppressive regime to tell us what to think; we can do doublethink all by ourselves. It seems possible that learning to think in this way could leave us open to manipulation by a regime that relies on such contradictions, à la 1984, but I’ll leave that thought as a vague suggestion here. The examples of self-manipulation in the cases of abusive relationships and drink driving should be enough to show that this way of thinking can be dangerous.

Is there a way to stop ourselves thinking this way? Probably not entirely, since it seems to be something we take to so naturally. But being aware of that fact by itself arms us against it to some extent. Knowledge is power (over yourself, as much as over others).

To close, I want to bring this back to vegetarianism. What I have said would make sense of the idea of initiatives that challenge people to go veggie for a month just to try it. You don’t just learn what other options you have to eat, you erode that image of yourself as a meat-eater, making it harder to think “I eat meat, so it can’t be bad”. Why not push yourself further? Try reflecting on the fact that you are munching on dead stuff – “mmm, tasty corpses!” – and see if your emotions towards meat change. And if they are changed so easily, why should your new thoughts be any less valid than the old? If you eat meat just because it doesn't feel like a bad thing to do, or because you've always done it, I dare you to try it and see what happens.

Then you can enjoy watching those spring lambs playing in the fields without getting hungry. If you look at them in the right way, they just aren't food!

To broaden the mind is to travel

The main argument of this blog post is that there is no need to physically travel anywhere in order to broaden your mind, or to “find yourself”. Those things can and should be done internally and, once you begin doing them, you should find that you have already travelled further than you could ever have imagined, all without moving a single step.

I’ll start with “finding yourself”, because that’s the least sensible idea. Broadening the mind has something going for it, so I’ll get to that later.

I assume that finding yourself is either learning about yourself, or learning to accept yourself. Both of these are important things to do; it’s just travel to far-flung destinations as the means that I want to question. To learn about yourself, the last thing you want to do is try to run away from yourself, and that is what travel so often amounts to. You need to confront yourself head on, with no distractions. The same goes for self-acceptance; you need to see yourself clearly to begin accepting what you see.

If you can’t find yourself alone in a quiet room, then the problem is not with your location, but with you. It’s a problem we all have at some point; many of us have it through most of our lives. We want to know ourselves, but we fear to. Self-reflection is hard, but it is the only way to ever truly find out who you are, and come to terms with what you find. Learn to meditate. It’s cheaper than flying halfway round the world, and it has a much lower carbon footprint.

Ok, that’s glib. I think there’s a lot of truth to it, but it leaves some things out. What if you want to find out who you are by seeing how you respond to new experiences? If you want unfamiliar situations, then sure, go to new places and meet new people, but most of us can do that by travelling less than 10 miles. Take up a new hobby; walk until you hit somewhere you don’t recognise then start exploring; ask a friend or acquaintance out for a drink and talk until dawn. All of these things are richer ways of exploring who you are than trying to rack up more air miles than whichever of your friends posts the most spiritually enlightened and deep travel photos in your Facebook feed.

Which brings me to broadening the mind. You might be able to learn to know and accept yourself without moving anywhere, but can you learn to know and accept other people in all their variety? I think you can, but it isn't as obvious because you are right there wherever you are, and other people are not.

For one thing the people you already know, and nearby people you could potentially meet, are almost certainly more varied than you have ever realised. Take the time to really talk to them and find out. Real learning comes from depth of communication, and that takes time, not a flying visit, brushing past a culture and gawping at it for a bit, then considering yourself to have come away enlightened.

Having said that, I think we do have an immense amount to learn from more distant cultures about ways a good life can be lived. Other people would balk at the things we take for granted, and in turn take for granted things that we find downright bizarre. Sometimes noting this can teach us ways to be better, or even just different. But all we really need in order to do this in most cases is the information about how they live and what they think. In an age where communication across the globe takes literally next to no time, and diverse reading material is freely available, there is usually no need to travel in order to learn. More than that, I think doing so does harm.

The most obvious harm it does is to the environment, because travel takes fuel and energy. Unnecessary air travel is morally dubious at best. Less obviously, it also does harm to our image of what a broad minded person is. We come to almost define it as being someone who has travelled. This is wrong in both directions – plenty of people have travelled to many exotic places and accrued no wisdom at all, and also plenty of people have barely left the town in which they were born and yet are tolerant, well educated, interested and interesting. We shouldn't judge someone by the number of stamps in their passport; it doesn't represent either breadth or depth of thinking or understanding of the world. A culture that thinks otherwise is one which pushes young people in particular into taking environmentally damaging and sometimes personally dangerous journeys to distant locations, purely for social acceptance. Gap year photos are easier and more gratifying to show off than being well-read and thoughtful.

What can we teach our young people instead? That people are complex and diverse. Talk properly to those you know, and you will learn this. That there are different ways of doing things that are just as valid as the ways we do them. Read widely and keep your eyes open as you move through daily life, and you will learn this. That you are a part of a wider world and that brings with it certain responsibilities. Watch the news, and you will learn this. That knowing and accepting yourself, without closing off opportunities for change in your life is of vital importance for your well-being. Reflect and meditate, and you will learn this.

The most enriching and satisfying journeys begin with a deep breath, a gentle unfolding of the mind, and the realisation that the only place to find yourself is right here.