If a pig and a vegan....

Pig swimming

Folks, sometimes I get a bit tired of writing serious vegan posts and articles. Sometimes, I feel like nobody's listening anyway. Some people are just too set in their ways or too busy living to think very deeply. Others simply disagree. Some are even quite rude about it. When that happens, I throw a little humor in with the facts, to make things more lighthearted. This is one of those times. I often have non-vegans confront me with hypothetical situations like the ones here. I don't answer, because I find hypothetical situations ridiculous. But maybe I should. If I did, here's how it would go.

If you (a vegan) and a pig were on a desert island....

Would you eat the pig?

The grammar police in me says, “First of all, don't you mean a deserted island?” Are there desert islands? I see most islands as dense and tropical with a bit of beach. Maybe that's because it's what I've always been told. Kind of like we've all always been told that meat and dairy are natural foods for us. They're not. They're particularly not natural for me.

You see, before I became a vegan, I was a vegetarian for well over thirty years. Before that, my folks had to force me to eat other animals. Finally, they just gave up. You should too. Because there is no way in H. E. double hockey sticks that you're going to convince me to eat another sentient being. Nope. Not even if I'm on a “desert” island with a pig.

So, maybe I'll just eat whatever the pig has been eating. After all, I'm assuming the pig was on the island before I got there. He or she must have been eating something. In the wild, pigs are mainly foragers, right? So, there you go. I'm all set. No need to eat the pig. I'll just join him for dinner. Maybe we'll even make use of the dishes and vegan food that washed ashore with the boat I was on.

After all, this is a hypothetical situation. It's a work of fiction. Therefore, I can add food and dishes to it if I want. They do always wash ashore in those books about people stranded on “desert” islands, right? Plus, there will likely be barrels of seeds, floating on the tides. They were meant to plant, in order to feed the not so lucky other people on the boat in future years. Yay! A garden. I love gardening.

Or maybe this was a tour boat. Is Gilligan here? I love that guy. And the professor too. Maybe he can make me and the pig a boat out of coconuts. We could float away into the sunset and hey, is that Wilson from Castaway bobbing on the water? It's OK. Pigs can swim. My faithful companion can rescue him. Hey, wait a minute. Pigs can swim? Then, explain this next hypothetical situation, would you please?

If a pig and a baby were drowning....

Who would you save?

Well, I'd save the baby, of course. I just told you pigs can swim. The pig is not drowning. In fact, maybe the pig could save both me and the baby, because, guess what? I'm a crappy swimmer. If it were up to me to save someone who was drowning, I'd probably die right along with them. Trust me, that baby is better off with the pig.

So, you better stop eating pigs. You might save a life someday in some other crazy, made up, hypothetical situation. Who knows? Ya, that was me, turning your table.

On a serious note:

Folks, I love all animals, even the human kind, vegan or not. That's why I write articles like this. I care deeply about everyone. I may use humor or shock to get my point across. But at the core of that is caring. My intent with these articles is not to ridicule, but to inform and to help. The humor and the shock are just there to grab your attention.

You see, unfortunately, the reality is that our planet, you know, the one we depend on for life itself? Well, it's dying. We're killing it. And what's more, the human behavior that is having the biggest impact on its' demise is our diet. Over-breeding animals for food is crippling our chances of any kind of survival daily. If you don't believe me, please follow these links or do some research of your own.

We live in a day and age where eating meat and dairy is not necessary for survival. This is not the ice age. There's plenty of good, nutrition filled food out there that does not require slaughtering innocent beings or screwing up the planet. A lot of it is being fed to those other animals bred for food. It could feed those starving children we hear so much about.

So, what would you do if you lived on a dying planet and your best chance of survival depended on giving up meat and dairy? Because, that, my friends is not a hypothetical situation. It's our reality.

Portions of this post were previously published by this author on a now closed Yahoo property.