Re: Vegan + Bacon

(This was meant to be a response to a blog where somebody wrote about the concept. Trouble is, I can't find the link!)

So, there is a concept called vegan + bacon, where essentially if you want to make some improvement in your life (say, be vegan) but feel there's something difficult that prevents you in some way (your love of bacon) you could just do the vegan thing and the bacon thing, and be vegan + bacon.

I... agree, but I think that it's sort of missing a point. The goal is always to get rid of the bacon. I think with time, as you do the vegan thing, you'll end up hopefully naturally doing the bacon thing less, but there's every chance you won't.

It's a thing I sort of struggle with in my veganism, as I really want to break it at times. It's difficult, sometimes, when say you're in a foreign country and there's less vegan food, to actually maintain it. I still haven't really figured out whether it's best to be rigid, and search around for ages to try find restaurants that do vegan food, or eat depressing things like marinara pizza, or if it's better to just accept it and acquiesce at those times. One week of eating vegetarian won't be the end of the world, I think. But then that can very easily slippery-slope into just being vegetarian the whole time, and then vegetarian plus bacon, and then...

And of course with veganism, it's a fully immoral act you're dealing with. The point is that the animal is dying (and they still end up dying for milk or eggs) and suffering whilst it's alive. Every time I eat a cheese with pizza because it's a little more difficult to find a restaurant that does cheese without pizza, that's direct financial support for a system of exploitation. Looked at from another way, you could compare it to a person saying, well, it was too difficult not to murder, so I just committed GBH instead. The point is not to be committing anything at all!

Yet of course, starting from a point of eating meat, vegan + bacon is a much needed improvement. From that lens, and especially since the concept is meant to be "popular" (for the everyday man), I suppose it's good.

How much absolutism is good absolutism?