Vegetarianism and The Banking Crisis

People don’t really agree on much.

It may be the result of some fucked up Hegelian necessity but, as a rule, mankind just doesn’t tend to see shit the same way.

Which is why the popular invective towards bankers at the moment is such an interesting phenomenon. It seems we’ve finally found someone we can unite against and something we can agree upon.

Bankers are bad.

No-one has a good word to say about them. Even the BBC, that self-proclaimed bastion of neutrality, finds itself unable to defend them. Bankers, it has been agreed, represent everything that our morally upstanding and selfless society hates.

They are avaricious, selfish and, worst of all, they have the temerity to be very, very wealthy.

But there’s more than a little hypocrisy at work here.

I’m not saying the bankers aren’t scumbags, I’m sure they are. But are we really such angels that we can claim the moral high ground?

Would most people behave differently if they could accumulate as much money as the bankers have?

Questionable, I’d say. Very questionable.

As a test, for a bit of fun, I’d like you to imagine you were asked to turn Vegetarian tomorrow.

I know this seems like something of a non sequitur. But bear with me…

In some cultures eating meat is seen as barbarous and unethical. The case, whether you agree or not, is undeniably reasonable.

Meat eaters, to satisfy their lust for flesh, are willing to slit the throat of a peaceful, living creature without a giving single fuck.

That’s because the meat tastes good. We don’t care how reasonable or scientific the arguments to abstain from it are. We like meat, we are greedy for it, and we are willing to kill for it.

What’s more, the case for eating meat is just as reasonable as the case against. The human animal has always been carnivorous. It is in our nature to eat meat. The world is a dog-eat-dog (or an x eats y) place, and that is simply how things are.

But here’s where it gets interesting…

Is it not also in our nature to be competitive? Have we not evolved to be avaricious? Is this not a game of survival in which we fight each other to achieve the status of alpha male or female?

Why, I think it is.

It would seem to me that the bankers we detest so much are being no less ‘human’ than the meat eaters are. The only difference is that, in this instance, it is we who are being sent to the slaughter house.

For Bob Diamond, Fred Goodwin and the like,  the money, the power and the lear jet lifestyles are every bit as juicy and delicious as a rump steak is to a meat eater. The bankers don’t give a fuck who they hurt to satisfy their appetite any more than your standard carnivore gives a fuck about how a chicken was tortured before it was covered in breadcrumbs, boxed up and branded KFC.

“Now, steady on,” comes the counter-argument. “We’re talking basic morality here. The  bankers have broken our society and let people around them suffer. Humans should be better than that. Talk about animals all you want, but morality is a people issue. People come first.”

Bit convenient that, though, isn’t it? A law of human betterment with a loophole that says although we must not damage the economy,  we can continue to slaughter living things? It’s the hardly most Utopian aspiration I’ve ever come across. Yes, people come first, but as long as people are saying that, it’s not strictly objective, is it?

Christians (as ever) can perhaps weasel out of it by claiming we are encouraged to eat meat in the Bible. But I’m pretty sure there are only ten real rules in that fucking book and chief among them is ‘thou shalt not kill.’ It wouldn’t have harmed the Almighty to have added the word ‘humans’ at the end of that particular diktat if He was really gunning for clarity.

If we believe the bankers should find it in their souls to overcome their nature and curtail their appetite for money, should we not do the same with our diet? We expect the bankers to make sacrifices and accuse them of acting in the interests of their own greed. But *cough* *cough* really?

Of course, the other aspect is that it doesn’t matter anyway. Because the bankers won’t change for shit.

They can’t see what all the fuss is about. The bankers are so brainwashed by their desires that they have applied a kind of financial casuistry to their lives. They cannot see that what they do is wrong. The sweet meat of success has driven them insane. You will not change a banker’s mind or persuade him to give up what he loves. He simply cannot see the same values in the world as we do. He doesn’t want to.

The Hindus, the Jainists and the Buddhists, were they not so forgiving, would look at us exactly the same way.

They can see the harm that eating meat does (in some cases claiming it to be the cause of war). They look upon it as an act of cannibalism and murder. But no matter how clear and reasonable the case against the slaughter of animals is, our taste for flesh is too strong for us to listen to it.

We are not going to give up the things we love, no matter what has to suffer to provide it.

And that is something we have in common with the bankers we all hate so much.

Am I saying we should all give up meat? No (I’d like us to, but that’s a different thing).

Am I saying the bankers are unfairly demonised? No.

I’m just making a case for consistency.  So if you eat meat and you do not believe you are acting immorally, then accept that they are not acting immorally. If you are, they are. Otherwise it’s simply nothing more than a bunch of turkeys voting against Christmas.

Personally, I suspect much of the bitterness towards bankers comes from tacit material jealousies. But if that’s not the case, if the rage we are seeing towards the bankers really does come from a genuine desire to see people living more ethical lives, then surely it was Gandhi who said it best:

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

A beautiful idea.

But then Gandhi was a Vegetarian.