After 21 years as a practicing omnivore, I decided the other day to become a vegetarian. I had been working in a convenience store for a couple hours and something might have snapped in my head. Since then, I have been examining my motives thoroughly and have only managed to come up with one reason for my conversion: I don't want to chew on flesh anymore.
Now keep in mind, for many years I've been a firm believer that there is something weird about someone who chooses a vegetarian lifestyle, so in no way, am I taking the elitist vegetarian route that seems to look down on those that choose to eat meat as committing some kind of barbaric act. Eating meat is something that we have evolved into and I accept this; it has been necessary in order for some of our descendents to live and, in another time, my (motives for being a vegetarian) might not have been quite as relevant. As a well-fed middle-class American, however, being a practicing omnivore might not be as necessary as it once was.
The idealist vegetarian route that sees the vegetarian lifestyle as the salvation of animals is naive and I understand perfectly well that feild animals can die just as easily in the process of harvesting wheat or soy as farmed animals can die when they themselves are being harvested. In fact, it seems to me that, aside from health reasons, converting to vegetarianism seems, for the most part, an impractical, if not completely illogical thing to do. For example, where should one draw the line when being a vegetarian?-- even common ingredients like glycerin can be animal-derived. Cheese is curdled with the stomach acid of cows. Eggs are in almost everything-- Is an egg a true animal? Who is to say? A line must be drawn somewhere and it is always somewhat arbitrary unless it is the hard line of veganism but even that is not without it's own problems. Maybe it's an a priori gut feeling I'm having to not eat meat. Maybe I've hynotized myself. Maybe I've unhypnotized myself. Hopefully someday I will come to understand my subconscious reasoning a little more clearly and grow into my decision.