Source: The Outback Steakhouse menu

While the rest of us live happy, healthy lifestyles, vegans go to-the-hilt trying to convince us that we aren’t really happy or healthy, and they attempt to make the meat-eating diet out to be the cause of our woes.

Their motives are not hard to understand. It’s obvious that their problem is with meat-eating, and they work hard to ensure that the choice that they’ve made for themselves is also the choice that they make for the rest of us.

To this end, they attempt to characterize meat eaters as callous and indifferent. As vegans see it, meat-eaters are low-IQ knuckle-draggers who couldn’t care whether our actions today burn the world to the ground tomorrow.

What vegans don’t comprehend is that meat-eaters are happier and healthier for some very good reasons. Among these reasons is that we understand our impact on the world, and the nature of the world that we live in, and these facts are something that we’ve come to peace with.

Among the fallacies common to vegans and to those obsessed with nature is the idea that nature is a personal entity concerned with balance and order. Such thinking is a clear projection of one’s own values onto a theoretical personal entity.

The fact is, nature is not a person. Nature is not a goddess, nor is it anyone’s mother. Because nature is not a personal entity, it is not concerned with regulation or with maintaining a balance. Nature is simply a broad term used to refer to the physical world around us. Nature puts no forward effort into replenishing what is excessively used, nor does it make a conscious effort to cull what has become too successful. Nature is a thing, and it’s a thing that we decide how to live in. When humanity makes a choice that impacts the natural world, that impact is weighed against the benefit to us, and we make the choice we deem to be more beneficial to us.

Most of us have come to peace with the reality of the world that we live in, and have accepted it. That acceptance is what enables us to live happily. As this happens, among the least happy among us are the outliers who stand in opposition to the choices agreed upon by the collective.

Another fact that we’ve come to peace with is the understanding that suffering is an intrinsic part of life. Livestock winces the moment it’s killed as it’s nerves send pain signals to its brain. Plants initiate defense mechanisms when we harvest from them. You feel upset when a motorist taunts you for deciding not to drive. The fact is, suffering is everywhere.

The way we experience the world can be positive or negative. A work of art can induce a positive emotion. To be spurned by a potential suitor can induce a negative reaction. A boxer receiving a left hook experiences a very obvious kind of suffering. To live is to experience, and that includes suffering.

While vegans are obsessed with limiting suffering any way they can, the rest of us have come to peace with the fact that living means sometimes experiencing suffering. While vegans worry themselves awake over the possibility that something they did caused a mouse they never saw to feel pain, the rest of us are aware of suffering as a part of life, and sleep well for having come to peace with that.

Our parents and grandparents have experienced suffering in one form or another, we’ve suffered, and our children will suffer after us.

A vegan might respond to this by asking whether you’d be okay with suffering if you or someone you care about is hit with a brick, this would lead pretty well to the next point: Meat-eaters are healthier and more mentally sound because they’re primarily concerned with the state of human lives, rather than animal lives.

Humans stick with human kind. Humans respond more sympathetically to the pains of our fellow human beings. Humans are inclined to dine with fellow humans. Humans seek sexual relations with other human beings. Humans socialize with human beings.

Animals are much the same way, with animals of one kind usually preferring the company of their own kind. When a wolf dines, they are likely to do so in the company of other wolves. A cat does not concern itself with whether it’s treating a fish humanely before it eats it. A rabbit that desires to copulate seeks out another rabbit as a partner.

While a vegan might seek out a rare outlier in an attempt to defeat this point, the fact is, it’s impossible to deny the tendency of most animals to stick to their own kind, and the efforts of the vegan would stand out as an obvious attempt to deny the reality of the natural world.

The fact is, meat-eaters understand the reality of the world we live in, and have come to peace with it. This makes meat-eaters happier and more sound-minded, as we’ve embraced reality for what it is, rather than what we prefer it to be.

If veganism were nothing more than a choice that one made for one’s self, I wouldn’t have any concern about it except for the nutritional deficiencies intrinsic to a meat-free diet. But because vegans are out to make veganism everyone else’s diet, and they’re willing to employ all manner of misinformation and deception to bring such an outcome about, there is a bit more urgency to respond to it.

Obviously, the belligerence with which vegans seek to change the world doesn’t lend itself the qualities of a peaceful mind that is better in touch with the world around it. It does just the opposite. At their best, these vegans maintain a veneer of serenity, even if only because they understand the value of maintaining such an image.

But the reality is, it’s meat-eaters that understand how things are, and as vegans have been climbing the mountain seeking wisdom, they’ll be surprised when they finally find meat-eaters waiting for them at the summit.