Brave New Kitty

Several years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian for moral reasons. I had become aware of practices in raising animals and in slaughterhouses that appalled me, and I decided that it was morally wrong to consume animals that lived and died in fear and misery. I thought it would be easy: just cut meat out of my diet, right? Wrong. When I started reading labels, I discovered that there are animal products in all sorts of foods that you would never think had them: vegetable soup and jello, for instance. And other common products, too, such as soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Then it occurred to me that, if I didn’t want to be a hypocrite, I would have to rid myself of all associations with leather, too. And what about dairy? Do I stop eating dairy because of how milk cows are raised (which is, bred to have udders so large they can barely walk and shot full of hormones to increase their milk production to a freakishly high level)?

The point is, when I really considered this issue in detail, it became an overwhelming problem to solve. I had to wear leather shoes, for example, or my feet suffocated. And there was no way to determine the exact content of many products. Organic was no answer, either. Just because animals are raised with organic feed and not shot up with chemicals is no guarantee of their humane treatment and death. Also, products labeled organic are only legally required to contain 85% organic ingredients; if your stance is a moral one, that’s not good enough. “Free range” was also no solution: “free range” meat is also no guarantee that an animal lived and died humanely. Furthermore, nobody is labeling leather goods “free range” or “organic” yet, so no matter how scrupulous I might become about my food and household products, I would never be able to do so about leather goods, which I could never completely give up.

In the end, I decided it would be hypocritical to call myself a vegetarian for moral reasons and continue to wear leather and consume animal products out of ignorance or laziness, and frankly, I found the vigilance necessary to not do either exhausting (and almost impossible, anyway). I made uneasy peace with the fact that humans are at the top of the food chain, that we’ve been living off of animal products for thousands and thousands of years, and that denying this would be naïve and intellectually dishonest. I am still opposed to many husbandry and slaughterhouse practices, but I realize now that I have no control over them—including buying “organic” and “free range”—and that to pretend I do would be more about wanting to see myself a certain way than to actually care about these things.

After coming to this awareness, I started to notice how many vegetarians and “organophiles” routinely betray their own principles. They eat junk food, dairy, and all sorts of packaged grocery products without questioning the ingredients or production processes, throwing organic produce, Cheetos, and Formula 407 in their grocery carts with equal disinterest, then smugly demanding paper grocery bags at checkout time without ever considering the impact of this on the environment (both reusable cloth and recyclable plastic bags being better environmental choices, according to my understanding). They suspend their principles if they’re at a restaurant or a friend’s house for dinner. They wear leather, and sometimes even fur. They have no inkling of all the products they use and ingest that contain animal products because it’s never occurred to them to look. And I found all of these practices to be the norm, and not the exception: it seems good enough to many people to see themselves a certain way, whether they actually are or not.

A similar pattern of hypocrisy also occurs in environmentalism. I’m afraid in recent years, as the trend toward being “green” has exploded into popular culture, the problem has gotten worse, not better. As more and more media attention is being given to global warming and “the environmental crisis,” more and more products are being invented to satisfy our desire to see ourselves as “environmentally conscious.” You can go to Target or even Wal-Mart, for god’s sake, and see products as diverse as clothing, candy, and cosmetics labeled “organic” or “all natural” or “free trade.” We now have a “green” cable television channel, whatever that means (you don’t need electricity to watch it, perhaps?).

Labeling is no guarantee of a product’s eco-friendliness. Of products that actually are produced organically (by the legal definition) and free of environment-harming chemicals, if they weren’t locally grown and made, then they were transported to market over long distances—sometimes from different continents—with hydrocarbon fuels, and often with eco-damaging refrigerants to preserve freshness, as well. So even “all natural,” “organic,” and most other buzzwords are no guarantee that the product you’re buying is not tainted by environmentally unfriendly practices. (Although the jury is still out on this too: one study says that because locally grown products are brought to market so inefficiently, it’s actually more damaging to the environment than buying non-organic foods shipped in larger quantities. Here’s a Wikipedia article that contains links to many of these issues in more depth.)

Also, buying products in a co-op, natural foods store, or even a farmer’s market, is no guarantee of being eco-friendly. All of these outlets are chock full of products grown or manufactured traditionally and containing pesticides, herbicides, harmful chemicals, and whatever else you want to avoid, unless specifically stating otherwise. Here’s a great article about “natural” beauty products and “natural” food stores that you might find interesting.

All of this is to say that 1) the product-to-market chain and 2) product labeling are both phenomenally, staggeringly complex issues, and unless you are committed to and vigilant about understanding them, then environmental concern, as well as most other claims about conscientious consumption, is largely about your own self-image.

The issue that really brought this to a head for me was hybrid cars. Since gas skyrocketed last spring, I’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of new Priuses on the road. This is one of the most ridiculous hypocrisies of all, because it’s a really, really expensive one.

There are two rational reasons a person would buy a hybrid car: to save money on gas, or to be environmentally conscious. If you’ve gone out and bought a new hybrid vehicle, you’ve missed the mark on both counts.

If you bought the car for economical reasons, you’ve just spent somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand dollars to save about fifty dollars a week on gas. If you do the math, and are honest about the total cost per mile of the new car (including cost of purchase, gas, oil, maintenance, insurance, wear and tear, and depreciation), then it becomes immediately obvious that it’s much cheaper and much more practical to buy a used just-about-anything than a new hybrid, and cheaper still to just keep the car you now have if it’s paid for, even if it’s a gas guzzler.

If you bought the car for environmental reasons, then you aren’t considering all the factors, either. The energy consumption required to put a car out into the world is immense. The raw materials alone include the manufacture and shipping of steel, plastic, rubber, glass, and paper. Then there’s the energy consumption used in the manufacturing itself (huge!). Then there’s designing, engineering, marketing and advertising. Then there’s shipping the car to markets all over the planet. I can’t find any statistics on this, but it seems like common sense that buying a new car, of any make, contributes to this huge amount of energy consumption, while buying a used car, of any make, does not.

What this means is, if you’ve rushed out to buy a new hybrid car without considering all the relevant factors, it’s more likely that it was about your self-image (I care about the environment! I’m driving a hybrid! or worse, I’m going to save money!), or about wanting a new car and rationalizing buying one, or some combination of both, than it was about saving money or saving the planet. The Prius is the new Corvette; hybrids are now fashionable, and who doesn’t want to be fashionable? And there’s nothing wrong with this, as long as you’re honest with yourself about what you’re doing. A hybrid is the best choice out there for anyone who wants to see himself as an environmentally conscious person. But without the aforementioned vigilance about an issue as layered and complex (and political) as the environment, that’s about all it is.

On the other hand, if you went out and bought a used hybrid, and did so because you needed a car, then yay!! for you: you deserve the good environmental citizen award.

You may think me a hypocrite for giving up on vegetarianism because I found it impossible to be true to the practice; you may say making the effort at all is better than not making the effort, regardless of the issue. But I didn’t give up on vegetarianism. I gave up on labeling myself a vegetarian when I knew it wasn’t, and could never be, the whole truth. And I agree that some effort is better than no effort at all. I’m not talking about giving up on the effort; I’m talking about being honest with yourself about the sincerity of that effort.

I object to people deluding themselves into believing they’re making an effort when they really just want to see themselves, and to be seen by others, as making an effort. There’s a big difference. If it’s about making the effort, then you won’t have a problem admitting where you’ve fallen short and have a few things to learn. You will practice skepticism and dig below the marketing fluff for hard facts and true understanding. You will be willing to make some painful sacrifices; it’s not possible to be environmentally conscious without doing so. And you will avoid giving yourself hard and fast labels. But if it’s about your self-image, then you probably resent having this pointed out because it interferes with how you want to see yourself, and might require you to confront both your desire to be fashionable and your lack of any authentic sense of responsibility about the environment.

Is it okay to be fashionably green because “well, at least it’s a start”? Because some effort is better than none? Yes and no. I’m not sure a thing counts if it isn’t motivated by a person’s values, because when something new captures pop culture’s fancy, being green will just fall by the wayside like old technology and the Independent Party, at least until we’re coerced by law to comply (which also doesn’t count, but hey, at least it gets the job done).

I guess it’s the difference between critical thought and dogmatism. Dogmatism, in this case, about blindly believing in marketing phrases, fashionable trends, and inaccurate self-images with little interest in deeper understanding. If you fall into this category, shame on you, because willful lack of critical thinking does the planet way more harm than good whatever the topic. The most important resource we have is 100% renewable, infinitely reusable, and capable of solving any problem we can possibly conjure up: our ability to think.

Let’s not squander it.

I hear people say “they did the best they could” a lot, usually in a hands thrown up, what can you do? kind of reference to narcissistic parents or siblings who treat them disrespectfully and aren’t willing to change. The implication is that these people needn’t be held accountable for the hurtful things they did (and often still do), and that not holding them accountable is how you forgive them. This is the wrong use of this phrase, and a great example of a tragic misunderstanding that keeps us stuck in unhealthy relationships.

It’s a tough problem. “They did the best they could” sounds good; it feels soothing and hopeful coming out of our mouths; it implies that we’ve reached an appealing level of acceptance and forgiveness. So we get to see ourselves as growing and spiritual people, and we also get to avoid unpleasant conversations and difficult boundary-setting with the people who are hurting us. Used incorrectly, “they did the best they could” allows us the illusion that people who treat us badly can’t control themselves, and that we are wrong and bad to want otherwise.

But of course, we do want otherwise, and no amount of pretending we don’t will ever change that. A child wanting her parents’ love and respect is the most natural thing in the world—and this is perhaps the biggest reason why it’s so easy to fall into the “they did the best they could” trap: doing so lets us avoid acknowledging the deeply buried grief naturally accompanying any childhood that brings us to the point of having to say “they did the best they could.” In other words, if we have to say it, then we have to deal with how our parents’ narcissism affected us—and continues to affect us.

When we get into recovery, we work so hard to develop mutually supportive relationships with people. If we then go back to our families and allow ourselves to be treated disrespectfully, it’s soooo damaging to our spirit. In large part, this is due to the irrationality of the exception we make: They don’t know any better. Or I only have to put up with it once in awhile…or whatever. However you rationalize people’s behavior, if it doesn’t come from a respectful place, then it’s not good for you and it’s not okay, whether or not they’re related to you. If respectful relationships are important to you, then you have an inalienable human right to require that all your personal relationships meet a minimum level of mutual respect and kindness. Period.

It’s a hard thing to do: demand respect and set boundaries and force change onto people who are probably going to resist it vehemently. We may not think the effort is worth it, and this can be easy to rationalize if we think it’s just about us. But there is another, equally important reason to demand respectful relationships from all the people in your life, and it is this: holding people accountable is the most loving thing you can do for them.

Holding people accountable for their behavior is the most loving, respectful way to interact with them, whether they appreciate it or not. It is the very essence of forgiveness because without it, there is no willingness, no impetus, no desire, and no real (that is, unselfish) love. Having an empty, one-sided relationship with a narcissist is not good for either of you: it saps your spirit, and it doesn’t give him an opportunity to do things differently. In short, if you want to do the most loving thing, you will have to set boundaries and have honest conversations. Ugh. But there is no other way.

There’s no talking yourself out of it, either. It’s true that narcissists typically behave as they do because they are emotionally undeveloped, and in that sense, they did indeed “do the best they could.” But it’s not a can’t, it’s a won’t. Everybody is capable of the simple behavioral changes that respectfulness requires. However, because of their strong personalities, addictions, passive-aggressiveness, ragefulness, or victim mentality (or whatever brand of dysfunction that goes on in your particular case), they’ve kept themselves conveniently out of pushing range. But here’s the thing to remember: when you understand this, it becomes your responsibility, as a compassionate human being, to push them a little, at least as far as you’re concerned. Setting boundaries with someone is like giving them multiple precious gifts: your caring, your honesty, your respect, your trust, your unselfish love, your willingness to do the right thing. If you understand this responsibility, and choose not to offer these gifts, then you likely have some of your own issues to deal with: fear, narcissism, or a mixture of both.

People may or may not change; that’s not up to you. It’s also not terribly relevant, because you are only responsible for your end of the exchange. Also, if you make the request/demand for respectful treatment and are refused, then you have the responsibility to change the way you connect with that person (which can sometimes mean no connection at all). Not doing so is like saying respect is optional, and it isn’t.

You can forgive people whether or not they change, but allowing yourself to be treated disrespectfully isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about avoidance. Letting people treat you poorly in the name of “they did the best they could” or even worse, “they’re doing the best they can,” is a dishonest, fundamentally childish way to avoid an uncomfortable responsibility that falls on the shoulders of people who pursue a higher calling. Don’t do it. Speak up for yourself, even if your voice shakes, and make the Universe a little bit better place to live in (because doing the right thing always does). Only when we understand that “they did the best they could” is not an excuse for putting up with disrespect does it begin to take on its true meaning: yes, they did do the best they could, but it just wasn’t very good, and it hurt us. That’s the sad truth, and that truth needs to be addressed because if it isn’t, it denigrates the true spirit of forgiveness and keeps us—and our narcissistic relationship cohorts—in a chronic state of ikkiness.

When you take care of yourself, you also take care of everyone around you. Once you understand this, you will no longer use “they did the best they could” to avoid responsibility to those you love, but rather, as a way to help them along their path. We can’t change other people, but we can change the world by changing our little corner of it one self-defeating behavior at a time.

I learned a great adage years ago in my women’s therapy group: “Stay on your own side!” It means that when you’re in conflict with another person, take care of yourself, stand up for yourself, speak your truth. If that sounds obvious, then you probably don’t need to read this. But if it sounds like hope and light, then you may have some of the same issues all of us did (and sometimes still do), and you probably want to be better at taking care of yourself in stressful situations. If you habitually:

• are afraid of conflict,
• expect to be proven wrong before you open your mouth,
• don’t feel okay wanting things from people,
• believe you don’t deserve to ask for what you want, or
• feel undeserving of other people’s respect,

then you may have trouble staying on your own side, and this article may be of some help to you.

Usually, we heard “Stay on your own side” from our therapist when one of us talked about a conflict, or an expected conflict, with a parent or sibling. Family conflicts are often the hardest situations in which to stay on our own side because family is where we originally learned not to. If you grew up in an environment where a parent or sibling’s anger could have devastating emotional or physical consequences, then you may have learned that the best way to handle conflict was to shut down and avoid it at all costs. Doing so was probably the smartest choice when you were little, but shutting down during conflict as an adult is devastating to your spirit. Unfortunately, it can be an extremely difficult thing to unlearn.

Why? Because staying on your own side—that is, unlearning to avoid conflict—can go against deeply ingrained survival tools that we learn at a very young age. When you’re small, it can feel very literally like a life and death choice to avoid someone’s—particularly a caregiver’s—rage. When something is that deep and that old inside of us, we usually have to confront a whole gaggle of personal beliefs and fears if we want to get past it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress while we’re doing so.

Not too long ago, I realized that the biggest of these limiting beliefs for me, and I think for many of us, is that I don’t get to take care of myself in the face of conflict. That is, a part of me still believes that I am unworthy of having desires and opinions and rights like other people do. I’ve understood intellectually for a long time that this is a lie, but a very old, very little part of me still believes it. I can still get flustered in tense conversations, I can still feel shameful afterwards, I can still lose myself and say things I later regret, I can still shut down or avoid situations when I know it’s in my best interest to speak my truth. Staying on my own side is not yet an automatic response; I have not yet fully owned it as a basic and inalienable right, which, of course, it is.

Nevertheless, mastering the mechanics of staying on my own side, largely through that group (the only place where this important issue was specifically addressed), was extremely important. I learned how to take care of myself despite my beliefs, and that process resulted in my recent deeper awareness by laying the groundwork for such an awareness to occur. And such ever-deepening self-knowledge is essential to our growth—whatever the issue, topic, or belief. Being willing to face our demons can be 90% of the battle. And when we don’t know what it is we need to face, learning the mechanics can often get us there. This is especially true for very old and deep-seated issues, issues hard to see and hard to accept, that all of us have in varying degrees.

So, learn the how of staying on your own side, and eventually you will understand the why of it. The best way to learn both is within the confines of a safe, supportive environment, particularly one with a psychological focus like group therapy. Group therapy re-creates a safe family environment in which you can re-learn (or un-learn) poor coping skills that result from feeling unsafe as a child. It is also undoubtedly the most efficient, and the most satisfying, way to work on such issues.

Finally, a word of caution: staying on your own side does not mean you have license to say whatever you want, whenever you want. Speaking your own truth never means that you get to deliberately or thoughtlessly hurt anybody, including somebody who hurt you (such hurtfulness, in fact, mimics the person who hurt you). The biggest reason for this is that hurting others isn’t being on your own side; it’s as spirit damaging as avoidance and will feel as bad afterwards. The essence of staying on your own side is about respecting yourself and others equally.

Certainly, most of us, maybe all of us, have trouble standing up for ourselves from time to time, and this is not in itself proof of a deep, dark lack of self-worth. But habitual conflict avoidance or big shame reactions afterward can indicate underlying issues of low self-worth or lack of self-respect. Staying on your own side is a basic aspect of being a healthy, functioning adult. As such, it is an important thing to be able to do. If you can’t, you’ll avoid all sorts of opportunities to learn, grow, and expand your world. I can’t think of too many things more tragic in the realm of personal development.

In reviewing all the topics I’ve been writing about since I started this blog, I realized that one of my main topics is spirituality. Because spirituality is such a vague and emotionally charged word, with myriad definitions and connotations, I thought it would be a good idea to write an overarching explanation of what I mean when I use it.

Spirituality is, in essence, discovering what nourishes your spirit and practicing it. By spirit, I mean the part of yourself that feels most alive: useful, connected, expansive, healthy, vibrant, whole. What makes life worth living. Spirituality is found in the answers to such questions as Who am I? What is meaningful to me? What do I want to do with the time I have?

Spirituality, as I use the term, has nothing to do with mythical gods or imaginary beings, or even with your own soul, at least not as an entity that goes on living after your body dies. It has to do with being and becoming the most whole person you can.

Spirituality is not something you choose. Spirituality is a basic attribute of being human, as basic a drive as safety, hunger or procreation. As such, it isn’t an either/or, you have it or you don’t; you have it. But it’s a spectrum we move along our entire lives, and we can choose to develop it or not.

Sadly, our culture is uncomfortable with the whole topic, preferring to relegate it to the realm of organized religion and not talk about it outside that context. This is like relegating the topic of money to cashiers. The difference between, say, a fundamentalist Christian’s or Muslim’s idea of spirituality and someone who’s spent a lifetime studying it (Joseph Campbell or Alan Watts, for example) is like the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. And we all pay dearly for this cultural avoidance, this lack of clarity on such a crucial topic, so necessary to our sense of who we are.

Relegating spirituality to the realm of mythical religion—that is, a religion that teaches the reality of mythical beings in the sky—is one of the great tragedies of our modern culture. We are left largely void of vocabulary to discuss concepts like utmost value, highest meaning, and deepest wholeness without conjuring up images of a bearded man sitting on a cloud, frowning down on us and shaking his head as he ticks off marks on his tally sheet, or a mother goddess doing much the same (but with different priorities). The result is a culture with a gigantic vacuum where those concepts are supposed to be, and a people who don’t know where to turn when they can no longer tune out that vacuum with distractions (a condition commonly referred to as “anxiety,” “depression,” “nervous breakdown” “mid-life crisis,” and the like).

But just because we’ve relegated spirituality to mythical religion doesn’t mean it has to stay there. Mythical religion, as I’ve stated elsewhere, is only one level of spirituality, and quite an unsophisticated one at that. It’s the level of children who want to be protected and taken care of, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting that, staying there is certainly prohibitive to the full blossom of human potential. Rejecting it generally means that you’ve achieved a more sophisticated worldview, and that’s good. It means you’re asking the right questions and thinking about the right things. It means you are a seeker of truth.

But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t think atheism (for example) is a non-spiritual worldview. The process of reaching the atheistic conclusion is itself a spiritual one. In fact, it is the very essence of spirituality. What could be more spiritual than defining one’s own truth? Nothing. Truth and spirituality are, I believe, synonymous terms. If you seek truth, you are a spiritual person. And if you are a spiritual person, nothing is more important than seeking truth. (Even if your truth is severely limited, which explains why fundamentalists are so vehement: they genuinely believe, with the zealotry of children, that truth is on their side. Say what you will about fundamentalists, they are nothing if not sincere.)

The fundamentalist Christian or Muslim, the atheist, the mystic sage; are all spiritual, all are seekers of truth. They are merely at different rungs on the spiritual ladder. As are drug addicts, gang members, soccer moms, and anyone else you care to name. We are spiritual beings because we have no choice in the matter. Finding meaning for ourselves is not an option. The only question is, do we seek consciously, or do we avoid doing so?

Finally, you could call spirituality personal growth, personal development, self-actualization, self-improvement, or any of the many other terms applied to the movement toward wholeness. But by any other name, it’s too easy to overlook the proper sense of wonder about consciousness itself and that the Universe exists at all. Much less ponder our place in it. I believe such pondering is essential to becoming whole, regardless of beliefs about god, and “spirituality” is more inclusive of that than any other term I can think of.

Salvation lies not in Jesus, but in shifting our cultural spiritual focus from “dogmatic beliefs” to “sense of awe.” If you think carefully about the implications of such a shift, you’re bound to agree.