I was recently thinking about the fact that society does not just make it more difficult for people to be vegetarian or vegan, it sometimes makes it impossible.
For example, MCLA's mandatory meal plan makes it impossible for a person to be vegan without eating nuts or soy (nut allergies are common, as is soy intolerance), without paying for food in addition to the meal plan (which is insanely expensive) and while still getting adequate nutrition until senior year, at which point the meal plan is no longer mandatory. At first I just viewed this as a simple societal prejudice, regrettable but not terrible, but upon thinking further, I realised that it is much more than that. By not providing vegan options, and then demanding that all MCLA students who are not seniors pay ridiculous amounts to eat only Aramark food, MCLA is effectively forcing students to engage in immoral behaviour. The only way to avoid this is to get a doctor's note (which many doctors will not provide) or drop out of school. The latter option, while more moral in the short run, may end up causing more harm in the long run, since it is far more possible to influence society, and other people, from a position of societal significance such as that a college education can help afford.
Now, perhaps the students are not being immoral as such, since ought implies can, and they cannot safely consume a vegan diet while in their first three years at MCLA. But certainly there is some sort of immorality going on, whether on the part of Aramark inc. or MCLA, or both. This kind of situation is not unique to MCLA, either; many other colleges have the same problem, as do numerous other kinds of institution. I must imagine that it is difficult to be vegan, or perhaps even vegetarian, in prison. It is certainly difficult, often impossible, to do so when homeless or otherwise reliant on soup kitchens/free church food/similar things - often, these organisations only offer one or two food options, and most of the time they contain meat (or, at the very least, eggs and dairy). Thus, society immorally forces a meat-eating diet on a substantial number of people. This is immoral for two reasons: one, it deprives people of their right to choose their diet, and may cause many psychological harm by their knowledge that they are eating dead animals, which they would not otherwise choose to eat, and two, it causes the death and suffering of innumerable non-human animals.
This made me wonder about the past, and the various institutional evils present at different periods therein. Often, when we look back at the past, we blame people for not taking a stand against immoral practices, like sexism or slavery. We seem to assume that they are choosing to be lazy, that they could act morally if they simply chose to do so and would put in a bit of effort. Even if we acknowledge that it would be difficult, we certainly don't deny that it is possible. Yet is this always the case? In past America, if one was a slave owner, would freeing all of one's slaves actually have caused any good? Or would the formally enslaved people simply be re-captured and forced back into slavery, perhaps under worse conditions than before? I don't know the answers to those sorts of questions. Yet, being in a position of forced immorality myself, I must look back on people of the past with a more analytical eye, rather than immediately dismissing their actions as the results of lazy conformity.
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