Jebus wrote:
But does such a person really exist? If so, s/he must be extremely rare.
Yes, and it's not rare. This qualifies most ex-vegans I have known; most were vegan for a mixture of reasons, including ethics, health, and caring about the environment. They cared about animals and ethics, and then changed their minds.
Usually, somebody convinced them it wasn't wrong to eat meat (usually by being in a relationship with them -- see our former discussion on that subject), or that meat was healthy (by some fallacious appeal to nature, or by debunking some of the erroneous claims
some less rational vegans make and going with the assumption that if one claim some people make is wrong then all claims anybody makes related to that subject are also wrong -- poisoning the well).
The other case is that they just got jaded and learned to distract themselves from suffering and ignore it.
After they start eating meat again, very strong cognitive dissonance kicks in, and they start using all of the same rationalizations that any meat eater uses to defend an irrational behavior. They also alienate themselves from their vegan friends (they'll claim they were ostracized, but that's
usually because they acted like assholes and took very personally their previous friends' questions and criticisms -- very valid criticisms).
Many of these ex-vegans are often the worst of the bunch, as far as advocating carnism. They're set on convincing others to start eating meat again, abnormally so. They want to "save" everybody from veganism, and they look back on their time as being vegans as if they were in a cult.
My suspicion is that the worst ones were no more rational as vegans or carnists; they were probably the crazy vegans that made us all look bad and went on with all kinds of absurd "facts" that just aren't accurate.
Those I have known who were slightly more rational as vegans tend to be more reserved, and almost apologetic, and they look back on the time as a side effect of idealistic youth, and as adults don't care about the world anymore -- that is, have turned to hedonism and self-indulgence, and just taking the easy way out for everything. And will pretty much admit this.
Jebus wrote:
I don't consider myself anymore ethical than the next ethical vegan, but I could never stop being a vegan, even if somehow my life depended on it.
Most of those who quit said the same thing. There are even a good number who have vegan tattoos.
It's sobering to realize how hard it is to identify the difference between a vegan who will really stick with it, and the vast majority who will quit.
It's not how active they were as activists.
It's not the lack of a lifetime commitment (they never imagined quitting while getting tattoos that say "vegan for life").
It's not that they were just dietary vegans (we're even talking about people who have thrown paint on fur coats, and broken into labs to free animals here -- things I don't agree with, but just as a matter of demonstration that it's not for lack of having cared).
A good person, through and through, can be come a callous, selfish, piece of delusional human shit (to put it lightly), and the same callous, selfish, delusional piece of human shit can become a decent human being.
Unfortunately, the former transition is much more common than the latter, and it's much harder to redeem oneself once one has fallen (not physically, but psychologically).
Going vegan the first time is easy; there's a simple excuse. "I'm a good person, I just didn't know"
Going vegan the second time, people have to come to terms with the fact that they did know, and they chose to do the wrong thing despite that. That's not easy for people to admit. It's much easier to just go on lying to oneself about it, and making up excuses -- although they'll always feel uncomfortable about it.
The kind of person who can look in the mirror and see reality, admit they he or she has been knowingly doing the wrong thing, that it makes him or her a bad person, and then make the choice to face that head-on and change, to redouble efforts to redeem his or herself -- that's the kind of person who can go vegan a second time. Most don't have that courage.
For most people, when they fall off the proverbial horse, they just give up and roll around in the dirt throwing a fit, attempting to convince themselves that they didn't want to be on the horse anyway.
I don't know which of those two the Original Poster is. Coming here and asking the question says something, but I'm not sure what it says yet. I wouldn't normally doubt somebody who says he or she used to be vegan, though.